Lying on the gurney while having a digital colonoscopy, I wondered how else I might have spent close to £5,000. A new wardrobe? Hot tub for the garden? Villa for a week on the Cote d’Azur?
Instead there I was in a Harley Street basement, stomach blown up to the size of a barrage balloon, chatting merrily to the radiographer’s assistant about polyps.
After that delightful experience came a mammogram, thyroid and ovarian scans, as well as blood tests galore. Between investigations I sat in a towelling robe in a posh waiting room, leafing through old copies of Vogue and feeling faintly foolish. Hideously expensive health checks are normally the preserve of hot-shot executives and millionaires, not housewives on middling incomes like me.
And yet I felt compelled to whack £5,000 on the day-long scan-fest because of a persistent symptom that I could not ignore. Not a lump, bump or unexplained pain. Just a terror of dying and leaving my young children.
As an older mother – I had my last child at 42 – perhaps this fear comes with the territory. This week Cameron Diaz, 53, announced that she and husband Benji Madden, 47, had welcomed their third child, the creatively named Nautas.
The mother’s age brought predictable carping online: Diaz will be in her 70s while her son is in his teens! She’ll be needing her own nappies changed soon! Selfish!
I loathe this kind of criticism. After all, who’s lobbing bricks at Al Pacino for having kids in his 80s? Aside from being sexist, such comments miss the fact that these children would probably rather have an older mother than not to have been born at all.
Besides, rather than being ‘selfish’, past interviews suggest that the amount of time Diaz will have with her children weighs heavily on her mind. When her daughter was a toddler she revealed: ‘I want to live to be 110, since I’ve got a young child. I think you have this amazing moment in your 40s where you appreciate who your parents are, and I want to have that moment with her – be there with her in her 40s.’
This week Cameron Diaz, 53, announced that she and husband Benji Madden, 47, had welcomed their third child, the creatively named Nautas
Last week, just days before announcing the birth, she said something similar: ‘I love being a mother… the only pressure for me now is I have to live to be, like, 107, you know?… I’m just trying to stay alive just like every other mother.’
I hear you, Cameron!
While I had my four children a bit younger than Diaz (when I was 36, 38, 40 and 42), I was far north of 30.9 years old, the average age of women having babies in England and Wales. Until recently, women like me were described as ‘geriatric mothers’ by the NHS.
Like Diaz, I met the father of my children a bit later in life. And like Diaz, this has made me concerned – perhaps a little obsessed – with not dying yet.
At 45, this may seem paranoid. But I know how cruel and capricious life can be. My father died of leukaemia at 46, when I was eight. I remember him in the hospital bed, most of his hair lost, covered in tubes.
Every night I clasped my hands tightly and prayed hard for him to recover, to no avail.
It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to work out that this might have contributed to my obsession with living a long and healthy life.
So I do a lot of things you might expect: walk everywhere, don’t drink too much, avoid eating sausages, eat more seeds than the average pigeon.
Just days before announcing the birth of her third child, Diaz said: ‘I love being a mother… the only pressure for me now is I have to live to be, like, 107, you know?’
I felt compelled to scrape my bank account lest cancer – at some stage and in some form – be lurking somewhere in my body, writes Clare Foges
But this isn’t enough: hence paying through the nose for that health scan last year. Five thousand pounds is not pocket change for me. Still, I felt compelled to scrape my bank account lest cancer – at some stage and in some form – be lurking somewhere in my body.
Was I satisfied with the clean bill of health I got from those scans? Hell, no! I have also had an MRI of my brain (£450), while next on my list is a mole mapping – a rather undignified tour of my body for any skin cancer suspects.
My husband, a cancer surgeon, thinks this is completely mad. Perhaps because of the nature of his job, he is matter-of-fact about death – ‘when it’s your time, it’s your time’.
He thinks I have more chance of out-running Sir Mo Farah than outwitting the black-hooded guy with the scythe.
To him, I’m a sucker for the slickly marketed health scan industry, which (he says) preys on the anxieties of the ‘worried well’.
No matter what he says, I will keep on having the scans and the blood tests.
I don’t want to go on and on like the Duracell Bunny for myself. Personally, I don’t fear death itself – on the other side it’s either amazing or it’s nothing.
The fear of dying is purely the fear of leaving my children.
I need to love them, hug them, tell them they are wonderful on a daily basis. While they’re children, I need to make sure they are hydrated and look after them when they are ill.
As teenagers, I need to tell them to ignore the rubbish online or the nasty things their ‘friends’ say.
As twentysomethings, I need to help them find a job or help them feel OK about themselves if they can’t.
As thirtysomethings I need to counsel them through relationship worries or help out with their own children. As fortysomethings… on and on it goes.
Like Diaz, I have realised I need to live until at least 110.
So – regardless of the eyerolls of my husband – I will carry on doing as I’ve been doing.
Whatever procedure I can undergo to catch the nasties early, I’ll sign up – whether it impoverishes me or not.
Why I wish Blake hadn’t settled
Blake Lively attended the Met Gala for the first time in four years, following news that she and Justin Baldoni had settled their lawsuit out of court
Blake Lively was wafting around the Met Gala hours after it was announced that she and Justin Baldoni had settled their lawsuit out of court.
These settlements carry an unpleasant whiff. Surely if you believe the other party has done wrong, you stop at nothing to get your day in court?
When women in cases such as this settle, it gives strength to the suspicion they may have been overreacting in the first place – and does those making similar complaints no favours.
I’ve cancelled our holiday!
As the chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz continues and fuel shortages threaten flights, I’ve cancelled our summer holiday abroad.
Months of uncertainty aren’t appealing – nor is the prospect of four-hour queues thanks to new EU border controls. Besides, while I love nothing more than a steak frites on the shores of the Med, the truth is that my children prefer sandy sandwiches and Robinsons orange squash on some sodden English beach.
Months of uncertainty aren’t appealing – nor is the prospect of four-hour queues thanks to new EU border controls
Want my vote? Fix our bin collection
Anyone who’ll bring back weekly bin collections gets my vote today. They’re fortnightly in Bristol, which is not enough for our family of six, forcing us to make trips to the tip where officials rip open black bags and turn away disallowed rubbish such as food waste or recycling. I loathe fly-tippers, but if this continues I’ll be one of them.
Heidi Klum’s Met Gala look was inspired by the 19th-century marble sculpture ‘Veiled Vestal’ by Raffaele Monti
Good on Heidi Klum for having some fun at the Met Gala. Dressed as a sculpture of a Roman goddess, she took ‘fashion is art’ literally. It makes a change from Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian, who were pioneering fake nipples. Let us pray that trend doesn’t make it to the High Street.
