I’ve steered clear of the repeal debate, I haven’t commented or joined in to any great extent. There are a number of reasons why, most of them are personal, and I won’t go into them in this blog. Suffice to say, anything to do with my uterus, isn’t something you should be spending your time, concerned about. A number of things have struck me though about the debate and this is looking at it purely from the perspective of a still viably reproductive female who has cancer. I was originally diagnosed at 33, I had three young children 5,7 and 6 months old, I was attending a well-known cancer centr ..read more

It started about a week ago with a text from my Clinical Nurse Specialist, inquiring if I’d managed to get my bloods done. To be honest I’d been avoiding it like the …….. well you know the plague. The thoughts of going out to the doctors after weeks of cocooning made a full waxing appointment coupled with maybe a few wisdom teeth being pulled seem a more appealing outing, but I had to get over my fear and venture out. I started my prep (I know, I know) by dragging out my sewing machine and making myself a mask from the template being used for #Masks4AllIreland group on Facebook, I figured if t ..read more

We all have different ways of looking at the world we live in. We all have different experiences. We all live together on this rock floating in space, and never before have we all been so connected because of social media. Sometimes this is incredibly positive, I’ve connected with friends I had lost touch with, kept in touch with others who live across the world. I like everyone else gets to voice my opinion, everyone has them, they are the ideas and perceptions we have to make sense of what’s happening around us . We use them to define ourselves and what we stand for, we use them to form conn ..read more

(I haven’t written in so long bear with me as I try to find my writing mojo again) We all have days in our lives we would rather not remember, that’s for sure. For me today happens to be one of those, because today is an anniversary of sorts, not the celebratory kind, but nonetheless one for reminiscing. This day 15 years ago I put my baby son 10 mths old in his car seat, no doubt with a kiss on his little chubby cheek. I strapped him safely in the car and off we set for the hospital oblivious to all danger ahead. Sometimes I wonder how I could have been so naive earlier that morning, my frien ..read more

(At the outset of this blog I want to make something crystal clear, this blog is not to be misinterpreted as a criticism of fellow patient advocates, we are all just trying to survive in the system that so often fails us) Sometimes in life, you need to know when to talk up, sometimes you need to know when to shut up. Becoming a stage 4 patient advocate has been a rollercoaster lesson in knowing the difference. I don’t claim to have the authority on either scenario at present so I’m sure I will probably divide opinion on whether I’m right to talk up now.  We have all followed the Cervical ..read more

I guess you could say  “Moving On” that’s a bit of an oxymoron when it comes to a stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Sometimes I wonder is it something expected of me, or something I expect of myself.  For those looking on as time passes and I haven’t passed, it can seem like all is well in the world. They see me walking in the neighbourhood, or at the local pool for my swim. I socialise and I travel, people comment ” you always seem busy” if you look at my Facebook page, it certainly looks that way.  But what’s it really like to live in my world? Truth is I spend a lot of time on my own ..read more

My mother died at the age of 56 just eight years more than I am now. She had MS every day we spent together, her life as I remember it was a pitiful existence. There was little joy permeating the constant struggle, for any of us. She got little in terms of support nor did we.  My father died at a few weeks short of 91, he had excellent health up to the last year and half of his life.  I don’t want you to think,  I wished the roles were reversed, I just wished something could have been done to make it fairer, but since when did life ever proclaim itself to be fair. I used to pray ..read more

Today I said goodbye to my friend. I walked into an already packed church, the crowd snaking down the footpath far outside. I took a seat in the pew, the priest was anxious to get started. The crowd was so large they could never all have time to sympathise, before the official start time. I was happy to wait, from where I sat I could not see the coffin draped in white that would transport her to her final resting place. I didn’t want to see it.  Through the mourners though, came her beautiful, beaming smile, from her photograph place atop. She would not have liked all the fuss about her ..read more

I haven’t done much blogging lately, I lost my mojo somewhere a few months back. I’m not really sure why, even though I was as busy as ever, I didn’t think I had anything new to write about. I was pretty fed up with melanoma. I think it was about then I decided I needed to challenge myself with something new. I guess that’s not completely true though, because looking back at my messages it was actually September 16, when the idea of doing a skydive was first muted. I didn’t really take the offer seriously at the time and quickly forgot about it. Every so often the conversation would start agai ..read more

“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place”                                                                          &nbs ..read more