Once again another high profile case is in the news in the UK as a family navigates the court appeal system in a bid to prevent clinicians caring for their child from ending life supporting treatment. Archie Battersbee, a beautiful 12 year old boy with a mop of blonde hair has been in a coma and ventilated since suffering a catastrophic brain injury in April.  His mother believes he was taking part in an online challenge.  He has never regained consciousness and doctors treating him have said they believe it is "highly likely" he is brain-stem dead and argue it i ..read more

It's Daisy's birthday today.  She would have been 17, she will be forever 12.  Next year it will be five long years since I kissed her goodbye.  This time of year is always tough.  Remembering her birthday, the moment my life, our family's lives, changed forever. This year is extra hard however.  I have Covid.  Despite a booster vaccine in October I still succumbed and it knocked me off my feet.  I have to self-isolate until the 28th.  Like many people all over the world, Christmas is going to be a tough one.  For me however, the timing could not ha ..read more

 Gosh, has it really been four months since I have updated this blog? Like all of us, it's feel like time has gone really quickly, but at the same time, it's plodded along slowly. We're in lockdown 3 or whatever the official term is in the UK; the PM made an official announcement at the beginning of the week outlining the next steps to eventually take us out of lockdown.  I don't watch the official announcements; all I care about is ensuring people are vaccinated. I know the impact of lockdown; I've seen and experienced it first hand, but I also don't want to rush out of it. My two c ..read more

  When I turned 50 I felt it was a new beginning, a time to look forward, to embrace my new life. I was back at work, dipping my toe in online dating and busy with multiple writing and speaking engagements. I was creating a new life, meeting new friends, carving out a new path....but things didn't feel right. It took me to the point where I was at burnout to realise that in order to face and embrace the future I had to take care of the past. I had spent many years caring, worrying about others, dealing with the multitude of curveballs, and challenges that life had put my way that I had l ..read more

I just can't help thinking, if Daisy was still alive, what would it be like? How would we have coped - she would have been one of the so-called "shielded ones", those who received a letter at the beginning of lockdown  telling them to stay at home for twelve weeks and not venture outside. Her school is closed. She barely went to school in her final year anyway, there were so many problems trying to get nurses able to be with her in school and I was concerned for her safety.  So I guess I would have been attempting to home school her.  She would have been missing her friends ..read more

Photo credit: George Arthur Plueger @Unsplash I was struck by the comments of two friends this week on social media which did more than anything to help me understand the true plight of the staff who are caring for people in residential homes during this pandemic. One friend is a doctor in Scotland, she often has to make visits to care homes, it's part of the normal workload of a busy GP .  She told me that while staff nursing Covid patients in an ITU are in the front line, the viral load when someone is dying is high, wherever your care facility is.  And as we know, now t ..read more

I remember the weeks after Daisy's birth, when she was in the neonatal unit, and the hours turned to days, the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned into months....two long months. I remember feeling numb and scared and confused at first and then, I settled into a routine, I went with the flow. It was December when Daisy was born, just three days before Christmas.  The lights and decorations were up, the weather was dark and stormy and the big tree outside the neonatal unit was bare of leaves. By the time she was discharged, two months later, the evenings were slowly getting lighte ..read more

It would not be an understatement to say that this time, this strange dystopian time of lockdown and social distancing, has been really tough for me. Having cared for a  child who was frequently immunosuppressed for twelve years,  the concept of social isolation is not a new one.  In fact for all of my friends who care for children with complex needs this is not a new situation. Having to stay at home to avoid infection, practicing aseptic non touch technique, meticulously washing hands, keeping germ free....this was our life for so many years.  Staring at the four magnoli ..read more

I'm going to share some of the faces behind the fight.The people who are working to keep us safe, to counter the threat of Covid19.  I keep thinking about all of my lovely friends in the NHS, London Ambulance and emergency services  People who kept Daisy, and Andy, safe and well.  I feel so helpless....I want to be able to help, so I'm using my platform to share some of the faces behind the fight, people I know who are working to help us during this unprecedented time. Say hello to my friend Lisa.  We were at boarding school together. She's a doctor, an out of hours GP ..read more

I was in Dublin last week for a little mini break and I did what every visitor to Dublin does, I went to the Guinness Brewery and took a tour. While I was there I watched a presentation about the Guinness Family, and about Arthur Guinness, and his wife Olivia.  They had  21 children, only 10 of them survived to maturity. OK, so that's a lot of kids, but the statistics were still the same, without antibiotics, without immunisations, children died, babies died.  Death was all around; you just need to visit a cemetery to gain some perspective, you can spot the graves of the people ..read more