Take Me Back to Normal

What is it they say? If you want to make God laugh tell her your plans? Well, I hope someone up there is laughing because I certainly am not. I am fed up. Actually that’s F.E.D. U.P. with a good half a dozen exclamation marks for emphasis. (!!!!!!!!) For fear of seeming to contradict more…

Nourish Your Soul

There is a hunger in my belly. A gnawing rumble. An emptiness. A hollow entreaty to be satiated. It is not food I crave. I am lucky there, food aplenty in my fridge, or delivered to my door. No, it is a deeper yearning, a desire to be fed, to suckle and be nurtured and…

Cannabis and Me: Breaking the Law to Live

I I have just celebrated the second anniversary of the day I almost died. But I didn’t. I have also just passed the two-year mark from the day on which I received a diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. And last week, the long-awaited scan results from the first phase of the trial I am…

Life is Like a Box of Chocolates

“Life is a box of chocolates, Forrest said, “you never know what you are going to get.” I couldn’t agree more. These words have been dancing around my head for some weeks now. A reflection of just how life has been these last few months. Many describe the experience of cancer as a roller coaster….

3 Ways of Healing – #Medical

Perhaps if I had been born in another time, another country, another town, in another family, with another name and the planets had aligned in the heavens in a different configuration, then maybe none if this would have happened. I would not be the person I believe myself to be. When I look in the…

Feather

                                                                            (Lion of Judah – Sophie Wilkins) Don’t take away my hope, it isn’t yours to steal Stop…

Death and the Elephant

There are some days not quite as bright as others, even when the sun is shining. The dark clouds of grief, or fear, or anger, or helplessness just roll on in like an impending storm to obliterate any rays of hope and possibility. The elephant in the room looms impossibly loud and large, knocking the…

When No One’s Looking

You came to me last night as you promised you would Under cloak of night a million blinking night sky eyes like fire flies bearing witness to our secret rendezvous Where I poured out my heart and hopes beneath your watchful gaze so silent still, and in the silence in the space between the breath…

Cancer Care in the UK – what’s the prognosis?

Cancer is more than just a disease it’s political. Yesterday, when former member of parliament and cabinet minister, Dame Tessa Jowell, herself diagnosed with brain cancer and seriously ill, addressed her peers with a deeply honest and moving account of what it is like standing on the front line fighting for your life, we know…

To prognosticate or not to prognosticate

“So what’s your prognosis?” If I had a pound for every time someone asked that question, well, I could probably fund a feet-up, rub-down weekend at Champneys. But I’m just going to say it – it royally p***** me off! I made the choice not to ask for my oncologist’s prognosis as to my impending mortality….