terminal cancer

Where’s the “good” in “goodbye”?

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

I was going through old cards and letters the other day as I began to put things up in my room (I’ve been very creative with command hooks. I should probably have bought shares in command hooks…). I found the last birthday card that Mum ever wrote for me (which made me cry). I also found the card my family wrote for me when I first went to uni, which has found it’s way onto my wall.

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The more I read it, the more I think it’s excellent advice for life. (I wish you could FaceTime dead people, though, but Mum was cremated and I don’t think ashes can talk).

I was wandering round a shop today when ‘No Good in Goodbye‘ came on. As it came on I was scrolling through my phone and people from my uni course began to post their results.

Admittedly I got a bit of a ‘pang’ and my mind began to race about what could have/should have/might have been.

It feels stupid because I feel incredibly lucky to be where I am right now and I’m more content with life than I have been in a long time. If I’d have stayed at uni I would most likely have become even more unwell and probably wouldn’t have finished. I wouldn’t have met some of the wonderful people I now have in my life and would have missed out on some fantastic opportunities that I’ve been granted. I probably wouln’t be blogging for Blurt, or have the job I have now (which is basically my dream job).

I’m struggling to match the ‘me’ that I am, with the ‘me’ I’ve always thought I ‘should’ be. I’ve had a few conversations in the past week or so when people have been really surprised that I did Art up to AS level and DT to A2 level. They’re really surprised that I have a bit of a creative streak (something I’m debating blogging about more…). I guess I sort of abandoned creative me, and tried to become academic. There’s nothing wrong with being academic, but I don’t think it’s really ‘me’. I’m actually not a huge fan of reading and writing, I’d much prefer to play with paint, talk to people, or design a website. I like doing and being rather than sitting and reading. I like learning through doing or talking to people.

Uni was so tied up in Mum’s illness. I didn’t notice it at the time. I didn’t really think I was any different from my peers. When I’ve gone back through cards, letters and photos, though, it’s become increasingly clear how much Mum being ill really did affect it. I can see my social life dropping off. I can see the distraction setting in. I can match photos and cards to points in Mum’s illness. We tried to keep everything as ‘normal’ as possible, but looking back  I can see how far from ‘normal’ things fell.

There is no ‘good’ in ‘goodbye’ and as each day goes by, I miss Mum more and more. There’s more I want to tell her, or ask her advice on, or just chat to her about. But maybe there is a bit of good in the bad? Maybe Mum’s illness and death and my leaving uni have forced me to reassess who I am and what I’m doing with my life, and maybe that’s no bad thing…

Silence is Noisy

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

We’ve passed the seven month mark. Seven months since Mum died. I’m not sure when I’ll stop counting these milestones. Maybe it’ll happen when things get easier. I’m not sure it’s getting any easier yet, in some ways it’s getting harder. The day Mum died was hard, but every day since, there’s been a nagging voice in my head saying: “The longer she’s dead, the more she misses.”

I moved house again last week. A few months ago I had to move out of halls very quickly due to taking a Leave of Absence from uni, so I lodged with someone for a couple of months. But last week I moved out, into a flat which I’m sharing with a friend. I’ve also got a new job – I’m still waiting for a start date, but it’s another life change. They’re both really positive life changes, but changes nonetheless.

My Dad has been incredibly helpful in all this, as have a couple of friends. They’ve helped me make decisions, taught me valuable life lessons, and in Dad’s case, helped me move everything I own from one house to another.

I have noticed Mum’s absence, though. When you get a new job, one of the first things you usually do is tell your parents. When moving house, your parents (with any luck!) provide a vehicle of some kind and some extra arms and legs for carrying things up and down stairs. Mums, in particular, are good at remembering things you forget (such as cleaning products – a quick trip to the shop now means we have the best-stocked cleaning cupboard in York, but it’s something I hadn’t factored into the big move).

There wasn’t really anything that she would have done that didn’t get done anyway. In fact, I can’t think of anything in particular that would have been her ‘job’. At one point I did consider she may have helped me buy some new work clothes, but then I remembered she used to practically pay people to take me shopping, so maybe not!

A lack of significant ‘role’ for her doesn’t mean I’ve felt her absence any less, though. I didn’t miss her too much during the actual house-move (another pair of hands would have been useful but we can blame my brother’s man-flu for that!), but I missed her that first night. I don’t know why I missed her then – even if she was alive she’d have been at her house, not mine – but I did.

Before Mum died, I never knew how much space an absence could take up. I didn’t realise how noisy silence could be. I don’t really know how to describe it, and perhaps it’s something you never really come across until someone close to you dies, but absence can seep into every aspect of your life and can grow at an alarming rate.

It goes deeper than a simple nothing. “Nothing” can easily be masked by white noise; the radio, TV, a trip with some friends, tasteful home furnishings, or a chat on the phone. “Nothing” is easy to cover up. But absence is deeper. No amount of noise can stifle it, no amount of talking can deplete it, no amount of looking-after-yourself, being sociable or distracting yourself can make it go away. It demands to be noticed.

Time is moving forward, life is changing, and good things are happening. None of it makes the absence disappear, and sometimes it makes the absence even more noticeable, but it’s also essential. My life can’t remain in 2015, it can’t get stuck in a time when Mum was still alive – it’s got to carry on, and that means that I’ve got to keep on doing what I can to live in the present.

Marie Claire Article: My Life Was Perfect… Then My Mum Died

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

My life has always been set out in front of me. Nursery, primary school, secondary school, possible gap year, uni, have a job, get married, produce 2.5 children and buy some pets, then watch my children go through the same system I did while I excel in my job, bake cookies on weekends, and skip off into the sunset. A nice, neat, perfect little life.

I imagine that anyone else who has grown up in a middle class family will have had similar expectations. I know many people at my secondary school had a similar life plan – lots of students achieved 11 A*s at GCSE followed by 3 A*s at A-Level. BTechs weren’t even taught and the advice was generally to study the ‘better’ subjects; sciences and maths, avoiding the ‘doss’ subjects like Art or Product Design. Following a gap year, I trotted down the uni path like everyone else.

That was where things went a little ‘off-piste’. During my first year, my Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Even though Mum was ill and I visited her in hospital and things, I carried on with my studies. The amount of pressure I felt to carry on as ‘normal’ was immense. The pressure didn’t come from anyone else – everyone completely understood that things wouldn’t be ‘normal’. Instead, the pressure came from myself. I needed to fulfil the perfect blueprint that I’d always believed defined success.

With second year complete, I hobbled into third year. Mum was ill. She was dying. But little old me needed to fill this mould, so I continued to head to lectures when I could. My attendance was more sporadic than I’d have liked, and I visited Mum every night, but I kept smiling, kept attempting to read, kept trying to work out what the heck a p-value was and why it was relevant.

Then Mum died. Four days later I walked into a statistics lecture and sat ready to learn. I tried to do the maths whilst replying to texts about funeral arrangements. I was happy and ‘normal’. People commented on how ‘strong’ and ‘brave’ I was. Well done to me, big gold star for completely ignoring grief and pretending to be absolutely fine.

A week or so later, my attendance was occasional at best. People were talking about having a break and postponing graduation. I didn’t know what to do. I needed to ignore everything in my life and follow the rules and the path that have always been set out for me. I had uni telling me to consider time off, my Dad telling me that maybe after the funeral it would all be better – that my dissertation might be a ‘good distraction’. All I wanted was my Mum.

I ended up sat in front of my GP and asked her what to do. She told to take time out. So that’s what I did. I agreed to take a Leave of Absence from October to January, then complete the first term the following year and postpone graduation.

This train to ‘perfect middle class life’ was still heading to the same destination but via a different route. People understood that I needed some time; Dad thought I could work on my dissertation still while I was off, it was all good.

Then it came to coming back, and I still wasn’t ready. I was trying to work out how to live life without my Mum. I was trying to get my head around returning to studying, despite not having the concentration to read even a few pages of a book. I was trying to compute how I’d get to lectures when some days I was struggling to leave my room, or even shower. My support team felt I would do myself a disservice if I returned to uni in January, both in terms of my health and my grades. So that was that, more time out, no uni until October. No lectures, no workshops, no essays to write, none of it.

Fastforward a few months, and the train to ‘perfect middle class life’ is now so far gone I can’t see it. Making the decision not to return was one of the hardest choices I’ve ever had to make. The pressure to be ‘perfect’ and ‘invincible’ is strong.

I feel like I should show the world that cancer took Mum but won’t take me. I feel that I should just ‘get on’ with life and build myself up, bit by bit, to create this ‘perfect’ life that has always been set out for me.

My fear of failure is something I fight against every single day. To look perfect, study perfectly and have the perfect social life. But sometimes, carrying on isn’t brave – breaking that ‘perfect’ mould is. It would have been easy to stay at uni and keep attempting to go to lectures. It would have been easy to cobble together some words and hand in sub-par work. It would have been easy to break myself in order to finish my degree ‘on time’.

Taking leave means that I’ve had to find a new place to live and find something to fill my days with. It means that I’m going to return to new classes with people I don’t know. Perhaps the hardest thing about it, though, is that I have to admit to myself and the world that I’m not okay. That life has got in the way of this path I’ve always thought I had to follow. I have to face up to not just my grief, but also to the effects of seeing Mum’s health slowly decline.

I have to admit I’m not ‘perfect’ and work on myself, and admitting to that is probably one of the hardest and bravest things I have ever had to do.

Read more about Marie Claire’s #BREAKFREE from Fear campaign.

Featured: http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/552018/how-to-cope-when-a-parent-dies.html

It’s Horrible Feeling Ill, and Worse When You Can’t Even Text Your Mum.

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

This weekend, I haven’t been all that well. This isn’t unheard of or anything – throughout Mum’s illness, I had a couple of periods where I fell ill. Whether it be a standard bug going round, leaving me bedbound and anti-food for a few days, an exciting late-night A&E trip with an asthma attack, or something else, I’ve become somewhat of an expert at developing odd symptoms over the past couple of years.

Whenever I was ill, I either told Mum afterwards (in the case of something short like an asthma attack), or told her but refused to let her visit. Mum’s immune system was often compromised over the course of her illness; aggressive chemotherapy does that to a person. I made sure never to do anything which could put her at risk of catching something. And even if I was ill with something that wasn’t contagious, I didn’t want to put her through the stress of seeing me ill.

This was so hard. All you want when you’re feeling rubbish is for your Mum to give you a hug and remind you there are better days ahead. To hold you together when it feels like things are falling apart… to stroke your hair, or bring you a drink, and remind you that it won’t last forever.

So keeping Mum away wasn’t ideal, but I would text her to update her on how I was doing. She was generally pretty unsympathetic, actually, unless I actually felt like I was dying (I think it’s probably a symptom of being a palliative medicine consultant). Maybe unsympathetic isn’t the right word, maybe matter-of-fact would be closer to the mark… but she would always reply, usually with kind words, happy thoughts, and often something to make me smile or laugh.

This weekend I’ve pretty much been restricted to my bed with headachey, dizzy, blergh-ness. I’ve felt pretty low in myself; I hate not being able to get out of the house, or even being able to get up and do stuff. I’ve been too exhausted to even go downstairs the majority of the time. Having wifi in bed has been a bit of a lifesaver to be honest because at least I’ve had a bit of contact with the outside world.

On Friday night I started crying because I felt so rubbish and all I wanted was Mum. I’m really lucky to have some amazing women in my life who frequently fill in as ‘stand-in Mum’ when a situation calls for it. But I think being ill is one of those times where you just want your ‘real’ Mum and no-one can fill that role, however amazing they may be and however much they might want to or try to.

I’ve stopped talking about Mum as much generally. I don’t think people want to keep hearing about it, and after a time you run out of things to say or words to explain what you’re going through. There are only so many times you can say ‘I’m hurting and it’s crap’, before even I get bored of hearing myself say it. I’m running out of words and losing the ability to express how I’m feeling, because more often than not I simply don’t know.

I know, though, that when I’m ill, all I want is Mum, and the only thing that sucks more than her not being there in person, is not even having her at the end of the phone.

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/feeling-ill-when-you-cant-text-your-mum_b_9241860.html

Two Years

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

Today marks two years since I heard about Mum’s diagnosis.

I don’t really know what to say. There isn’t really anything to say, I guess. It was the start of the longest, weirdest, 20 months of my life. Mum looked well. I couldn’t compute how she could be so ill and look so well.

One day I’ll write a post about coping with that news. But at the moment I’m struggling with getting my brain to do anything much, so today is not that day. I miss Mum. I miss the person I was two years ago. I desperately want the old me back and my old life back but I know that can’t happen. I will never be the person I was two years ago, because so much has happened and changed, but hopefully I can become a new person, with some of the old spark.

Check Your Lumps and Bumps!

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

Cancer is a word we don’t like to say. It sticks in your mouth like treacle. It doesn’t feel nice. It doesn’t sound nice. It’s a word that invokes fear in some, memories in others; to some it means nothing.

This Thursday is World Cancer Day, a day designed to get people talking and thinking about cancer.

I’ve written about Mum for months; about her last months of life, and our first months of life without her.

But through all these blog posts, I’ve never really gone back in time and spoken about her full story.

Mum was diagnosed with cancer, initially, in August 2012. She found it super early – before even a mammogram would pick it up. She had a lumpectomy that September and started on a course of chemo. We were upset, but not overly worried. She had caught it early so prognosis was good. The chemo, and radiotherapy were to wipe up any remaining cells rather than to target a particular lump. Mum spent a week at home after each round of chemo, and then went back to work for two weeks. When radiotherapy came around she’d simply pop down during her working day, get zapped, and head back to work. Cancer was annoying, but she wasn’t about it let it get in the way of living her life.

By Easter 2013, cancer was gone and life started to get back to normal. Mum was on tamoxifen, a drug developed with help from Yorkshire Cancer Research, but apart from that cancer was a thing of the past and we all moved on.

In February 2014, Mum found herself somewhat achy and decided to get checked out before going on holiday. That was when we found out that the cancer had returned, and was terminal. Mum had a good six months of relative health while on hormone treatment. When it stopped working and she started chemo again, there were a few hospital stays but Mum was still working, right up until her brief coma in February 2015 (February isn’t the best month, apparently!). She never worked after that, and though her health picked up a little for a short while after, it then declined steadily until she died in October 2015.

Mum’s story is one cancer story. One story out of the 338,263 new cases of cancer in 2012.

Cancer didn’t die with Mum, either. I might not have cancer, but I’m still affected by it. I don’t want cancer to be a part of my life anymore. But like anyone else who’s encountered cancer, I am hyper-vigilant for any lump or bump, any mole… anything that might indicate that cancer is making an unwelcome appearance in my life.

My Mum died. She was an incredible human being and will always be part of me, but she’s not here anymore and it hurts. It’s been over three months since she died and I still cry most days. I still have trouble sleeping, rarely sleep through the night, and dream about Mum dying over and over again. I still keep my phone on me at all times and check it repeatedly. Images and memories of Mum’s illness play over and over again in my mind.

One night I worked out that Mum’s cancer was all my fault (don’t ask). As much as people tell me it is in no way my fault and just a random cell mutation, as much as people reason with me and explain this to me, I still get dark nights where I feel as though I’m being crushed under the weight of guilt.

Cancer didn’t just take Mum’s life, but it took some of mine, too. Some of my brothers’, my dad’s, my aunt’s, uncle’s, grandad’s. It reached my friends, through me, and the friends of all my family members. It reached my lecturers and others who have helped me. It’s not something which is isolated to the sufferer and it’s not something that goes away when the person dies.

This World Cancer Day, if you do nothing else, please just check yourself for any suspicious lumps or bumps. Cancer Research UK has a guide on checking for cancer on their website. Catching cancer early can increase your chances of recovery. Life gets busy and it’s so easy to procrastinate these not-so-fun tasks, but please take it from me: it’s important.

If you’d like to donate to Yorkshire Cancer Research through my JustGiving page, please click here.

Two Very Different Moves

~ Naomi ~ 2 Comments

I started planning moving away to university months before it happened. After sixth form, I took a gap year, so by the spring before I went to uni, I knew for certain which university I would be going to and what I would be studying. My birthday is in March and I’d asked for ‘bits for uni’. Mum and I spent the day in York shopping for bedding, pans, and decorative bits and bobs. I remember it as such a lovely day; proper mum-and-daughter time. It was filled with excitement of new adventures to come. She’d just been given the cancer ‘all-clear’, and things were really looking up.

When the time come to move to uni, my whole family came (it was a bit of an event). Mum had bought me a big tub of chocolates to share with others on my floor (after all, chocolate is a fairly sturdy base for friendship). It was an emotional but exciting and happy time.

I moved again this weekend. My first ‘proper’ move since I first moved to halls – I’ve moved between home and uni since then, but only to and from halls so it never felt very different from that first time. But this time, I moved out of halls and into a real house.

I’ve had to move out of halls because I’m not returning to uni this January. I felt the need to remain around my friends and support networks, so I needed to find a place to live fairly quickly (or sofa hop for a bit, but that didn’t really appeal). Thankfully, with the help of a local youth charity, I found a place very quickly, living with a lovely lady and her two cats.

I’d been thinking about Mum a bit less recently, but over the last week I’ve been missing her more again. I always low-level miss her, but it had been getting a little easier and memories of ‘well Mum’ had begun to replace some of the ‘sick Mum’ memories. Seriously missing Mum returned though, and with it came ‘grief attacks’ and many moments where it felt like every part of my body was breaking, all at once.

When I ordered new bedding (my new place has a bigger bed), it reminded me of that day I spent with Mum in York. A happy memory, but a memory nonetheless, one that can never be repeated. Packing up my things, I relived moments that have happened in that room. It was my home, my safe place, throughout Mum’s illness. When I returned from hospital the night before she slipped into a coma, that was where I landed. When my friend came to see me and started to cry, it was that room. The walls of that room have seen more than a student room should ever have to see. It was the place I ran to when I heard that Mum had died.

On Saturday, the three month anniversary of Mum’s death, I shut the door on that room for the final time. My very kind new landlady helped me move out. Dad will see my new place at some point, but Mum never will. She will never see my new room, never meet the person I’m living with. She’ll never see me grow and learn and laugh and cry and that breaks me. So many times in the last few weeks all I have wanted is a hug from her. A bit of reassurance that I’m doing okay and that the decisions that I’m making are not ‘wrong’ ones.

Living somewhere new is a new start. It’s a chance to move on from Mum’s illness and death. A chance to start piecing my life back together, to build it back up again. I wish it were that simple though…I still jump when the phone rings, and cry-laugh when I’m reminded of a Mum quirk. Mum is all around my room, in photos, in the plaque she bought me last Christmas, and in the books that stand on my drawers. Mum will be brought up in job applications when it comes to explaining why I’m not studying right now, her name will stick in my throat every time a friend or family member of my housemate visits and asks what I’m doing at the moment. It’s not as simple as ‘not being affected by cancer anymore’ because we still are – I still am – and probably always will be in some way. That said, I can choose to let it define me, or I can choose to move on and begin to build a new life. I hope that by moving, that is what I’m beginning to do.

Featured: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/naomibarrow/two-very-different-moves_b_9087128.html

Campus Society Article: What it’s like caring for a terminally ill parent when you’re at university.

~ Naomi ~ Leave a comment

I remember the day Mum stopped being able to walk. I had to help her from her bed to her chair and wheel her to the bathroom. She could still wash herself at that point and once she’d finished I wheeled her back, found her medication and fixed her some lunch. I remember it so clearly because it was the last time I had some quality time alone with her.

I didn’t know that I was a carer until I’d been caring for over a year. Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer during my second term of university. She died at the start of my final year.  I knew that none of my friends had a terminally ill parent, but that was about as far as my thinking went. It was only when I met someone from the charity York Carers who started asking me questions like “Do you worry about your Mum when you’re in lectures?” that I began to realise how different my student life was compared to my peers.

I didn’t think I was a carer because I still lived at university.  I hadn’t realised that a lot of things I did were things that my friends didn’t do. Like going home more a lot more often and checking in on my family every day. When going home, most of my friends would be waited on hand and foot, but even though I did still take my washing home (so much cheaper than on campus), I normally did it myself, and often ended up cleaning and cooking a fair bit too. I also didn’t appreciate the toll of emotionally supporting my family and worrying about not just Mum, but also about my Dad and brothers and how they were coping.

My caring responsibilities started slowly and increased steadily by the time Mum died, I hardly realised how far my life had shifted from that of a normal student. To begin with, it was just a matter of visiting home more often to see her. But over the course of Mum’s illness I’ve had to do many more things including visiting her in hospital, helping her drink, fetching her medication, and moving her around the house.

When she was in hospital, I occasionally missed lectures and in my second year I had to postpone my summer exam to give me enough time to catch up on all the work. I’m the eldest of three children, and the only girl, so I definitely felt some responsibility for managing the house while Dad was in hospital, transporting Mum’s family, or working.

Perhaps the biggest area of my uni life being a carer impacted was my social life. I could never commit to anything too far in advance for fear of letting people down and when I was at uni I often spent time catching up on work instead of being out with my friends. To begin with my friends were amazing. I lived in halls and we’d often crash each other’s rooms. I remember one friend arriving in my room with chocolate fingers and a film one night when I was having a particularly bad day. But in second year, as we moved out of halls and I had to go home more often, it became harder to keep those friendships up. The more time I spent at home or in hospital, the more distant I felt from uni and my friends there. I drifted from them as their lives moved on and mine stayed stuck in cancer-land. It wasn’t their fault, and whenever I do contact them or see them around they’re really supportive and still invite me to things. It’s just how it was.

Other young adult carers have shared similar experiences. Through the power of Twitter, I found two other carers with stories a bit like mine. Maariyah, a first year student at the University of Portsmouth, has been caring for her Mum for years and like me didn’t realise she was a carer for a long time, “I didn’t actually realise I was a carer until I got older and realised my role” she told me. Jane, a master’s student, has been caring for her sister for most of her life and now cares for both of her parents, too. Both Maariyah and Jane live at home and travel into university for their lectures, which in itself gives them a very different university experience from their friends, but one I instantly
recognised.

Bethany, a first year student at the University of Bedfordshire, has cared for her Mum from a young age. She lives at uni too but, like I did, travels home often.

Both Jane and Bethany mentioned how difficult it could be to socialise. Having less time to see their friends might be an obvious one, but they also spoke about not wanting to cancel plans at short notice, letting their friends down, and Bethany said “because  of my caring role I don’t like to go out much and haven’t found the confidence to have a social life at uni.”

Thankfully, all three carers receive support from their local carers organisations and Jane is also supported by her personal tutor and a lecturer. Talking about her lecturer she says “she’s been a star, I honestly believe that without her I would’ve definitely dropped out of uni. She’s been my rock throughout the last few years, she’s always there for me both academically and personally.” These supports are lifelines. Helping carers to manage the various strains on their time and providing them with occasional light relief. I can relate to this, I’ve been incredibly well supported by both my academic supervisor and my college welfare team who have constantly gone out of their way to help me out. Once I discovered I was a carer and found York Carers, I began to receive support from them too which has been invaluable.

It is estimated that there are 290,369 carers in the UK aged 16-24 but the true number is unknown because so many young adult carers may not even recognise themselves to have a caring role. Out of those who identify themselves as a young adult carer, 25% won’t tell their college or university about their caring role. It isn’t quite clear why but often it can be because they don’t know the support that could be available to them, or they are worried about the reaction of their tutors. Under the Care Act, 2014, every carer is entitled to support to help them to carry on with their life. This includes the right for every carer to receive a carer’s assessment, assessing the needs of themselves and their family to make sure that they receive the support they deserve, such as help with the caring itself, assistance with travel costs, or enabling the carer to have some time away from their caring role so that they can do something else for a while.

Despite the difficulties caring can throw up, most of us wouldn’t want our responsibilities taken away. I got a sense of pride from caring, I love my families, and would rather care for them myself than have a relative stranger do it. Being a carer, I learned a lot. I learned about the issues facing a person with limited mobility, both in their house and when trying to get out and about. I discovered how non-wheelchair-friendly many places are and found a new appreciation for anyone wheelchair-bound. I learned how to support a disabled person around their home – and about the various gadgets available to help with that. I also learned things about myself, mainly that I’m more resilient than I ever thought possible.

Every carer needs support. There’s no reason that being a carer should stop you from attending university or college, if you want to. If you think you might be entitled to carer support, go to carers.org to find your nearest carers centre.

This article originally appeared on Dorms, the online magazine of Campus Society, check it out here.

900 Cancer Diagnosises A Day

~ Naomi ~ 3 Comments

Someone just rang me up on behalf of Macmillan. It was someone asking for donations, as you might expect (I don’t think they’ve ever rung me up for anything else, and yes you can get annoyed at cold callers, but at the end of the day it’s their job and at least this time it’s for a charity not for PPI or something). The line used to get donations this time was ‘900 people are diagnosed every day with cancer in the UK*’.

900 people. Every single day. Now of course, their reason for telling me this was to get donations, but 900 people is a LOT.

That’s 900 people who are hearing the news every day, and then 900 people who are going to have to go home and tell their family and friends. 900 lots of family and friends who are going to have to hear the news that someone they love has cancer. Well over 900 lives that are going to be affected by cancer on any given day.

Not all of these will be terminal, like Mum, but some will be.

It makes me so angry. I hate this disease. I hate what it does to people. Not just to the people diagnosed – but their family and friends too. Look at my family – a unit of 5, plodding along. Mum diagnosed the first time and we did okay. We accepted it, we dealt with it, we brushed ourselves off and got back up again.

Then round two hit. My youngest brother is doing okay at the minute. But at 15 years old he saw his Mum for the last time, and that shouldn’t be something which happens to anyone. My middle brother is doing okay at the moment too. He’s in a decent job with bright university prospects. But last year it hit him hard, he had an incredibly difficult time at university and ended up not pursuing that particular course and that particular uni. Dad’s taking things in his stride but it’s clear he’s not exactly ‘living the dream’, so to speak. I don’t want to write much more than that on the 3 main men in my life – it’s their life to share if they want to and not really my place to do it for them. But they have been deeply affected, as anyone would be if their spouse or Mum died?

Me? Well, it’s been 2.5 months since Mum died and almost 24 since she was diagnosed. I’m not back at uni yet – it doesn’t feel possible at the moment and my GP was fairly explicit that she didn’t think now was a good time to go back, either. I’ve been struck down with anxiety so bad that it can take me a long time to even venture as far as the kitchen opposite my room, and that’s if I make it.

I’m working on it, but I’m currently faced with having to find a new place to live, and new support, which isn’t exactly helping. I have found an absolutely brilliant charity this week though who have really been helping me out, and I am so grateful.

Building my life back up is not something that is going to be quick or easy. It’s going to be difficult and it’s going to take time. My Mum hasn’t just died, but she was ill for 20 months and if anything, that’s currently affecting me more.

I get frustrated often. I am desperate to get back to the person I used to be. The person who was able to hop on a train and nip down to London for the day. Who spoke in front of rooms full of people. Who enjoyed living and learning. Who socialised. Who never stopped. I used to be able to do all of that and now some days I can’t travel as far as 3 feet, and I feel unable to even comment on something on Facebook, never mind talking to hundreds of people.

Then I hear stats like this and I get even more frustrated because Mum’s cancer wasn’t a one off and it sucks. Cancer is affecting people every single day and I feel powerless to do anything about it. I’m not a scientist, I can’t cure cancer. I can’t take the pain away from people. I can’t cure their loved ones or better yet, stop them from even getting ill in the first place.

I wish I could, but I can’t. So I feel like I’m standing here watching it all from behind a glass screen. No matter how much I blog, no matter how much I scream or stamp my feet (figuratively, of course), it’s not going to fix this.

It’s times like this when I wish I had the faith that my Mum held so deeply. I wish I could believe in this bigger plan drawn up by a loving God. But I’m struggling to. I’m working on it. But it’s another thing which just isn’t that easy.

*At a very quick Google, I can’t find their evidence for this, but I didn’t look very hard. But whether it’s exactly 900 or not, it’s still a lot.