‘Singing saved my life’
When Caroline Harbord faced death, there was only one thing for it – she had to get out there and sing for her life…
Standing on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury, I scanned the crowd. A sea of faces. Ten thousand people watching, waiting…
A shiver ran though me. Nerves? Excitement?
The music started. Strains of Something Inside So Strong, I opened my mouth, began to sing and … joy pulsed through me.
Performing at Glastonbury 2016 was a once in a lifetime experience and one I thought I might not live to see.
In 2006, I was a busy working mum to Max, then eight and Harvey, then five. I enjoyed my job as a physiotherapist at Lewisham Hospital in South London.
Life was fine. I’d race around working, looking after the kids, not often looking up at the beautiful sky above me.
Just one niggle. A pain in my stomach. It was mild but it didn’t go away.
Eventually, I visited my GP who suggested it was irritable bowel syndrome.
It took a year, several trips back to the GP and my stomach swollen hard like I was six months pregnant before I was finally referred for an ultra sound scan.
The scan was in the hospital I worked in. I popped up in my lunch hour, still in my uniform. The radiologist and I were chatting when his face changed.
‘I need to get a doctor,’ he muttered. And that, as they say, was the moment everything changed.
I saw a specialist.
‘How likely is it to be cancer?’ I asked – disbelieving, I was only 40. ‘Likely,’ was the reply.
In fact, I had stage four nonHodgkin’s lymphoma.
I’d had none of the classic symptoms – night sweats, itching or unexplained lumps or weight loss.
They’d been undetected for so long, the tumours had laced themselves around my aorta, spread above my diaphragm and into my bone marrow.
I suspected my prognosis was not good.
Telling the boys was difficult. I started my chemotherapy the day after my sister-in-law’s funeral. She’d had cancer.
‘Mummy’s cancer is not like Aunty Vicky’s,’ I told them.
But I wanted them to know the truth. I was very sick, I could lose my hair and things at home might be hard.
My wonderful friends rallied. One took the boys to school for me.
‘My mummy’s got cancer,’ Harvey told her solemnly in the car. ‘So, we’re getting a dishwasher, a cleaner and she might go bald.’
A fairly accurate description. The treatment was on a three-weekly cycle. One day in hospital, the next day in bed and then back to work.
It was a time to take stock and look at my life.
I’d always loved music. As a teenager I was in a punk band. I started out as the bass player but they needed a singer so I stepped up.
We performed a lot but didn’t make it big.
For a few years I worked for record companies trying to get my foot in the door of the music business.
Then meeting Toby, my husband, training as a physiotherapist and having my sons.
A dishwasher might help us cope practically. But I needed other ways to cope.
That meant taking control – my way, which included a mainly organic diet, cutting all my hair off – in case it fell out – lots of make -up, bright clothes and accessories. Being frank with my friends about the cancer… and music.
I hadn’t sung – apart from in the car – for such a long time.
A bit of research and I found a local choir to join.
After tea on a Wednesday evening, I would leave Toby to load the new dishwasher and race to a local museum to sing.
I found it soothing. For two hours, while I sang I didn’t think about myself or cancer, I just went with the music.
Music really is food for the soul.
It was four months before a scan confirmed the cancer had receded. I was lucky – the treatment had gone well.
Obviously, you never escape the shadow of cancer. But life could start to get back to ‘normal’.
But not quite normal, I told myself I must grab every opportunity and experience. Which is why – when I found out they were putting together an NHS choir to feature in a BBC programme with choir master Gareth Malone, I put my name forward.
The audition was terrifying. Standing up and singing in front of TV cameras and my colleagues – they had 400 applicants.
But I was chosen!
And what an adventure. The Lewisham and Greenwich choir didn’t win the show – we came second – but when we put out a charity single
A Bridge Over You we became embroiled in a race for the Christmas 2015 number one!
Chris Evans had us on his radio show. It was us against Justin Bieber! Apparently, we were just 662 sales behind him – when he tweeted to his fans to support us. Us!
Pop A-lister Bieber told his fans to buy our single – not his.
We got the number one slot on Christmas Day.
The amazing experiences snowballed.
We appeared on TV, we were in the papers and we sang at the Royal Albert Hall (twice!), the FA Cup Final at Wembley, we supported Matt Goss, played with Boy George and became on first name terms with Squeeze and, of course, sang at Glastonbury.
It’s ironic – my teenage self might only have dreamt of appearing at Glastonbury, but thanks to cancer I’ve done it.
I’m not glad I had lymphoma, but it did push me back into singing.
And that is how I live my life now. I’m 54 and I’ve been cancer-clear for 13 years. I volunteer as a buddy for Lymphoma Action – a charity which supports sufferers during and after their treatment – because I want to give something back.
I cherish the important things – friends, family, happy moments … even just looking up at the sky and taking a moment to notice how beautiful the clouds are.
‘We got to the number one slot on Christmas Day’