Donald and The "Attempted" Birthday Boycott
- timandcloe
- Jun 14
- 8 min read
To start this blog off, I want to play a game of Three Truths and a Lie.
Is the lie either:
When I was younger, I cut my dog’s tongue with a pair of scissors and blamed it on a bird.
I buy myself trophies whenever I beat my siblings at games.
I once made banana bread without flour and didn’t realise hours later when it seeped through the cooling rack.
My progress scan results have come back with good signs.
Keep those in mind as we continue...
Because this week, I tried to boycott my own birthday.
And by that I mean I issued a formal request to the universe, my phone, and anyone remotely emotionally invested in me that the entire event be quietly ignored. No calls. No texts. No cards. No presents. No Facebook posts. No “hope your special day is as special as you are” energy.
Just a normal day.
Beige. Unremarkable. Like a Monday, but with slightly more existential dread.
I even hid my birthday on Facebook in an attempt to avoid accidental contact.
Which, for those who know me, is quite the downgrade.
Growing up, my birthday was less of a day and more of a government-funded public holiday. No joke - celebrations lasted a full week and would have continued longer if I’d been allowed to stretch the moral argument. I was firmly of the belief, in my youth, that my existence warranted an extended festival involving cake, attention, and at least three outfit changes a day.
Then of course, age does what age does.
Somewhere along the way - probably after marriage and parenthood - I became someone who prefers to compress celebrations into a single polite 24-hour window, often shared with other June babies, whilst quietly discouraging gifts unless they’re practical, edible, or exchangeable for groceries.
This year though? Not even that.
Why?
Because 39 isn’t a milestone birthday.
And also because I currently can’t eat cake, which is honestly one of life’s cruellest plot twists.
Add to that the general state of 2026, which has so far taken a very enthusiastic jack-knife to every plan we had at the beginning of the year, and celebrating felt less like a vibe and more like poor timing.
Especially when I had chemo scheduled for the very next day, and the pre-game prep isn’t exactly glamorous. It involves house sterilisation, emotional preparation, medication sorting, broth procurement, and the ceremonial eviction of Tim from any bathroom-related zones for the week ahead.
For context, we’re talking clean sheets, clean towels, clean toilets, clean everything. New toothbrushes. Separate washing baskets. Heat packs. Tissues. Tablets. Supplies strategically positioned around the house like we’re preparing for a particularly depressing apocalypse.
Less Mad Max. More Sad Max with a spreadsheet of medications.
You know. Opposite of birthday sparkle.
Then, perhaps most significantly, we were still waiting for my first progress scan results.
Perfectly timed to arrive at 4:45pm on my birthday.
“Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Am I responding to treatment? We’ll just have to wait and see.”
I mean, come on - nothing says celebration quite like mid-treatment radiology suspense.
Hallmark really needs to make a card for that.
So hopefully you can understand why I wasn’t particularly in the mood to celebrate while sitting in cancer limbo.
But before we continue…Let’s return to our game.
Truth number one.
The dog.
Look, in my defence, I was fascinated by our childhood dog’s permanently hanging pink tongue. It seemed impractical. Inefficient. Poorly designed.
In what can only be described as my brief veterinarian-meets-Dexter phase, I attempted corrective surgery using household scissors.
When my parents noticed the dog casually wandering past with blood dripping from its mouth, I quickly pivoted to a much stronger explanation.
A giant black bird. With a giant black beak. Had swooped down and attacked it.
This story may have held up slightly better had I not been standing there with crimson-covered scissors hidden behind my back like a very unconvincing criminal mastermind.
The dog recovered. I learned an important lesson. I’ve remained both a dog lover and a significantly more responsible user of scissors ever since.
Don’t judge me. 😑
So anyway, despite my very clear “please ignore this day” memo, several people still chose heartfelt violence.
I received beautiful messages. Phone calls. A blank card from Tim. A pre-filled one from Harry.
There were also beautiful shared gifts for both Tim and me, as his birthday comes two days before mine.
Which always creates a magical 48-hour window each year where I can refer to him exclusively as “the much older man” and be technically correct.
Cradle snatcher. 😏
Earlier in the week we even popped out to the outdoor drive-ins, where Tim spent most of the evening emotionally reconnecting with his childhood through the new He-Man movie.
Watching a grown man revisit the glory days of plastic swords and questionable haircuts was unexpectedly delightful. And slightly disturbing.
Then came another gift.
A bread maker from two of my beautiful friends. Which is either incredibly thoughtful or a cry for help.
The jury remains out.
The evidence, unfortunately, is mounting.
You see, I am currently in what I’d describe as my domestic redemption arc. Because if I’m going to feel like a partially deflated pool toy left outside in winter, I may as well lean into becoming an artisanal bread-producing domestic goddess.
Though at this point, my relationship with baking remains largely theoretical.
I enjoy the concept of it tremendously.
Because another truth is that I am a terrible cook.
Years ago I proudly baked a loaf of banana bread and only realised I’d forgotten the flour hours later when family members were trying to identify the missing ingredient through process of elimination.
The clue, apparently, was that it was one of the main ingredients in bread.
In fairness, the loaf looked convincing. Until gravity got involved.
I also managed to botch the first loaf in our new bread maker last night… so progress is still to be made.
So that’s truth number two.
But even with a mildly unsuccessful birthday boycott, the best present of all didn’t come wrapped.
It came from my oncologist.
On the eve of Cycle Five, Dr Kelvin sat across from Tim and me and told us the scans showed that my Donald Trump tumour had shrunk.
The Donald has officially lost territory. 🏳️
Which, unlike the real Donald, is a result I was very pleased to see.
The little bastard is responding!
Even better, one of the bigger Benjamins - a.k.a lymph nodes - appears to have joined the resistance.
Then came more good news.
My genetic testing returned negative across the board for hereditary cancer markers.
In plain English, this isn’t something lurking in the family tree waiting to ambush future generations or complicate treatment further.
It’s just bad luck.
The sort you don’t win anything for except perspective and an increasingly inappropriate sense of humour.
Then Dr K said the words.
“You’re on track.”
I can’t properly explain what that does to your brain after months of uncertainty.
Tim and I made it about ten steps out of the clinic before completely losing composure.
Hugging. Crying. Producing an amount of snot that should legally require a warning label.
Not elegant. Not dignified. Entirely necessary.
And that is truth number three.
Possibly the best one yet.
Afterwards we celebrated properly.
We went to Get Chunky to buy cookies for the oncology team.
Because apparently gratitude is best expressed through baked goods that aren’t mine.
Then Yo-Chi, which remains one of the few foods capable of cutting through chemotherapy tastebuds and pretending to be food. The staff were lovely. Possibly alarmed. Definitely generous.
We picked up Chinese takeaway, scored a free drink, and went home to do what we do best.
Which absolutely included the highly competitive final event of the night: the Cereal Box Challenge.
Rules are simple:
Place a cereal box on the floor. Pick it up using only your mouth. No hands. No knees. No dignity… which suited me nicely, given I’ve already misplaced mine somewhere around diagnosis.
Absurd. Competitive. Exactly my demographic.
And yes. Of course.
I won.
This should surprise absolutely nobody.
Particularly given earlier that week I’d also defeated all three of my siblings consecutively at Moto Blitz racing in Timezone whilst celebrating my niece’s 16th birthday.
Which naturally forced me into the morally responsible position of buying myself another trophy.
This one is labelled GOAT. A personalised plaque is on order.
It will sit beside the trophy I bought after beating them at Holey Moley and the medal from darts.
For balance, I did also buy the mini putt-putt loser sibling a wooden spoon trophy.
Because I am generous. And humble.
Mostly generous.
Honestly, my family should probably stop trying at this point.
Which brings us back to our game.
The final answer?
There wasn’t a lie.
Every single one was true. Including the one I wanted most.
So yes - the birthday boycott that began as a quiet attempt to ignore the day somehow ended up giving me exactly what I needed.
Hope.
Not the loud, cinematic kind.
Just the quiet sort that slips in through clinic doors and sits beside you without asking.
And it’s that hope that carried me into Cycle #5, which arrived in its usual chaotic fashion and included:
Full tracksuit uniform once again, this time in baby blue, with an entirely new inappropriate cap that I fully acknowledge was immature, unnecessary, and in exceptionally poor taste. Which, if anything, only increased its appeal.
The continuation of Tim & Nurse Co’s chemotherapy word game, which this cycle somehow involved “moist” and “pineapple” in the same sentence, causing nearby patients to become unwilling participants.
New chemo friends. Stories swapped. Laughter too loud. Support gear tried on like a very niche fashion week.
A lovely older lady announcing she loved a man in glasses. Initially directed at Tim. Until she realised he was ginger and immediately reconsidered her entire position. Brutal.
In at 9am. Out at 2pm. Somehow standing in Bunnings buying plants before school pick-up as though none of it had happened.
A three-kilometre evening walk before the pegfilgrastim injection - affectionately known as the bone marrow squeeze. It also chipped away at my goal of walking 100km in June for breast cancer clinical trials, because apparently treatment wasn’t quite enough breast-cancer-related activity for one month.
It turned out to be another great cycle day.
And whilst, overall, it wasn’t the birthday I would have planned in a parallel universe where cake still tastes like cake (and not drywall) and calendars behave.
It may have been one of the most meaningful.
Because somewhere between chaos, scans, shrinkage, cereal-based athletics, and quiet moments in between, hope came back.
Next up is Cycle #6 on the 3rd of July. Then a PET scan two weeks after that. Surgery planned for early August. Then will be back to resuming these infusions for another 7.5 months until March next year.
There’s still a long road ahead.
But for the first time in a while, I can actually see it.
And that’s a gift far better than cake.
For now, I’m happy to accept just “on track”.
And down that track, I hope to ring that bell to signal No Evidence of Disease (NED).
Loudly. Possibly dramatically. Maybe holding a trophy I bought myself.
Until then, I enter Week One - the least glamorous part of the cycle. Which means I’ll now spend the next few days existing somewhere between “I’m absolutely fine” and “if that sock falls on the floor it lives there now.”
And finally, if you’ve made it this far, congratulations.
You now know considerably more about me than you probably intended.
Please don’t judge me for the dog incident.
I was young. Unsupervised. One bad report card away from a very niche criminal arc.
Most importantly though...
Never challenge me at games.
You’re unlikely to win.
And if you do, don’t worry.
I’ll probably still buy myself the trophy and dispute the result. 😏
Some happy snaps:
This blog is to allow me to write a little more about it along the way. Partly to keep friends and family updated, and partly because writing has always been how I make sense of things.
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