Empathy, pain and action

I’m struggling to know where to start with this blog post, which if I’m honest doesn’t happen to me very often. I’m usually blessed with the ability to sit down at my keyboard, churn out words for a wee while and then sit back and edit it into something coherent. Today I’ve been procrastinating for […]

Five things I wish I knew when my Dad was dying of cancer #cholangiocarcinoma

Last November my Dad died from bile duct cancer, cholangiocarcinoma. Bile duct cancer is an incredibly rare cancer with current estimates of 1,000 new case in the UK each year and 2,500 in the US and an annual incidence rate of 1-2 cases per 100,000 people in the Western World. Search twitter for people talking about […]

999: Show them the love!

Rarely do I sit down and write a blog post in an instant response to something I’ve seen, I’m quite a reflective person, bit of a thinker and I tend to muse on things and have a list of ‘to write when I have time’ blog posts, but occasionally, not often, but every now and […]

A game of odds #cancer

A week ago I wrote a post explaining Dad’s latest situation with #cholangiocarcinoma Don’t give up the ship, fight her till she sinks. At the time we’d just seen his oncologist and heard the news that Dad’s one remaining option was to have chemotherapy in an attempt to stem the tumour in his stomach bleeding, which […]

Don’t give up the ship, fight her till she sinks #cancer

Ten days ago I wrote a blog post The beginning of the end? that reflected on my Dad’s journey/fight/life with cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer) over the past four years. Well ten days on and things seem to have progressed even further. In March alone Dad has had three blood transfusions, which equates to about 8 […]

The beginning of the end?

Tomorrow is my second blogging birthday, at the time I started to blog I really didn’t know whether I’d enjoy it or what I’d talk about. I knew that I’d have some stuff to share though (never really short of an opinion) and I also felt that cancer would feature in these posts….I’m not sure […]

The ultimate recycling?

In Britain, there are currently over 10,000 people in need of an organ transplant. Each day three of them will die because of the lack of donors. Despite this, 15,000 people die each day in the UK. Only three of them will become organ donors. These statistics just don’t make sense to me. This morning I read an […]

When it’s good it’s very very good #NHS

The last few days Gran hasn’t been very well, I spent an hour with her and Grandad yesterday evening and she was perky, but not herself. Grandad spent the whole time just looking at her, wistfully, worrying but like he was drinking her in with his eyes. They’ve been together since they were children and […]

Cancer and Cake

The other week I sat down to watch The Bucket List, I didn’t really know much about it, except that it was a comedy and that Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson starred in it. In a nutshell, for anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s about two terminally ill cancer patients and their quest to achieve […]