After flirting with my old friend Neutropenic Sepsis over New Year’s, and being so close to having to go into A&E, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be so lucky the next cycle. The trauma of my previous incarceration still feeling too raw, too fresh, to even consider the possibility for a moment. But as my parents and I filed in to my Oncologist’s clinic room on Monday, 8th January, ready for my pre-chemo chat, I had no idea that was the least of my problems… He asked me how I was, how I had been. I told him about my nearly-temperature, how I’d been struggling a bit with the exhaustion, my frag ..read more

I don’t know if I had a latent desire to write a novel one day. Was it something I secretly wished for but never thought I could actually do? I placed in, and  even won, some poetry and short story competitions at uni. But I was studying Science. My life was taken over by field research and a 50,000 word thesis on the role of ants in ecosystem regeneration in an Endangered Ecological Community that was being practically decimated thanks to mining. Sometimes I wonder what the fate of those ants is now… Well, the ones that survived my pitfall traps that killed them by the hundreds, that is ..read more

So, chemo. I was already one cycle down when I first set foot back in the cancer centre for my first time being a day patient. Seasoned professional turned rookie once again.  I had waved my hand around dismissively each time someone had asked how I felt about starting chemo again (for my third new regime). ‘Oh, it’ll be nothing darling. Nothing I haven’t done before, and this one will be nothing compared with the devil Cisplatin I had the first time around.’ But like it often is in this cancer-filled life I find myself in, my ‘I’m sure it’ll all be fine’ attitude turns out to not quite b ..read more

So I last left you falling asleep with Clarence and me in our own beautiful bed, after we escaped from the dreaded hospital. It was the end of November and the days were getting shorter and I was getting ready to spend my birthday, for a third time, in the midst of cancer progression and chemo. But It was a relief to be back in my little haven of a flat, and although I could no longer enjoy the beautiful views out of my windows, I could certainly appreciate the feeling of sun on my face as it streamed into my living room. My flat seems to be able to find any hints of sun that might be out ther ..read more

So in lieu of being given much of a plan, I decided to make my own. On the Thursday my parents were turning up from Australia to come stay with me and be my eyes and support. On Friday I had my next chemo, so it made sense to me to stay in hospital until then, and head off home on Friday after it finished. So I started putting it around that this was what was happening. When the nurses started saying ‘I hear you’re going home on Friday’, I knew I had succeeded. The Occupational Therapy (OT) team had kept checking in on me, the lovely Australian girl who had only been at UCLH for 3 days (well i ..read more

At some point over Monday or Tuesday, Rosa emailed my team and asked if someone was going to actually come and visit me and talk to me about what was going on. They told her they might be able to come around on Thursday. Rosa asked if I would like her there for it. And by default I said ‘no, I don’t need that, I don’t want to put you out…’ Then I came to my senses and told her I would actually really appreciate her being there. So the plan was made for her to come around in the morning before catching her train up North from Euston at around lunchtime on Thursday. Where, I ask you, would we be ..read more

I was determined to keep making my way to and from the bathroom on my own, but my level of success hinged on whether things were where I expected them to be. There were some very scary moments. The hospital is an ever-changing environment, and with no one really making note of the fact that there was a blind patient, it meant that things remained quite chaotic. For some reason, night times were the most disorientating. To be fair, that’s true of hospitals whether you’re blind or not. There was one bathroom that I knew the layout of, and could get my way around. Then one night on my way to it ..read more

Tech issues continued to plague me. My new phone came with a USB-C to USB-C charging cable but no usb-c power socket. I’d been charging it plugged straight into a powerboard I had with a usb-c direct lead out. But at hospital I would need a wall plug. I wracked my brain on the morning the world went dark for a solution. I had a powerbank with a USB-C out, so I could charge my phone from that, then charge the powerbank at the wall. But when I went to charge my phone from the powerbank when I was in A&E it said the accessory couldn’t handle the power required, so it couldn’t charge the phone ..read more

On the day the world went dark, I was comforted by the fact that I could very vaguely still make out the tattoo on my wrist that matches my parents’. By the Thursday, I no longer could. On the Friday morning, I woke up on ward T13, by the window, squinting out at the skyline I had gazed upon so many times from my hospital bed. On the horizon, I could maybe make out something that must have been the darling BT tower. By the next afternoon it had all finally left me. The world had plunged into complete and utter darkness. Whether my eye was open or closed made no difference. So, at around 11am o ..read more

The next morning I had a call scheduled with my bestie in Sydney. But at 9am, a nurse and a porter turned up to take me off to an MRI immediately. Thank goodness someone had actually ordered me one. So off we went. I managed to get through it fine. Clarence was of course right in there with me, smiling away. Then almost as soon as I was deposited back in my room, I was told they were sending me off to the Royal Free Hospital up in Hampstead, where they have an ophthalmology department. They put me in a car and somehow I ended up where I was supposed to be. I must have got there around 11 am. M ..read more