Tuesday, March 17:

I'm cruising slowly towards the end of my blog writing time. It has been a huge part of my life for over a year now. I have been able to empty my head and unburden myself and I believe this in itself has played a massive part in my recovery.

Everyone needs a goal to aim at and something to look forward to and the blog has played that part for me. It has also given me time to think about things past and present and during one of my nights of less sleeping and more thinking I remembered a conversation I had with my father just a few days before he died, which involved hope and results.

He was in hospital trying to recover from a chest infection and had been desperately ill. His recovery was hampered badly by two things – he was diabetic and his sugar levels were not settling and just a few days earlier my mother had died and this was a truly dreadful blow – to us all – but to Dad it was something he could not come to terms with.

Worse, he had been unable to be with her as he himself had been struck down with this terrible infection and had lain close to death himself on the day that Mum had died. We hardly knew which bedside to be at! Breaking the news to Dad had to be delayed due to his own condition. He lay in bed despondent and my brother Cliff and I spent many hours sitting with him.

On this particular day I arrived in the morning and Dad was sitting up in bed, his blue/grey eyes were bright and hopeful and he beckoned me over to come and sit quickly as he had something important to say. I sat in the chair beside the bed and he began his story.

He said: "Mum came to visit me last night, she sat right where you are now and stayed for ages talking. She told me all the secrets of the universe – I know them all now, but I'm not allowed to tell you. We went on long journeys through deserts of multi-coloured sands where there were trees with jewels hanging from the branches. It was so beautiful and the birds spoke to me and told me secrets."

He looked directly into my own eyes and I saw there was such hope and wonder in his. Now, believe me, my father was not one for fanciful dreams or words and if he had said that someone had shown him how to build the next generation of hybrid motor engines I think I would have been able to take that, but this was completely out of character.

Dad had been on a journey that was literally out of this world, maybe in his dreams, who knows, but the hope and joy in his voice that he had seen Mum and been to those wonderful places with her was something like a miracle to him.

I was so envious. As far as Dad was concerned he had spent some time with Mum in a place that was indescribably beautiful, they had shared some precious last moments together and he had been given that chance which had eluded him, to say maybe a goodbye, I don't know. I didn't want to spoil his moment but later on I gently reminded him that Mum was no longer with us and it was unlikely that she had sat where I was now sitting and that maybe it had been a good dream.

I can remember that he looked at me in much the same way as I look at Laura occasionally when she hasn't understood something, with a great deal of love, understanding and some sympathy. A look that said, one day you will understand, but not now, you're too young and he held my hand and said just two words: "I know".

He said so many things with just those two words and I have never forgotten that moment – nor until now have I shared it with anyone. Why am I sharing it now? Because I know now, too. I don't know the secrets of the universe but I understand what Dad meant.

I understand the need to hope for better things in bad times and to look for the best in every situation. I think in that moment we both knew that Dad was never going to come home again and two days later he died, but he died having seen something that we couldn't, something wonderful and worth waiting for.

Websites I have found useful:
Breast Cancer Care
Cancerhelp.org (the patient information website of Cancer Research UK)
Netdoctor.co.uk
Scarf Studio (scarfs and bandanas)

Having cancer has given me that same understanding and something to hope for. It has given me a good sharp slap and made me appreciate what I have. It has made me understand other people better and how it feels to be unable to function properly. Not to be able to have the stamina to get through a day, to have your mind confused and not working properly.

It has made me understand the need to hope for better things and maybe to understand why these things happen. In all, my year of cancer has fitted in well with Laura's "annus horribilis". A year when, more than ever, she badly needed someone to be close and have the time to listen and help – the cancer gave me that time with her.

Alan, too, went through the year with redundancy ringing in his ears and needed someone to talk it all over with. I may not have been totally coherent at times but I was able to be there and try to understand all their fears and troubles. Now, hopefully the times are getting better and we can all look forward to something wonderful and worth waiting for. This is not the end of something, it is, as my father saw, a new beginning.

Monday, April 1:

I couldn't resist an entry on April Fools Day! After all, this blog started on a date of Friday 13th! You may notice from the dates that until now I have made no entries for a while. Why? Well, I haven't been ill, I have been very very tired but best of all I have had nothing much to report – until now.

The radiotherapy left me in the end with an extremely sore breast, but just as easily as it came, it also went and now I am sitting here just "busting" to tell you all – definite pun intended – that on Friday I went to see Dr Ah See and she gave me the all clear!

It sounds so simple to say and so quick but it has taken me all weekend to be able to sit and write it without bursting into tears! I could hardly believe that my journey through all this has now ended. OK I still have to have check-ups, I'm not complaining about that, and I will always be a patient of the oncology clinic, not complaining about that either as it means I can call them any time I feel insecure about my health. I feel rather like a "private" patient, instant access to the clinic, although it was a hard way to earn it!

I can't remember much about the appointment. Apart from the usual two hours plus wait, which I was fully prepared for – Dr Ah See is very thorough, patient, kind and never makes you feel you're being rushed. She explains everything fully and carefully and of course this takes up her time. She has to listen, and she does, very patiently and of course this all puts her behind.

However, we talked for a few minutes about how I was, went through all that I had done, treatment wise and she brought me up to date with how that has left me. My bones have suffered a little and I have osteopinosis, which is the bit before osteoporosis – thinning of the bone – but we can deal with that.

She then said well done I'm pleased to tell you your treatment has finished, the cancer has gone and I will not need to see you again. It all came out so normally I hardly realised what she had said. Maybe I had expected a drum roll or a chorus of the trumpet voluntary or some kind of flashing lights but this was almost low key – well it was low key in fact, so much so that I almost didn't take it in!

She then went on the say something about the treatment for the thinning bones; we had previously discussed some medication, only now I couldn't seem to hear a thing she was saying. After the words "no need to see you again" a small tune started up in my brain. I think it started up as the song from Born Free - it's always been a favourite of mine – and the words were jumping about in my brain along with a swelling orchestra.

I must have nodded and responded because I came away with a prescription for some "bone" tablets but by then the few notes had risen to a full orchestral crescendo and my brain was wandering somewhere along a grassy forest path with Elsa the Lioness bounding along beside me!

We shook hands and suddenly I just wanted out, out of the hospital, out of the clinic, in fact I was out, I was free! I made a terrible excuse to the nurse about having a lift waiting, I really didn't want to talk any more and fighting back tears I calmly walked to the exit. I say calmly but my mind was springing and singing, it was doing cartwheels and little jumps and punching the air!

Actually, I am not given to such physical extremes and despite my joy I was also still aware I was in the cancer clinic and I could remember some of those awful chemo sessions and how desperate I felt and with that in mind my outward appearance was very demure. I called Alan, texted Hil and could hardly wait to get home and call Cliff. I thought if I phoned him from my mobile he would think it was bad news so waited an extra half hour before I could tell him!

What can I say; we were all ecstatic in our own ways. A huge weight suddenly lifted from us all and such an appropriate thing to happen at the start of spring. After the euphoria of the moment I held it all together extremely well until Hil screamed round in her car not too long after I'd been home, abandoned it in the road and ran up the drive shouting "Oh Su!" and almost crushed me to death with a bear hug! We both lost it and the tears came – both of us hugging and crying.

We didn't even do that when family deaths occurred! We had to make tea and calm down but we were both still crying when she left an hour later! They were happy tears of course, grateful, relieved and again some disbelief. I had made it. All that treatment, time stolen from my life, worry for everyone, the not really knowing about the future.

Somehow they all had to be washed away and believe me we gave it a good go! I typed a "round robin" to everyone I could think of and sent them all off. Even now I am still shedding tears and giving thanks for the fact that along with the sunshine of spring I have regained some long term health, hope and an abundance of happiness.

The tiredness I can overcome and fitness will return with some help and careful handling, the weight can be lost, all these things are within my control and now I can actually have my life back under my control too!

So this blog is at an end, really. I shall miss it. It has made me sit and rest – sometimes for quite a long time – and allowed me to verbally "thrash" the cancer. It was never meant to be a medical fact sheet and it certainly never achieved that! It was meant however, to convey my thoughts of the journey through the whole thing and how my life rubbed along beside it all.

The torment of both mind and body and the effects that all this has on you as a person and those around you. I don't know if I managed to achieve anything with this or not but if by reading this the only thing you ever remember is to check your breasts regularly, attend those mammograms – when you're old enough! – and not be scared of facing it all then those many hours of keyboard tapping will have been worth it.

Thanks for being with me on this terrible and rocky journey and to all of you who have written in to sympathise, agree or to urge me on, it was all very much appreciated and although I wasn't able to respond personally I have been truly grateful for all your comments.

Of course I could never have come through all this without the support of my family, my brave and wonderful Laura, and Alan who must have clocked up enough miles to drive to the moon and back. They went through the worst and the best with me.

Cliff, who phoned, visited, encouraged and supported me all the way along with his family and all my relatives who have bravely followed my blog from the beginning. Hil, who proved that friendship is more than just a word and who went to infinity and beyond with that one!

Enough now, it's sounding like an Oscar speech. I was going to say I haven't even won anything, but of course I have and would you believe it – I'm crying!

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