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  • Journalist's Cancer Diaries

    Emily Hourican is a journalist with the Sunday Independent .Below is her experience on dealing with cancer . This is Part one of her diary published 6th of December 2015 .




    Last year, on the 23rd of December, my 43rd birthday, I spent half the day wondering, sadly, how I got to be so old.

    Wondering how I could have come so far from my youth, looking for signs in the mirror of the toll taken by that journey. My children didn't cheer me up, nor my husband, nor telling myself how lucky I was. Eventually I jumped into the ice-cold sea, and that did the trick. A burst of endorphins displaced the vague low-level depression.

    This year, I will spend the day getting radiotherapy, possibly chemotherapy too, depending on the schedule, for a cancerous tumour in the base of my tongue. I will probably have a mouth full of ulcers, a rash across my face and neck, no taste buds, no saliva, possibly no swallow, in which case I will be fed via a tube in my stomach. There are many more possibles - infection, dehydration, morphine, clinical fatigue - but I can't really take them in yet.

    Yes. I have cancer. A quick visit to my house would probably alert some of you to that fact. It's the trays of wheatgrass on every window ledge. The brand-spanking-new masticating juicer, the equally-spanking-new Nutribullet (I was offered five, by kind friends. I think this may be the modern response to cancer 'Oh my God, that's terrible. Can I get you a Nutribullet?).

    Everywhere is the hopeful, pathetic evidence of well-meaning attempts to turn back time; to reverse a disease that has already entirely escaped the confining properties of garlic, ginger, turmeric and all the other foods that are supposed to keep this from happening. They are my champions in this battle, but they must have been napping.

    Their help is too late. I have cancer. One tumour, one affected lymph node. Despite being (quite) young, fit, healthy. Despite having given up smoking over 20 years ago and being a very modest drinker. Despite having no history of cancer in the family. Despite having all my life eaten lots of the good foods, very moderate quantities of the bad. Despite exercising often and being quite good at managing stress. Despite having three small children, a job, a life, and plans for the future that do not involve a round of highly toxic treatment that will leave me in the short term a thin, grey shadow of the self I am now, and in the long term beset by a range of possible side effects that I can't bring myself to think about.

    The night my father died, I learned just how fast life can be torn apart. How flimsy our defences really are, all those slender webs of faith and hope and 'it can't happen to me' that we believe in absolutely, until they are torn away like thread. How in one instant the world you thought you lived in spins on its axis and resettles in strange new shapes around you.

    I learned that again when I had my children, each new baby bringing a new reality with it. You would think I would have got the message by now. Maybe I have. But when the consultant told me, moments after I came round from a general anaesthetic after an apparently routine look at the lump I kept complaining about at the back of my throat, "you have a tumour. It's malignant," all over again I tried to hold the moment still, keep time from moving forward even the few seconds needed for that statement to become true.

    Just like when my father died, I felt that if I could shut my eyes tight enough and force my mind to freeze, time would freeze with it, and the thing he had said wouldn't be true.

    It didn't work. The thing became true much faster, more ruthlessly than I could hold it still. I started to cry then, still unable to sit up or even raise my head, still dizzy from the anaesthetic. A hand reached down from somewhere and patted my shoulder kindly. I don't know who it belonged to, but I am very grateful. Bad news makes us feel we are entirely alone, out there on some lonely, rocky outcrop, beyond reach. That hand showed me I am not.

    "There are a range of treatment options available," the consultant said. It was all the reassurance he could give. He couldn't say 'it's going to be ok,' 'you'll get through this,' because he simply didn't know if that was true. Then he added, reassuringly, "you're young and healthy."

    But clearly not young and healthy enough not to have got this in the first place. And so how am I to have faith in the rest of my youngness and healthiness? My confidence in who I am has been wiped out. I no longer trust in my youth and good health, although I would have put big money on it just a few hours before.

    Someone leaned in to me: "Is there anyone you would like to call?" I rang my husband, who lost his mother and his older sister to cancer, and told him: 'I've got cancer. Please come...' Still cutting in and out of consciousness, they wheeled me into a hospital room where my husband was waiting. Almost immediately we began to try and reassure each other:

    'It'll be ok.'

    'He said 'pretty early'.'

    'One bad year and then you'll be ok.'

    'We'll get through it.'

    'Am I going to be like John Diamond?'

    It's my greatest fear. No tongue. No voice. Unable to taste or eat. Fed through a tube. John went to parties dressed in velvet suits and scribbled witty notes as fast as other people could crack one-liners. Apparently. I can't see myself doing any of those things. I can't see myself displaying the gaping hole of my mouth without the proper inhabitant of tongue, or some kind of shredded mess left behind by surgery. I can't see myself ever going out again. I don't even want to be the life and soul of the party, I just want to go home, to my kids, back to work, back to my life.

    Later I find out that they won't be doing surgery, because of where the tumour is, and because they have faith in the radiation and chemo. This is good news. I am learning to take good news wherever and in whatever unfamiliar form I can find it.

    There is more good news. The cancer I have is viral, caused by the HPV virus, the same one that causes cervical cancer. It is a common virus, at least 50pc of the population carry it, probably far more. And mostly it doesn't do very much. But, it can turn nasty, for no reason that anyone has yet worked out - all they know is that it is doing it more often than before. It can lie dormant in your system for 20 years, more, then one day it wakes up and gets busy. The result is cancer. But, a slightly different type of cancer, one that is very responsive to radiotherapy, shrinking without putting up too much of a fight. So, the prognosis is very good. And once I get rid of it, it is less likely to come back than other cancers.

    I know I am lucky. In a way. Lucky because of what I have, lucky in the people around me; family, friends, comparative strangers who have been wonderful. And any amount of time spent in the cancer world, the place I live now, my 'new normal,' shows me that there is worse, much worse. There are people in this world, good people, who don't have the same kind of definitely hopeful prognosis. Who are living with far more uncertainty and fear than I am. Who may well have to find some way of saying goodbye to their loved ones. I have seen them; soon, when my treatment begins, I will be properly among them. I know that in comparison, I am lucky.

    But I don't feel it.

    Telling the children was awful in all the ways I expected. But it is done now and I think they are prepared for what is to happen, in the knowledge that I will be cured, that life will return to normal.

    I live in a funny new world now, full of consultations and hospital waiting rooms, talk of 'outcomes', 'process', 'procedures'. Underneath those words are a whole range of horrible things that I try to put out of my mind. But every time I manage, I have to go to another appointment, where all the worst case scenarios and most hideous side effects are pointed out to me again, beginning with death and moving up from there.

    Radiation treatment in the mouth is a pretty big deal it seems, in a way that it isn't when they are zapping somewhere like a breast. Presumably many of these horrible side effects will happen, but I will try to take them as they come, in the hope they will be reversed once treatment stops. Once away from the medical professionals, I reform the happy little bubble around me: 'it'll be fine'. And then another appointment, another consultant, another set of side effects and might-bes crashes in, bursting it, leaving me exposed to the freezing winds of 'what if...'

    Familiarity is what breeds good cheer and confidence. There is nothing familiar about any of this. It is new, alien, and therefore terrifying. I am terrified.

    On one level, I feel a bit of a fraud. The offers of help are flooding in, lasagnes (the currency of kindness) are arriving regularly, the kids are being asked on countless play dates and treats, and I don't even feel sick. Apart from a slightly sore throat, and some days a touch of ear ache, I feel entirely myself. Apart from the fear and sense of doom on the horizon. I sleep well, eat well, I am full of energy. This just makes everything seem even more perverse. I guess it's like dry rot - you can't see it, but once you hear those words, you know you are in for huge trauma.

    I am trying not to let the fact that it's nearly Christmas make this worse, because that's just silly. This is what it is at any time; a bunch of twinkly lights and other people's excited plans shouldn't make it worse. But they do, a little. And there is still a part of me that is still disbelieving, waiting for an 11th hour reprieve, waiting for the call from the governor: 'I'm so sorry, we've made a mistakeā€¦'

    Sunday Independent
    Last edited by bojangles; 25-01-2016, 10:22 PM.

  • #2
    Emily Hourican diary . week two ( published 13th of December 2015 )

    This week was mostly about The Mask. I have been hearing about this mask since very shortly after diagnosis. "You'll be fitted for a mask," I was told, at various intervals, in a way that made it seem like just another staging post along the road.



    Which, for them, I suppose it is. My appointment came around and the kindly technician asked, "are you claustrophobic?" I said no, believing that to be the truth. Actually, a better question on his part would have been: 'are you bothered by being clamped into something that is heavy, incredibly tight, cuts off all movement and greatly restricts your breathing?'

    The mask is moulded to my face while warm and wet, extending from the back of my head down to my shoulders. It dries and sets, hard, and is then bolted to the table, with me inside it. This is the mask I will wear every day, for 15-20 minutes, during treatment. The mask ensures that the radiotherapy is as minutely targeted as possible, hitting the bad cells, missing the good ones. Therefore, the mask is essential. It is my friend.

    But there are some bad moments in there. Moments during which I am forced to draw on everything I have ever learned about deep, slow breathing, about not allowing myself to spiral into full-blown panic, about simply relaxing into the moment, nasty as that moment is. The temptation to struggle, to claw at the constricting heaviness of it, is huge. Instead I try and remember St Teresa's prayer: 'Let nothing disturb thee, let nothing affright thee, all things are passing.' All things are passing I gabble silently to myself, hands balled into sweaty fists. Scenes from the 1977 film of The Man In The Iron Mask with Richard Chamberlain play out inside my head - the end of that film, with Louis XIV bolted into the mask and locked up in the Bastille, bashing his iron-clad head against the walls, used to terrify me as a child. I always thought that no fate could be worse than that one. Funny where life takes us.

    My life seems to have split in two and is running along parallel but disconnected paths. On one path is the usual Me, who goes to the shops, drops the kids to school, collects them, puts on a wash, cooks dinner, looks forward to watching Homeland. But racing in tandem with that me is the other Me, the cancer Me, who has to fit in hospital appointments, long, exhausting chats about whether or not I need fluoride trays to keep my teeth from crumbling following radiotherapy, about whether it would be a better idea to get a stomach tube fitted now, while I'm fit and strong, rather than waiting until I am debilitated and in need. Half the time it feels as if I am talking about someone else when I matter-of-factly discuss things like the gag reflex that will stop me from swallowing in a few weeks. For the other half, the realisation hits in small, successive waves, like enemy fire at a protective shield. Some of the bullets bounce off, others land a direct hit.

    Read more: Emily Hourican's cancer diary: I just want to go home, to my three kids, back to work, back to my life
    Emily Hourican. Picture: Gerry Mooney
    3
    Emily Hourican. Picture: Gerry Mooney

    This is when the tracks converge. When the usual Me has a sudden, horrible realisation: 'This is actually all the same Me. That person I'm talking about who needs to put structures in place to ensure the continuation of a life she can no longer lead, is actually Me.' In those moments, I see my old life ever further away from me, so that it feels like I am on a ship, heading out to a dark sea, looking back at the twinkling lights of home behind me.

    If the famous Kubler-Ross five stages of grief are true, I seem to be stuck, bouncing back and forth between denial and anger, unable to move on, unable to get over the fundamental unfairness of it. Actually, recently I might have graduated to bouts of depression as well. "I can't do this," I think. "I just can't." And there I stick for a while, unable to struggle forward to the inevitable next stage of that thought: "but I have to." Eventually something snaps me out of it, often just the simple realisation that I don't have any choice. I have to do this.

    Right now, it seems to me that nothing more profound about the human condition has ever been written than Beckett's 'I can't go on. I'll go on'.

    Part of the problem might be that I am still in what feels like the phoney war. Peace has clearly broken down, but actual hostilities have not yet commenced. Treatment hasn't started, so all the horrors are still very much abstract ones. But at least now I have a date - December 21. And suddenly I am desperate to begin, because until I begin I cannot end.

    Soon I will know what drug I am getting along with the radiotherapy. Because I have agreed to take part in a clinical trial, to see if there is a viable, perhaps less toxic, alternative to the current treatment, I will be randomly assigned either chemotherapy or a different, newer drug. Once assigned, I will know what I'm getting, but the actual choice is up to the universe. And, although both are highly effective in treating the cancer, there are pros and cons to each in terms of side-effects. We all know a bit about chemotherapy and the way it sledgehammers the body's immune system, opening up the distinct possibility of infection. The way it can cause impaired hearing, early menopause, hair loss. "I don't want you to lose your hair, mummy," the four-year-old said. "You have beautiful hair." She must have heard me talking. The new drug doesn't do that, but it brings with it an 80pc chance of acne and increased mouth ulcers. Swings and roundabouts, I say to myself, although surely there must be a more appropriately subdued metaphor than that?

    People keep advising me to 'take control' of my medical journey. I have absolutely no idea how to do this, or even what it means. I don't know anything about this area, and I've forbidden myself from poking around on the internet. Mostly, I just let the doctors get on with it. I do ask lots of questions though - mainly about process: What? Where? How much? And, above all, how long? 'How long will it take,' I ask, urgently, about the radiotherapy sessions and drug infusions. It's as if I think I will still be a busy person when all this kicks in, a person with places to go, deadlines to meet, lunch appointments to honour, a friend to meet for a drink, Pilates classes. Someone who wonders how they will possibly fit in these bothersome medical appointments. Who am I kidding? I will be a person who moves between home and hospital, in ever-tighter circles as the more distressing side-effects kick in. Who takes each day as it comes and doesn't make plans in case the plans cannot be seen through. A person whose world has shrunk down to measuring out the hours between pain medication and high-calorie smoothies.

    But then, when it is over, after just seven weeks, I will be a person who is free of cancer. A person who will most probably never have this cancer again. A person who is still, in the scheme of things, lucky.

    And meanwhile, I am a person with a lot of new friends. After last week's article and talking to Brendan O'Connor on RTE radio on Monday, I know, more fully than ever, that the world is full of wonderful people. Decent, supportive, encouraging people. Some of them I know, some I used to know, some I have never met and probably never will. Many are much farther along this new road of cancer than I am, and are cheering me on out of nothing more than the fundamental kinship of kindness. I guess this is what they mean by the community of man. I'm glad to find it.

    Sunday Independent

    Comment


    • #3
      emily _I3.JPG
      EMILY HOURICAN

      Week three 20th of December 2015
      So by Sunday last, the cancer had gone, leaving no trace. No pain, no discomfort, no sensation of a lump in my throat, no faint earache, not even the vague dull twinge I had become used to. Nothing at all.



      The symptoms had been gradually dwindling over the course of a week or 10 days, and then, at last, there was nothing left. This is the point at which, if I had still been waiting to see a consultant, I would have cancelled my appointment, thinking: 'Great, that's that resolved, whatever it was. I'll probably never know, but now that it's gone, who cares? And hey, I saved ā‚¬180!'

      My problem was that I was already in The System. So, how to get out? "The cancer's gone," I announced to my family. "The wheatgrass and turmeric worked. It's gone. Now all I have to do is persuade the doctors to scan me again so I can prove it to them." I spent the day discussing with them how best to get my medical team to take this miracle seriously. "I'm not going to let them treat me for something that isn't there," I said firmly. "Not when the treatment is so toxic. After all, my body is clearly dealing with this. It needs to be left alone now to get on with that job."

      That evening, I met a friend, a medical man, who has a great deal of expertise in this area. He was giving me some advice on radiation side effects and how best to manage them. "It's ok," I said, "the tumour's gone. I can't feel anything any more. I'm going to ask for a reassessment tomorrow first thing."

      "It hasn't gone," he said kindly. "Cancer doesn't do that. By all means, ask for a reassessment, but it hasn't gone."

      Sure enough, I woke up on Monday morning and the earache was back, the sore throat was back, now with a sort of tight feeling in my oesophagus that made me feel as if I was choking. The tumour, in all its malignant power, was still there, still active and, like the One Ring in Lord Of The Rings which grew heavier as Frodo approached Mordor, this thing seemed able to sense the nearness of danger and dig itself further in.

      That delirium of mine - the idea of the miracle cure - was, I suppose, the last desperate wriggle as the net tightened. The final struggles of a horse before it accepts the harness. Because that very day I got the call to say that I would be starting my drug treatment in two days' time.

      The random clinical trial I signed up to has awarded me cetuximab rather than chemotherapy. A newer drug, more targeted, perhaps less toxic, although with plenty of unpleasant side effects of its own, including acne (very likely), extreme tiredness (very likely), increased risk of mouth ulcers and inflammation of the mouth (also very likely), followed by the less likely - nausea, headache - down to the more-remote-but-still-possible - wheezing, sweating, conjunctivitis, fever, and so on.

      More warnings, more explanations, more information that churns about in my head, throwing up horrible words and images: 'mucositis', 'jaw stiffening', 'impaired bone healing'. At this stage, I am pretty good at shutting them out. 'Tongue lacerations,' I think la di dah di da di da; 'chronic fatigue,' oh whatever... And yet, they do their work somewhere, those words and images, because by Tuesday night, the evening before my first dose, I am increasingly frantic and then miserable. Childishly, I cannot get over the fact that this is actually going ahead, that no call has come. A line from Auden's The Shield Of Achilles kept playing around in my head: "they were small/ And could not hope for help and no help came."

      No help came.

      The feeling lasted until I entered the day ward of St Luke's Hospital on Wednesday morning. And then it went. "I am here now," I thought, "this is all there is. There is no mistake, no call to come, no cavalry. Just me, and whatever inner resources I have accumulated over the years." It's not the worst feeling.

      And so I did not flinch when the nurse said cheerily: "We'll all be running from your veins by the end of this," as she gently put the line into a reluctant vein, that will allow the drugs to drip into my bloodstream. I had visions of teams of medics digging at my arms and legs in a couple of weeks, trying to find a vein stout enough to take the needle. I nearly laughed.

      Then they hook me up. I get steroids and then antihistamines before the main event. This is already more drugs than I have put into my body in a year. The antihistamines make me feel woozy, but I don't dare drop off. The last time I went under in a hospital, I woke to be told I had cancer. So I struggle to stay awake, too scared to let go. Instead, I wonder, what is the essential Me? Is it the Me that is indelibly connected to this body? So that what happens to it, happens to Me? Or is it something somehow separate? Autonomous? Something that retains its own stamp, no matter what happens to the thing attached to it? Something that can lay low when times get really tough, the way certain amphibians do, digging themselves into the mud throughout food and water shortages, going into a kind of sleeping death, only to emerge in glory when the rains come? If the former, this is going to be tough in ways I can't yet fathom. If the latter, we're ok. At this stage, I truly have no idea. It will be interesting to find out.

      And actually, the day ward is a very pleasant place, and of course the drug infusion is a complete anti-climax. For two hours it drips steadily into me, unobtrusive, painless. I thought I would be disturbed by the toxicity, after a lifetime of working hard to put only the healthiest things into my body - organic food, supergrains, shampoo and face creams made from all-natural ingredients - instead, I wish the drug well on its way: "go find the cancer cells and kill them," I will it. I feel like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, roaring out to the massed Roman armies: "At my signal, unleash hell!"

      Next week, on my birthday, I will get a second dose of drugs and my first radiotherapy session. Happy birthday, me!

      But I have realised what of course I already knew. What we all know. That words are dangerous too. That descriptions of what will happen are far worse than the happenings themselves. When I am told about all the things that will be done to me, I feel mauled, abused even. In practice, I am minded, babied through it all by nurses with gentle voices and gentle hands. The time is punctuated - as I have learned everything in hospital is - by cups of tea and biscuits. A chat with the doctor, many chats with nurses, chats with my fellow patients.

      We swap war stories, these women and I, but in a low-key kind of way. "How many weeks in are you?' I ask. "Three." "And how is it?" "Fine, I'm a bit tired, that's the worst of it." There is a gentle heroism to the responses. A discreet bravery hidden beneath comfortable tracksuits and baggy tops. We ply each other with all the usual clichƩs: "One foot in front of the other." "Step by step." "A day at a time." "You do what you can do." There is no drama, just determination. We are a community of the quiet and focussed.

      The day goes by easily. When done, I am collected by my mother and brought home, fed and sent to bed. I cannot get used to being the one who is minded rather than the one who does the minding. This is entirely new for me - a lifetime of being eldest sister; sensible help and support to my more highly-strung friends; mother of one, then two, then three. I am the one who minds, who helps, who cheers up and talks down. Now, all roles are reversed and it feels like vertigo. I feel I have let my family down. My husband down. My kids. This, I think, wasn't the deal.

      But I go obediently and sleep for a few hours. I wake up and watch TV. I feel serene and pretty stoned. The next day I have what feels like a hangover: faint headache, wooziness, nothing nasty. And I am, at last, begun. I am on the road, and one step closer to the end. "That was easy," I think. "No bother."

      After the phoney war of last week, this is undoubtedly a false dawn. Or perhaps a fool's paradise. But that's fine. It will do for now.

      Comment


      • #4
        Week 4 27th of December 2015

        The spots have arrived, earlier than expected. I think we - *by which I mean my 'team'; the various doctors, nurses and consultants who are with me on my journey through cancer - thought I would get through two, maybe even three, doses of the drug, Cetuximab, before this, the most common side effect, kicked in. But no, Day Three after the first drip and I look 13 again, and not in a good way. Spots on my chin, forehead, around my nose, the odd stray one on my cheek, and a growing desire to scratch at my neck, arms, shoulders and chest. I can't work out if the spots look better or worse with make-up over them. I suspect I will be playing this one out for a while. By the time I get the second dose, a week later, I have a hot rash all over my face, chest and back.

        Share

        There are apparently antibiotics they can give me for this. Originally, when these were mentioned, I paid very little attention. "What are a few spots, in the scheme of things," I thought. "I will be frying far bigger fish than that."

        But now that the rash has arrived, I hate it. My face is sore, tight, slightly itchy. And knowing that I look worse than I feel isn't great either. Six more doses of the drug, and I dread to think how I will be. A wise friend told me when I started this: "it's not the things you expect that will bother you. It'll be something else, something left-field." She was right.

        However, this is the only real side effect I have experienced so far - slight nausea for a couple of days, a headache, disrupted sleep - but nothing too bad. For this, I am grateful. There is a point, not too far away I suspect, where I will hardly know how I feel. Where symptoms will have multiplied to such an extent that all of me just turns into a mass of different discomforts: vague nausea, vague headaches, vague aches in other parts like ribs and cheekbones. Low level itching of rash, overall fatigue and gloomy spirits ... By now, I'm not even sure how I used to feel before all this started. Better, I presume, but it seems hard to connect with that now. I am only myself in the moment. I can't remember myself in the past or imagine myself in the future.

        My birthday passes slowly, with an infusion of the drug followed by my first session of radiotherapy. How quickly the outrageous becomes mundane, I think, as I settle onto my bed in the day ward, arm out for the needle. All the things I should be doing today leap up to mock me. Outside it is sunny, cold and still; my favourite birthday weather. It's the one day my family can refuse me nothing and so each year we do my kinds of things, which really means nothing very much. Actually, my kids laugh at how boring my birthdays are - my perfect day would be a walk up the Sugarloaf, then dinner at home. No wild parties, no boozy lunches. But they know the drill, unexciting as it might be, and are ready to indulge me. The five-year-old has a full day of events, including a surprise party and some cake-baking, planned. Instead, they wait, put off hour to hour as I try and get through the alternative schedule, the one the hospital has planned for me.

        As for how they are coping in general with the great change to my life that ripples smaller changes through theirs - they are coping as kids cope. My daughter, who has chapped lips, shouted from her bed the other night "Mummy, I think I have mouth cancer!" After a momentary silence, the boys started laughing wildly. "I've got bum cancer," one of them said. "I've got hair cancer," said the other. This is how they cope - by laughing, by distancing, by playacting. Who knows what effect this is really having on their innermost selves? I fear their faith in the world has been deeply rocked; that never again will I be able to say with authority: "that isn't going to happen," about something unlikely that they fear - like their parents dying in an accident, like them getting sick themselves; any of the unexpected terrors they have voiced over the years and allowed themselves to be jollied out of. Because now it has happened; the unexpected, the unlikely, the unwanted. And so it can happen again. But perhaps, too, they will grow up thinking of cancer as just another word. A nasty one, but a manageable one. Like flu, like appendicitis. And given what we are told about the numbers of us who will face, and get through, this disease in the future, maybe that is no bad thing.

        Perhaps the most immediate impact on them is my sudden, urgent need to force them to do things for themselves; to grow them up in just a few weeks. Instead of Who Will Love My Children?, which of course is the first film that popped into my head when I was told I had cancer, it's more like, How Will I Empower My Children? How will I suddenly transfer to them the skills they are going to need in the next few months - by which I mean the small things, like getting themselves a slice of toast when they want one, rather than asking me. Frantically aware that soon I may not have the energy to indulge them as shamelessly as I have done, I am trying to encourage them to be more self-sufficient, at least in the matter of glasses of water and the like. They, poor things, are confused. "Get it yourself," I say urgently to all their requests. "You need to know how to do this. It's time you learnt where the milk is kept." I am packing several years of independence training into a couple of weeks. They, of course, hate it. "Why can't you do it?" they want to know. And what do I say to that? Having deliberately tried to downplay the extent to which I will be laid low by this treatment, I can't suddenly say "because soon I will be unable to get off the sofa, or restrain myself from howling in pain. I may be hospitalised, tube-fed, doped up on morphine. I won't be around to make you toast!". At the moment, I'm settling for: "because it's time you learned."

        Back on the day ward, I receive birthday congrats from the nurses and we compare notes on how ready or otherwise we are for The Big Day beyond. One woman, a patient like me, is wearing a jolly Christmas jumper, sleeves rolled up for the drug drip. We compare side effects and look forward to next year. She is a couple of weeks ahead of me, but I don't ask too much about what waits down the road, because suddenly I don't really want to know. I mean, I do know, but I don't want to hear it from people actually going through it. I've heard enough from the docs. We talk, and then we fall silent. "I can't wait to get home," we both say at intervals.

        Everything takes longer than they say. Entire days seem to going by while I sit and wait for drugs to drip, machines to heat up or cool down, the people before me to finish their sessions. I am focussing a lot of resentment around this waiting. And yes, I know that it is displacement - all the fury I feel at being here at all is being channelled into irritation at sitting around. But, more than anything else, this makes me feel usurped as the driving force of my own life; as if I have been forced into a surreal game of Piggy In The Middle, with my health as the ball, permanently out of reach as I race from person to person, each of whom holds it over their heads then passes it to another just as I reach them. There is, I suppose, a fine line between kicking too much and accepting too much; between surrendering too much of my life to the system, and chasing after it too hard.

        In the end, I behave badly outside the radiotherapy unit, complaining about the length of time I have been waiting. "This is a hospital," I am told, politely but firmly. Not a hotel ... is the silent inference. They have a point, I suppose. I apologise, and we get on with it.

        A full 20-minute session in The Mask isn't easy, but it is more painful than traumatic. The Mask is tight and constricting. It pushes my jaw forward so that by the end, the strain makes my teeth chatter slightly. But I don't freak out. Although I do wonder what would happen to me if, in a Day Of The Triffids type scenario, the entire hospital staff were wiped out, with me surviving but left bolted to the table. Don't go there, I tell myself firmly, and go back to reciting what I can remember of The Lake Isle of Innisfree. There are many more sessions of this to get through. It is a distance run, not a sprint. A question of rhythm and pace and, like everything, timing.

        Three sessions later, my throat is slightly sore and my mouth is dry. Finally, I am here, where they told me I would be. In treatment. The talking is done, the consultations are over, the what-ifs laid to rest. There is now just me, and the countdown. Suddenly, seven weeks feels like a very long time.

        Sunday Independent

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        • #5
          Week 5 , 3rd of January 2016

          If my current life and illness were to be considered as metaphor, a kind of Pilgrim's Progress of the body rather than the soul - and frankly, sometimes I find it is easier to think of it like that, embellished by significance, rather than to take on the simple, dry fundamental facts - then this week would be my Slough of Despond. A deep morass of dreariness, like thick mud that clutches and pulls at me as I try to wade through it.

          Each day I get up, have breakfast, and go into hospital. Some days are short - a quick visit to the radiotherapy room, 20 minutes on the table, in the mask, which seems to get more sore and unpleasant every day rather than less so, then out and home. Other days are longer; meetings with consultants or drug drips to be factored in. But in a way, length of time makes no real difference. Because the days all feel the same, even the ones where I'm done by 10am, technically with the rest of the day in front of me. The flavour of the hospital remains, bleeding into everything. A friend, when I described the dreary rhythm, said, "it's like the worst job in the world." That is exactly what it feels like. The worst job in the world: relentless, joyless, unproductive, unavoidable. Unpaid. And I can't even call in sick.

          When I'm not actually in hospital, I am beset by a round of Things I Must Do to try and delay the onset of the worst side effects. There are endless mouthwashes to swill - I'm up to three different kinds a day, all on heavy rotation - fluoride trays to apply to teeth to protect them, a considerable amount of brushing, flossing, etc, for the same purpose, menus to plan - food that will be nutritious and calorie-dense, but not too spicy or exciting in case it occasions the need for yet more mouthwashes - soothing cream to apply to the radiotherapy rash, which is like a mild sunburn at the moment, and then, on top of that, my own schedule of things I am determined will help me through: wheatgrass to juice, fresh air and exercise to pack in, yogic breathing, meditation, some decent time with the kids that isn't all about cancer and cancer treatment.

          The smell of the hospital travels home with me, on my clothes, in my hair, on my skin, and waits for me. No matter how much lavender oil I sprinkle around, the smell lurks underneath, so that when I come into my bedroom after an absence, my heart thumps suddenly, an unpleasant lurch of fear that startles me, causes me to think 'What? What is it?' in alarm. Until I realise. 'Ah yes. Hospital.'

          So deep is this week's Slough that I am reduced to making a checklist of Reasons To Be Cheerful, writing these down and ticking through them. The list starts with 'I could feel worse . . .' And moves on, through 'at least I'm not missing any nice weather', 'the kids are having a fun Christmas thanks to all the nice people taking them out' and 'who knew the world was so full of kind, lovely, thoughtful people, prepared to write to me, dedicate masses for me, send me rosary beads and love?' After that, I kind of run out of steam. And so I go back to 'I could feel worse.'

          And I could. Much worse. Presumably I will, but right now, this is all more depressing than it is anything particularly dramatic. The colours of my new world are grey and sludgy. Like a paint box where all the lively reds and yellows and blues have been mixed in together, blending into a sad, dirty, indeterminate kind of colour.

          I'm trying hard for my usual Pollyanna-ish state of constant optimism and good cheer. But I have begun to discover that it has serious limitations. Actually, it seems to be based on equal parts energy and the simple, undemanding belief that, in bad times, tomorrow will be better than today. As a worldview, it is entirely unsophisticated, not the product of deep thought or careful philosophising, just basic animal spirits. "A good night's sleep will sort me out," I have always believed, "tomorrow will be better," and mostly, I have always been right. Now though, I can't say these things. Because tomorrow isn't going to be better. It is going to be the same, at best. Quite possibly worse.

          But right now it is the sameness that bothers me. Day after day stretches in front of me, the already well-trod path from my house to St Luke's, the diminishing returns of pleasure I take in the handy distance - 13 minutes on average - into the hospital, onto the bed, deep breath, mask on, many deep breaths, mask off. "See you tomorrow, you're doing great," until I want to scream.

          Actually, there is another thing on the list Reasons To Be Cheerful - I have been put on an antibiotic for the spots. They haven't gone away, not by a long shot, but the antibiotic has taken some of the misery out of it. The frantic urge to itch is mostly gone, the hot, sore pulsing is mostly gone.

          I still look like a teenager - not in a good way - but I feel slightly less hideous. I even feel robust enough to turn over in my mind the question: skin or hair? Which would I mind most, losing my hair or being covered in spots? Really, it's a matter for the kids, and which they would mind the most. They are well aware of the spots - "you look like the goblin king in The Hobbit film," said the middle one cheerfully; this, I understand, is not a compliment. The youngest said, "you have even more spots today, mummy," almost as if she was congratulating me. On balance, they seem more kindly curious than repulsed or upset. I'm guessing baldness would shock them more, and so I must assume that spots are the lesser of two evils.

          I tell myself I'm two weeks in now, although I'm not really, not quite. Even by my overly-optimistic calculations, that's five more weeks to go. I am still only trudging through the shallows here and already I can feel that I am shedding bits of myself. The non-essential bits perhaps, the decorative ones, but bits I like. The desire to make an effort to look nice; the energy to tidy up and make the house look nice; worse, my determination to be more interested in others than in myself.

          At this rate, I risk turning into the classic stereotype of the invalid: self-obsessed, self-referential, constantly, anxiously turning over in my mind: 'how do I feel now? How do I feel today?' until it tunes out all the other voices in my life, the voices I am used to listening to, delighting in, far over and above my own. Almost more than anything, I hate that idea.

          A few people have told me I'm brave to write this diary every week. But brave is relative. There are many different types of brave. Brave, for me, would be saying nothing. To tough it out silently and stoically, the way some do. My way is to tell. To talk. To explain the things that are happening to me and the way I feel about them.

          I understand why others don't. Who still, now, keep cancer a secret. There are people who believe their careers and relationships will suffer for revealing something like this, something they feel might compromise them and their abilities in the eyes of those around them. Cancer was the disease that wasn't named for so long; 'a long illness' as it was known euphemistically in obituaries, 'the Big C' as many still refer to it in stagey whispers. As recently as the 1970s, in Italy and France it was common practice for doctors to tell the relatives of a cancer patient, but not the patient themselves, what they had. There was so much shame attached to the diagnosis that the doctors believed knowledge would hasten the patient's death. Until even more recently, there persisted the belief that cancer was the disease of repression, of passions undared and lives unlived; a body's vicious judgement on its inhabitor for a lack of courage and honesty.

          Actually, some people probably still think that. But I don't. Cancer is a disease like any other. You get it because you get it. Either because you have a genetic predisposition, or because your lifestyle leaves you vulnerable. In my case, I got it because a virus that most of us have, that I have probably had for 20-odd years, somehow found the wherewithall to rise up and get active.

          And there it is, another Reason To Be Cheerful - I don't feel any need to keep secrets. The effort of that, on top of the effort of treatment, would really do for me.

          Sunday Independent

          Comment


          • #6
            17th Of January . 2016

            Emily Hourican

            The day David Bowie's death is announced is a sombre one in the radiotherapy waiting area. "Did you hear?" we ask each other. "Terrible, isn't it?" Because the truth is, if Bowie could die, with all his incredible beauty and grace and talent, all his money and fame, any of us could.


            Or at least, that's how it feels to me. I have never, in all of this miserable process of cancer, confronted the possibility of my death even for an instant. Perhaps that particular treat is waiting for me when I am out the other side of treatment, when I am over all the miseries of getting well, perhaps then my mind will have space to consider the "but what if . . ." of it all. Until now, I haven't done this. I have had complete and utter confidence in the outcome - a complete eradication of the tumour and all its works - from the first minute I was told about it. I have only ever feared the cure, not the lack of one.

            Which is partly, I think, what has made me a slightly unwilling, even at times petulant, partner in 'the process.' "Is this really necessary?" I have been wondering silently to myself from the beginning. "Are they not overreacting, just a little?" Now, for the first time, I begin to think, perhaps they are not overreacting. Perhaps this is all really necessary. Instead of the possibility of my death being a morbid thought, it is actually quite a galvanising one. After all, if I must jump through hoops of horror, at least let there be a good reason for it. The best possible reason.

            And now that the going is really rough - and rough, by now, it really is - I find myself weirdly more able to cope. Perhaps because the moment of crisis, the things I have been dreading for so long, are here at last and I can now confront them, face them down, instead of just anticipating and dreading them.

            My mouth is very sore, my jaw is stiff, swallowing is difficult, I am on constant, albeit still low-level, painkillers, my neck and face itch with a radiotherapy rash, I am exhausted - so much so that I am sneaking off to bed most afternoons for a lie-down that usually turns into a full-blown nap - and I don't even bother pretending I'm going to get up with the kids in the morning any more. I have the beginnings of at least one ulcer and I don't much want to eat, because eating is painful, food is uninteresting - actually, nearly everything just tastes of ashes - and the desire to vomit kicks in after just a few mouthfuls. Yes, it's all happening, just as they told me it would. And my response, so far, is a sort of Spirit-of-the-Blitz type thing.

            When mealtimes come round, as they do with what feels like dismaying frequency ("God, lunch already," I find myself thinking. "Surely not . . ?"), I swing into a pathetic semblance of action. "Right," I say, "let's do this thing!" I swill yet another mouthwash, the numbing one this time, and approach whatever bland, paste-like substance is waiting for me - porridge, Weetabix mushed up in loads of milk, risotto - and begin to eat with grim determination. And without much pause. If I stop for too long, I know I will never start again, and so I march onwards until I feel I cannot manage another bite. This, unfortunately, doesn't take very long. Then sometimes I go and lie down, to prevent myself undoing all the good work by getting sick.

            Fun stuff, eh?

            On the plus side, I have been revisiting some of the wonderful puddings of my childhood. Rice pudding, bread-and-butter pudding, something truly delicious called a Queen of Puddings, which is sponge, with a layer of jam, topped with a layer of meringue.

            My mother - a wonderful queen of puddings herself - has been making and dropping these in to me. I try and think back to the days - all of about three weeks ago - when I would have merrily eaten my way through an entire bowlful of any of them, take a deep breath and manage a few bites. Even they taste like ashes. "Did you sprinkle the contents of the fire-grate over this?" I ask my husband after he has presented me with a bowl of something. Yes, this is what passes for humour in our house these days.

            I have adopted a similar sort of grim heartiness in my interactions with my 'team' at the hospital. "How are you?" they ask. "Dreadful," I say in cheerful, ringing tones. "Perfectly dreadful. But it's only going to get worse, right?"

            They look shifty, as well they might. After all, what are they supposed to say? 'Yes' is the only accurate answer, and, although I asked, it's really not what I want to hear. Instead they tell me "you're doing great". And it is amazing how galvanising praise is. Being told I'm doing well gives me the courage I need for a few more steps.

            Actually, I make reasonably light of my symptoms in hospital, but heavy weather of them at home. I don't know why this is. Perhaps it's the brave face we all try and wear in public, dropped like a stone when we come through the door of our own houses. Perhaps I only have the energy for one lot of pretending and I have decided my family must bear the brunt of the truth. Or perhaps it's because proof of worse is all around me in hospital; evidence of all the many ways in which I could be and feel even more miserable than I do, and the perspective afforded by this panoply of suffering shames and silences me.

            I can't smile much at the moment. My mouth is so sore and my lips so cracked at the corners that smiling is painful so I am rationing it. It is mainly just for my kids now. Having always been a naturally very smiley person, I am, in essence, doing the exact opposite of Brendan O'Connor's pre-Christmas Smile Revolution. He found that the world, smiled at, tends to smile back. He must be right, because I am finding that the world, dealt with via a rather blank visage, tends to give blank back. My face-to-face interactions are less warm than formerly, no matter the efforts I make to communicate goodwill, interest, empathy, through the eyes alone. Years of watching America's Next Top Model and listening to Tyra Banks going on about 'smizing' -"smile with your eyes" - should have prepared me for this, but I am finding that the world is not really getting my 'smizes'. Actually, the world seems to think I am pretty grumpy. The world might be right, and now that I am without a smile to cover up the grumpiness, I am exposed.

            And meanwhile, the flow of good wishes goes on. Every day brings more cards and gifts, through the post and in person, from people I know and people I have never met, probably never will meet. I cannot get over the decency and kindness of folk. That too is galvanising. Three more weeks of this. I think I can do it.

            Sunday Independent

            Comment


            • #7
              Very sad reading, I do hope for a happy ending, Life can be so hard sometimes I am sure her family are really suffering seeing her go through this.

              Comment


              • #8
                Emily Hourican 24/01/2016

                Two weeks of treatment to go and I am veering wildly between thinking "just two more weeks, I'm nearly done here!" and then pulling myself up short: "Two weeks. Two whole weeks. Given what has happened to me in the last two weeks, how can I possibly do two more...?"

                But in general, the giddy feeling wins out. Two more weeks and I am finished. Twenty-three sessions of radiotherapy done, 12 more to go. Two more drips of Cetuximab, two more meetings with my consultants, 12 more daily visits to hospital, and then this cancer nightmare is over for me. For now, and I believe, forever. Because the hope I cling to is that the cancer I have, HPV-viral-related cancer of the tongue base, doesn't come back the way other cancers can. Doesn't come back at all. This is what I have been told, and I am determined to believe it.

                By now, the pain in my mouth and throat is pretty bad, but I have found that other things bother me more than pain. Talking is getting harder. My voice has been a feeble rasp for the last few days, and smiling is still not easy. This means the general level of chit-chat is down. This is a pity. I like chit-chat. The weather, funny things people's kids said, weekend TV, a wedding coming up. I'm usually happy to while away an hour or so on this, but not any more. Also I have a constant ringing in my ears that makes me slightly deaf and inclined to shout "what's that? What did you say?" at people in a way that, rightly, startles them.

                So I am retreating a bit further, into my own little world. Already I feel like a stray cat the way I slink into the house and up to bed, avoiding my children in case they try and talk to me, engage me with the details of their lives. "Later," I think. "Later I will listen to them, talk to them, take notice of them. Later, when this is over." And then I think, "hmmm, when later finally arrives and I am done, how will I ever again find the energy for the simple to and fro of normal life?" But that is too worrying a thought, so I push it away.

                That said, the big drama of this week has been the management of the pain. What to take and how often in order to stay on top of the soreness? For a time, I alternated paracetamol and ibuprofen quite happily, but then suddenly that wasn't quite enough - the niggles of bad pain would start when I was still a long way from the next intake and blanket coverage seemed never to be achieved - and so I got bumped up, to something prescribed with codeine in it. With lots of codeine in it. After the first dose, I am as high as I ever remember being in my life, wandering around the hospital in a daze, legs feeling like jelly, head like a helium balloon floating several inches above my neck on the thinnest of strings, about to detach completely.

                That might sound nice, but actually, I hated it. Perhaps I am too much of a control freak to let go. Perhaps I'm just not quite miserable enough yet as who I am, to want to part company with that so completely. So we modify, we go back down the 'ladder' of pain medication - at the top of which sits morphine - to something with far less codeine. Even then, I can only manage half the dose.

                But at least I know now that if this all gets so miserable that I want the last weeks to go by in a complete fog, a drug-induced haze, it's an option. Easily done. I have a bag of stuff right here that will do it for me, and that's without even reaching the morphine rung of the 'ladder'.

                Clearly, I am sensitive to medication. And I think I know why. As children, we were all treated homeopathically. Which is to say, in my experience, with nothing but tiny sugar pills. When we got sick, which I have to say we mostly didn't, we went to bed and were given granules of things called 'Nux Vomica', 'Kali Karb' and 'Belladonna' for as long as it took for these to 'work'. I don't believe a single illness of mine was hastened on its way by these granules - given a day in bed and a few hot drinks, the body of a healthy child will shake off most things. I very much doubt the granules brought anything to the party except placebo, which of course is not nothing. If we needed painkillers, later on, for headaches, period pains etc, there was something that claimed to do that job. Again, it needed several hours in bed with a hot water bottle to 'work'. You cannot imagine my astonishment, years later when I had left home, at being casually given things like Anadin or Nurofen by friends. Things that had an immediate, discernible effect on pain. I felt like Miranda at the end of The Tempest: "Oh, wonder! . . . O brave new world, That has such people in't."

                My mother still swears by homeopathy - my husband heard her giving me some homeopathic sleeping granules recently, with the recommendation: "Take three, and after a few hours, if they haven't worked, you can take three more." He thought this was hilarious - and she may well be more right than I. But one excellent legacy from the lack of hardcore medical intervention in my life until now, is the fact that I seem to respond, fast, to anything I do get.

                Food is still an all-consuming horror, with all the stress of "you must eat!" dinning away in my head constantly. It takes me half-an-hour to eat a small bowl of clear soup, anything non-liquid is pretty much out by now, as is everything except the blandest of ingredients, and even then it's very much trial-and-error: pears are in, bananas out. Pasta is okay, rice isn't. The most surprising things cause pain and discomfort. "Try this," kind people say, having brought round exactly the sort of thing you think would appeal to an invalid like me - something soothing, soft, comforting. I try a bite, and for no reason that any of us can work out, it's a no. I'm like the Caesars of old, thumbs out, ready to confer life or death on some painstakingly-created dish.

                Also waiting in the wings is a bag full of high-calorie nutrition shakes, given to me by the hospital. These, the theory goes, can take some of the pain out of eating thing. As much as 400 calories in one handy-to-drink shake. Instead of trying to tot up how many calories I might have consumed in half a bowl of clear vegetable soup, three spoons of plain yoghurt, a glass of carrot juice... So, "okay," I think, after a particularly bad eating day, "just drink the shake. Four hundred calories, then you can go to bed and forget all about it." I stood over the sink, in case the need to vomit came upon me, and opened a container of vanilla flavoured, slightly-thickish liquid. I managed - heroically! - to choke it down although it took a few goes, and keep it down, despite a strong urge not to. Then I felt sick for two hours. Proper lie-on-the-sofa-too-weak-even-to-get-to-bed sick. Ugh, So now I'm back to what my stomach tells me it will cope with: broth, some juices, bits of tofu (tofu, I have discovered, may just be the perfect radiation food: tasteless, soft, easy to swallow, apparently nutritious, too).

                The most torturing bit is that I still have wonderful memories of what food tastes like. Mmm, I think. Hummus with warm flatbread. Burger and chips, steak, Caesar salad, lobster... And I can smell perfectly well - the kids had bacon sandwiches for breakfast this morning, and the smell sent me into raptures. But the reality is, no matter how delicious something smells or looks, as soon as it's in my mouth, it's ash. Sometimes sore ash, with the texture of grit; impossible to chew and swallow. I think there is a Grimm's fairytale about this - someone gets cursed with this very thing, that everything they taste will be ash. I can tell you, it's a highly effective way to ruin someone's life.

                People keep asking me how I am, naturally. The answer is, I don't really know any more. In response I say, "okay, I guess", because mainly I'm thinking, "I suppose I could be worse". But as for how I actually am? No idea. I have come so far from what I am used to that I don't know how to assess my current whereabouts. So I have taken to letting the team in hospital tell me. By any normal standards, I feel pretty dreadful - most days I am not up long before I begin to wonder how soon I can go back to bed again - but hospital standards are not the same, and by these, I am apparently pretty good. Blood pressure? Normal. Temperature? Normal. Bloods? Normal. Pulse? Normal. Rash? Under control. Mouth? Sore, raw, uncomfortable, but sure what can you expect at this stage?

                Once these vitals signs are monitored and the professional assessment of my side effects is complete, they tell me I am doing good, and I take that out into the world with me. Even when I don't feel it, that is the story I tell to myself. "I'm doing good."

                That, and the sight of Bobby Kerr on The Late Late Show the other week looking bright and healthy, give me hope and enthusiasm for the future.

                Sunday Independent

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by joan mack View Post
                  Very sad reading, I do hope for a happy ending, Life can be so hard sometimes I am sure her family are really suffering seeing her go through this.
                  It is very hard to watch this sort of thing Joan but you have to do your best as that is all you can do.I watched my own flower battle away ,chemo,radiation,surgery and then it coming back in three different places and being told that the only shot she had was to try something that might help a bit but didn't is tough ,especially for the person with it.
                  I remember the specialist telling us of it coming back and the look on the mots face told it all.i knew right there that she was shattered and there was nothing I could do.
                  I protected her and she got Christmas with her kids and grandkids last yr and thankfully she did not suffer like others do .Her biggest regret was that she never got one lousy old age pension cheque lol as she was only just turned 64 a week before she passed on.
                  Hope this doesn't depress you but as I said to the specialist ..."it is what it is" and he looked at me and repeated it himself.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I was coming up to my sixtieth Birthday when My Husband Died Tolka,

                    He had a lung removed and some radiation and we were taold he was one of the lucky ones who was free of cancer,

                    Later when he became unwell we were told he was suffering from Depression from the aftermath of his operation,

                    He was so happy to hear that news but it was false eight months after his lung was removed he died,

                    He always kept my health insurance loaded as because I had asthma he thought I was the weakling,

                    He was so strong, Ge never got colds and he could almost lift a house, However when he got cancer it took him fast.

                    It broke my heart to see him die inch by inch, When I went to visit him in the hospice, I had to stand outside the door and try and get a smile ready. He hated tears,

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Can only imagine how hard it was for all of you Joan.My mot was only in the hospital for 7 days after I took her in on her birthday and I really though I would be taking her home.Guess I couldn't see what the Drs saw .i even told the kids not to bother coming up and it was only when they called me at home that I knew there was something badly wrong?At least we were all with her when she passed .

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Yes we spent the last twenty four hours with my late Husband, Afraid to leave the bedside in case we were not there at the end,

                        We thought we might get a last few words but no. He slipped away silently. I had said the act of contrition in his ear, I hope it worked, He didn't go to Mass but he loved the bible. He could quote from anywhere in it,

                        I asked him did he believe at the end, He said he felt there had to be something more then this life,

                        The Hospice he was in had a lot of Monks that did the rounds and he grew very fond of one he called Padre Pio, I think This Monk helped him a lot,

                        He spend his last days worrying about how I would manage without him. He had most of the garden Cobble locked so I would have little grass to cut, I hated it,

                        He urged me to try and meet someone else, He said I was to young to spend my life alone,

                        I had my six kids and my Grandkids and a huge lot of friends, I quite like my own company so I doubt I will be doing any speed dating lol!

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          All of the above is sad reading indeed. A girl I used to work with died on Sunday, from cancer. She leaves two children, a boy fifteen and a girl about two years younger. Six months ago she watched her mother die from cancer also.

                          My mother died from the same scourge in 1962. In those days they didn't have chemo and radiation therapy, just surgery, and hope that all the nodules are removed. Alas in her case they were not. She suffered terribly, the doctor called every day and gave her morphine injections, but after awhile they were not so effective. She used to cry and ask God to take her as she could not stand the pain.

                          It is very hard to watch somebody you love in pain, knowing it is going to get worse and eventually they will be taken from you. There are no words of comfort you can say to them, only hold their hands. She used to ask me to read to her and sing for her, which I did. It gave her some comfort, but did not relieve the pain. R.I.P.

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