Kirsty Everett - Honey Blood: A pulsating, electric memoir like nothing youve read before

CONTENTS

Honey Blood is one of the most exuberant, life-affirming memoirs I have ever read. The fact that it is about the uncompromising reality of childhood cancer makes it all the more extraordinary. Read it and be utterly bowled over by Kirsty Everetts astonishing courage, honesty and cheeky humour.

Patti Miller, author

Do not be afraid of this book. The big C in it is not cancer, its courage. The courage to deal with pain, loss, fear and the shattering of a young girls big dreams.

Instead of tiptoeing around the tough stuff, and leaving the most difficult bits out, Kirsty Everett dives right in, taking the reader into her world, bravely, honestly, with raw humour and grit. We get up close to her tight-knit family, boisterous friends, tender first loves, doctors both brusque and kind, and rude strangers. Death hovers on every page, but lifes vitality and Kirstys defiant spirit shove it aside.

This refreshingly straight-talking account of adolescent leukaemia goes beyond pain to a fuller, wiser, deeper understanding of what really matters when everything you hope for hangs by a thread. It offers the best medicine for anyone who has ever faced the relentless physical and mental odds and obstacles that create seemingly insurmountable roadblocks as tests of character. It may not be a cure, but it is one mighty transfusion of the powerful drugs that make us human and help us survive: hope, compassion, and love.

Caroline Baum, author

Everett is a born writer, her compelling story shot through with the extraordinary sensitivities of childhood. Honey Blood is never maudlin or self-pitying even though parts of the book made me wince with sympathy because Everetts story shines with strength.

Bookseller + Publisher magazine

If the Olympic Games are designed around commitment, courage, determination, and people reaching their goals and achieving their personal best, Kirsty has been to the equivalent of two Olympics.

Wayne Staunton, managing director, Sold Out Event Management

This is a coming-of-age story that will shock and inspire you. Told with searing honesty, Honey Blood tells the close-up story of growing up while everything is falling down. In her compassionate, funny and warm way, Kirsty Everett tells her story that will inspire others to tell and live through their stories. A wonderful and truthful insight into how to survive and thrive against the odds.

Michael Anderson, professor of creativity and arts education, University of Sydney

For Peter James Everett and Benjamin Malesev

the truly good men.

And for all the young people who are no longer alive because cancer

stole them away from their families. Theres not enough room in my

locket for all of you, but you have a permanent place in my heart.

CONTENTS

Oh good, Kirstys here! Wait until you see her curl up and do this cold turkey.

They called it Day Only, meaning you only spent the day there having treatment. Day Only consisted of one large room at the very end of a hospital ward. I dont know why they didnt let us all spread out and have one room each, because every other room on this ward was now empty and unused. Perhaps they wanted to keep all of us cancer kids in the one place.

Day Only had eight beds, seven of which were proper single beds. Six of those beds had bald children in them, which meant the seventh bed was for me. The eighth bed the bed near the door was the treatment bed. This was the altar where our innocence was sacrificed to the cancer gods. This wasnt so much a bed as a hard padded bench that was just like a large ironing board. Next to it was a privacy curtain that they could pull around the bed whenever a patient was placed upon it.

I sat down on the last empty bed, got out a book Unreal by Paul Jennings and began to read. Mum plonked her handbag on the ground and pulled out the latest issue of Womens Weekly before sitting down in a beige chair next to me.

Wheres that lollipop for Bradley? We should get Kirsty to show Bradley how this gets done.

The nurse speaking was called Karen. Karen was always here. She had long straggly hair that was a greasy tangled mess on each side of her face. Mum often said it looked like it needed a good wash and blow-dry. Karen had an enormous bottom that wobbled so much that sometimes it seemed to be chasing her around the room. Karen would stride towards one of us kids and then, suddenly, her bum remembered it needed to keep up with her. She rummaged around in her pockets for a few moments and then pulled out a red lollipop. She walked over to two-year-old Bradley, who tilted his head backwards, opened his mouth wide and let out a high-pitched scream. Bradley, like all the children here, was bald. He had dark brown eyes, ghost-like skin and a frail, malnourished body. Its probably a good thing that the windows couldnt be opened because if there was a gust of wind, then Bradley wouldve been picked up and carried away.

His parents, like all parents at Day Only, were powerless statues.

If you be a good boy, you can have this lollipop, said Karen.

I think Karens eaten one too many lollipops, muttered Mum to me and we had a discreet giggle at the expense of Karens bum.

The five other children, along with Bradley, began to scream too. The choir of howling cancer children filled the room. I sat still, holding my book in my lap, and didnt make a sound. My ears began to ring and I tried to focus on the words in the book, but the cries of terror made my hands shake and the words kept jostling about.

Well have to do this the hard way. Karen put the lollipop back into her pocket and motioned for another nurse to come over. As the other nurse got closer to him, Bradleys screaming became even more high-pitched. He knew what was coming. We all did. Goose bumps exploded all over my arms.

Karen tried to pick him up. He kicked and punched at her and the other nurse grabbed hold of his legs. Come on, Bradley, said Karen. Dont be so difficult for us.

Bradley stopped screaming for a moment, but the other children continued crying in solidarity. As he reached the treatment bed, where a registrar stood waiting for him, he wailed like he was being murdered. My ears wouldnt stop ringing. I heard a whooshing sound as the curtain was pulled around the treatment bed. We could no longer see Bradley, but we could still hear him. The other children fell silent. Bradley was on the altar now and none of us could help him.

I heard the registrar say: Can someone put a hand over his mouth? I cant get this needle in with him screaming like that.

Someone covered Bradleys mouth, but I could still hear him yelling from behind the hand. Minutes ticked by. The curtain opened. Bradley had stopped screaming, but now he was sobbing as his dad carried him over to his bed and Karen wheeled Bradleys intravenous drip behind him.

Heres your lollipop, she chirped, as she shoved the sweet near Bradleys face. He snatched it and chucked it on the floor. Whos next?

It wasnt me. They did us in order of youngest to oldest. I was ten, so I would be going last today. I would have a long time to read and listen to the shrill cries before it was my turn on the altar.

One after the other, children were taken and given their treatment. Eventually, Karen came over to my bed.

Come on, Kirsty. Your turn.

I swung my legs down from the bed and started to walk towards the torture table, Mum following behind me. Karen pulled a clean plastic sheet onto the bed. I used the little step next to the bed to get up onto the hard platform and immediately curled up on my side for the bone marrow biopsy, or BMA (bone marrow aspiration), which I knew they would do first. Karen whisked the curtain around. I stared straight ahead at the curtain in front of me. Mum stood near my feet so she wouldnt be in the way, but she was always careful to position her eyes at the same spot on the curtain as I did. She didnt want to see what they needed to do to me. No one needs to see this. The curtain was bright orange with cartoon characters all over it not Disney characters like Goofy or Donald Duck, but warped creatures that only vaguely resembled these beloved Disney characters. Red lollipops didnt make biopsies easier and neither did stupid cartoons on a curtain.