The cancer in my brain has made another appearance

The last time I wrote a blog post we as a country were coming out of lockdown. Unfortunately, as I write this we are once more going into lots of local restrictions as the virus insidiously starts to appear again.

As though mirroring the virus, the cancer in my brain has also made another appearance. My consultant today told me of a new but very small lesion on the cerebellum. It can be treated with stereotactic surgery and so I have agreed to go ahead with this once again.

It will happen quite soon so the growth can be nipped in the bud so to speak. I know I am lucky to live where I do because of the treatment options locally, but I feel each time I have to dig a little deeper to find some energy and resolve.

I am also having an MRI scan on my spine to ensure that nothing else sinister is going on – I have had more pain of late. On the positive side the consultant thinks it will show no sign of cancer. He’s just double checking.

Once again the NHS is coming to my rescue.

I need your prayers

As my eldest grandchild left home today to begin university, I wondered how many more times I would see him. I don’t like thinking this way. It’s morbid. I just need your prayers and the gifts of the Spirit to keep me buoyant and to remind me of how lucky I am.

Ruth, also thinking about her son going off to university, shared a poem by Kahlil Gibran that we used as part of our son’s funeral service. She didn’t know we had used it. She was only four at the time and yet today it helped her understand a life lesson and reminded me of it.

On children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness,
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“So he also loves the bow that is stable.” I need to remember this and believe it.

Pray that we may all be grounded in and by God’s love.

Blessings to you.

Pauline

Wonderful news in the midst of uncertainty

It has been many weeks since I last blogged and much has happened to the world and its people in that time in terms of sadness, courage and self sacrifice.

We are all reeling from the effects of Covid 19 on lives and economies both personally and nationally. I hope you are all safe and well as we emerge from lockdown.

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Thankfully my treatment for cancer has continued throughout with scans, stereotactic surgery, telephone consultations and injections. I can only praise my oncology team and the NHS.

Today I was told by my consultant that my scans show no change from the last, taken 7 months ago, which came as wonderful positive news.

The stereotactic surgery was minimal, comparatively speaking, dealing with 1 met in my brain that had regrown.

This all means that I can relax for a while in the knowledge that the experts are on top of the disease.

With a bit of luck, the sun will shine again and I will be able to make the most of the summer.

“Let me sing of the Lord! He has been good to me!”

I am grateful for your prayers and positive thoughts, and the brilliant NHS which continues to care for me.

Pauline

Cancer during coronavirus

Hello once again

In my last blog post I wrote that ‘no one is immune to suffering’ and coronavirus (Covid 19), which is now rampaging across the globe, brings this fact into stark reality.

Most of humankind is doing what they can to limit its path of destruction from China to the Americas. At the forefront of this battle are wondrous medics and carers, many of whom have already given their lives to help the sick.

During this catastrophe, other medics are still working saving the lives of others from the diseases and illnesses we perhaps know more about. No working from home for them. In fact it’s business as usual.

Brain scan results

Yesterday I received the results of my last brain scan which were disappointing. The suspected brain met has grown from 4 to 7mm and another has been seen in another area of my brain. Both need treatment.

The good news is that I am once again deemed suitable for stereotactic surgery and I’m to expect a phone call to organise this in the near future.

Even amid the urgency present in our health care system, I am being given life saving treatment and another chance. I marvel at our NHS and am grateful for it.

Let us thank, pray for, and wish well all those who serve the sick and comfort the dying and do so with a grateful heart.

Best wishes for a happy Easter.

Pauline

Another marker met

Yesterday I went with Max and my sisters on a pilgrimage of sorts to Our Lady’s Chapel in Osmotherley.

I felt I needed a spiritual boost and the destination proved to be the perfect answer. Wonderful scenery, atmosphere and fellow travellers! The day proved to be spiritually and mentally uplifting and therefore successful. I was made more ready for my event of the week.

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I’ve been engrossed like many in the European Games coming from Glasgow and Berlin. They’ve helped distract me from my preoccupation with cancer and its demands.

Last week was a full body CT scan – the results of which I’m still waiting for. Monday it was a meeting with a neurosurgeon about gamma knife. Today it was treatment for the new lesion found in the cerebellum.

Happily it was small and needed only 20 minutes of radiation at full dosage. The MRI scan also showed that previous lesions had either disappeared or left only scarring after previous treatment in April. Result! Target met!

So it’s forward with positivity and resolve but not getting too carried away. Thanks to all for continued prayers and good wishes. I know I’m blessed to have so many who care for me.

God bless you and your families.

The power of light

The sun, earth’s provider of light and heat, has been shining for us in England and over the rest of Europe for weeks now.

Its laser-like rays cut through the atmosphere relentlessly and can be a curse as well as a blessing. These shafts of light, straight and sure like arrows, make me think of radiotherapy and gamma knife technology – precise, unswerving, directed.

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I was told some news yesterday about my brain mets treated in April. Mixed news – some good, some bad. Those mets targeted have shrunk but a new small area has appeared.

Fortunately, I’m a suitable candidate to have the surgery again which will take place next week.

Needless to say I’m nervous. I would even say scared. I re-read my blog post which I wrote just after the surgery where I described it as an enlightening experience.

I hadn’t known what to expect and so approached it differently. I was blissfully unaware I suppose, so I was relaxed. Somehow, I have to get to that place again. The support and prayers of my family and many friends are helping me so much. It does take a lot of energy being continually positive.

May the physicist, consultant and radiologists be guided in their work by the sure and healing hand of God. And may my trust in my Creator be strengthened so that I face the future with courage.

I’ve got butterflies

I’m sitting watching the majestic Federer play tennis at Wimbledon. The butterflies are fluttering outside on a beautiful summer’s day and they’re also fluttering inside my stomach at the moment.

The reason? I have an appointment for a head MRI scan on Friday and to be truthful I’m feeling nervous. I feel well apart from a cold and chesty cough.

Oral Chemo treatment is progressing with few problems and apparently I look well according to public opinion. Still I’m nervous.

It’s been three months since gamma knife treatment so the success of that procedure needs checking as does the growth of any more tumours. This is what is giving me butterflies!

They were dark days and I don’t want to go back there. However I must deal with whatever I find which takes me back to my first blog post and the poem Invictus.

I have to ‘keep faith’ as they say. I must remain positive and go with how I’m feeling – and that is good.

My family and friends are wonderful – so supportive, so hopeful, looking forward to the future with realism yet optimistically. I have to keep strong for them.

I’ve never had a bucket list. I’m not organised enough for one but if I were to have one, at the top of my list would be children and grandchildren-related goals. I’m no different from many, many other people. Love for family is all.

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So I write this as King Roger is being tested. He has learned to deal with tricky situations and so must I.

Flutter by Butterfly!

What I’ve learned on my cancer journey so far

25 May is a day to remember for the family today. It would have been Tony, my brother’s, 76th birthday, but he died in December. However it’s an opportunity to celebrate his life and all the love he brought with him.

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Another reason to celebrate life is Baby Ally, my great nephew, born prematurely at 24 weeks. Weighing just over one and half pounds at birth, he is going home from hospital today now weighing almost five pounds.

He is 24+13 weeks in hospital speak! A strong baby who has benefited from wonderful care by the NHS and amazing devotion from his parents. It’s not been an easy time for them, but they’ve found strength in one another and their families.

I too have a reason to celebrate the NHS. Not only have I benefited from Gamma Knife treatment, I’ve now been given a new drug only recently on the market, which has shown in trials to be effective, but is expensive.

If it suits me, the oncologist says it could, in combination with other meds I’m taking, control the cancer for a possible two years. I feel so blessed and thankful for our health system! We as a nation need to protect it.

Almost 13 weeks on from my first blog post, I want to express my belief in prayer, my gratitude to medics of all disciplines, and the spiritual, physical and moral support of my family and friends.

At the moment I feel tired but otherwise well. What have I learned so far from my ‘cancer journey’?

That most terrains go up and down with some plateaus
That it’s ok to feel scared, but not to give in to fear
That you meet many amazing people on the way
That there is goodness in most people if you look closely enough
That suffering and joy are not mine alone, because we are all human

A day of enlightenment

26 February seems light years away and yet it isn’t seven weeks since. How much has happened in this short space of time and what a learning curve I have been and am still on.

Yesterday was a privileged day for me and my family. I went to Thornbury hospital, working with NHS, for Gamma Knife treatment which specifically targets brain tumours leaving healthy brain tissue intact.

What amazing technology and even more important to my mind, what amazing people delivering it. My team was headed by Mr Rowe. A quiet, gentle, very clever man but also compassionate and empathetic. He was working with another neurosurgeon and radiologists and was extremely positive at the end of my treatment programme.

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This was the part of the plan I was most nervous about and yet it became an uplifting experience. Positivity was the word of the day. “Lord for tomorrow and its needs I do not pray. Keep me my God just for today.” Of course the primary cancer has still to be verified, but after another biopsy tomorrow that question will hopefully have been dealt with.

Today’s mass readings speak of coming to the light, which for believers is God, the source of all light. And if we look closely enough we can see this light all around us, in inspiring, caring people, in goodness, in the environment and certainly for me, in radiotherapy using beams of light to eliminate destructive cells. A day of enlightenment for me. A signpost leading me forwards.

“Lead kindly light, lead thou me on.”

Pauline