That’s my mum and dad in the picture, enjoying a Sunday dinner earlier this year. I say enjoying, but she wasn’t really. She had no appetite and didn’t drink that glass of wine because it tasted horrible. At that time she was nearing the end of a three year battle with cancer, which ended in September when she passed away at a Hospice near Hereford. She contracted breast cancer – which also killed her daughter Heather 20 years ago – in 2016. She had a double mastectomy and goodness knows how much chemotherapy and for a couple of years there was a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. The light went out in January of this year when the cancer came back in her liver. We were out for a family meal and she wasn’t feeling too well. Someone remarked that she looked a little yellow. Tests revealed a massive tumour. She was devastated of course and so were we. Everyone did their absolute best to be up-beat. She carried on as best she could. Her ‘piece of string’ started off short, got a little bit longer following treatment and then vanished completely when we had to sit with her in front of her consultant to be told that there was no more treatment to be given and that she had very little time left.
What you can’t appreciate until it happens, is the impact all of this has on the rest of the family. Apart from the poorly patient being poorly, which is bad enough in itself, everyone else just goes into a state of limbo. Babies were born and we barely noticed. Amy (my very brave eldest daughter ) was poorly too, which hardly got a mention. Businesses were launched. Holidays were cancelled. Cancer is utterly devastating for everyone involved. If you asked every family member to name 10 big things that happened to the family in the past three years, we’d all only remember 1: Grandma dying. Cancer consumes everything.
She’d be horrified at this appearing here and on facebook, but as she’s not here to argue with me (there’s a silver lining everywhere if you look hard enough!) I’ve done it, but only really because we’re trying to raise some money! She would have been 81 next week, so now seemed an appropriate time to get this underway.
To a man and woman, all of the people who did their best to look after mum throughout the whole thing were amazing. But what’s painfully obvious is that the whole system is very short of money. Hopefully you and your family will never be touched by cancer. But if you are then you’ll all want the treatment and care to be as good and as well funded as it possibly can be.
Luisa, my much better half, is a keen runner and having done a few half marathons has now got a spot in next Aprils London Marathon. She’s doing it for Macmillan Cancer Support. The link to her just giving page is below. I’d be very grateful if you could take a moment or two to give whatever you can. Every penny will be welcome.
Thank you.
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