The Lump

Sandra, an old school friend who fostered ambitions to work in the
film industry, shot a video of my 18th birthday party. Last week,
feeling nostalgic, I unearthed it and sat down to watch, as though it
were a rerun of some long forgotten sitcom.

Saturday 18th February 1995 was the date. EIGHT AND A HALF years ago -
boy, does that give me a jolt!

Sandra, being an experimental kind of director, livened up the
proceedings with a few unconventional camera techniques: slow-motion,
stilled and even upside-down shots.

All 50 guests are portrayed within her lens at some stage: faces who
have flitted in and out of my life; many of whom have long since lost
contact.

The DJ played all my favourite 80s tracks: Wham, Soft Cell, OMD, Adam
Ant, Ultravox?

Fondly though I treasure this record of a landmark celebration, it
makes touchy viewing. My mother cannot endure watching it at all.

The reason? I was extremely ill. My agony is visible in every
wince-inducing footstep and tilt of the head. On that most special of
nights, my poor young neck was sporting a cyst the size of a swede. My
face was distortedly puffy, and my new, theoretically figure-hugging,
crimson velvet dress gaped pathetically due to the lack of flesh
filling it.

I had misguidedly twined up my hair into a French pleat. Whilst
striving for sophistication befitting of my new adult status, the
result was an austere, 'librarian' image; the tall hairdo serving only
to exaggerate my height and dramatic gauntness. I also wore a sweeping
crepe pashmina, which failed in its task to conceal my grotesquely
engorged neck.

I had been planning this party with military precision for almost a
year: booking caterers; listing song requests for the DJ; purchasing
new nail varnish; ticking off the days on my Garfield calendar.

Then, with just a week to go, the cruellest fate befell me.

After 18 years of unblemished health, this loathsome growth appeared,
burgeoning to such an alarming diameter that I feared I may actually be
sprouting a second head.

On Monday, the 13th, my doctor diagnosed mumps - despite my having only
one lump, on the right side. Surely mumps swelled up on both?

"Just take plenty of rest, Leigh. It'll clear up in three days," he
waved me away with glib optimism. "You'll be right as rain in time for
your party!"

Huh - talk about false hope! By the Saturday, I felt ten times worse.
I'd had the week off school (something I could ill afford in my crucial
A-level year) and spent it bedridden: incapable of standing up
straight, sleeping or swallowing any food other than the Complan my mum
force-fed me via a straw. In those five days, my weight plunged by a
stone, giving my already slim body a withered, sad appearance.

So quite how I survived that party, I shall never know. I guess I
adopted a kind of 'show must go on' mentality: there would be plenty of
time to lie down and die silently later, but right now there were
guests to entertain and Come on Eileen to dance to.

On the 19th, which was my actual birthday, Mum summoned the doctor to
my bedside. At last he confirmed our suspicions that I was not
suffering from mumps and never had been!

My monstrous protuberance, it transpired, was a 'branchial cyst': a
benign genetic defect with which I was born but which manifests itself
in early adulthood. I thought wryly that it could hardly have chosen
earlier adulthood than this!

If my cyst had any sense of decency, it could have lain dormant for
another week, just long enough to allow me a happy birthday. But oh no!
- it couldn't wait to erupt and thwart any chance I had of looking
pretty and winsome in my party photos. Such callous irony!

The lump was removed in a two-hour operation on Monday 27th March 1995.
I spent two days in hospital, but being young and resilient, recovery
was swift. An inch-long scar has puckered my neck ever since, though,
as evidence of my blighted birthday.

Sandra's video is just a film to me now; a drama concerning another
girl in another life. My friends, family and I are played by actors,
like a Crimewatch reconstruction. The actress playing 'Leigh' looks
nothing like me.