Part One.

So I guess this is where I tell you how it starts? I’d be telling fibs if I could remember exact dates, but throughout a lot of this year Mams health had started to become problematic for her.

Things she had always taken for granted had become increasingly difficult, walking the dog , bending over too pick something up, lifting driving you name it.. combining this with the fact that her memory had started to become a little more clouded day to day I became more and more concerned. I suppose we all kind of shrugged it off as back ache & well ..age.

One really stand out moment for me was my sister Francesca’s engagement weekend in London, back in June.

Mam, Dad & I checked into our hotel room & the Saturday morning we were due to go into Windsor for the day. Mam had only walked from the bathroom to the bed & she yelped suddenly in pain & was really uncomfortable all weekend afterward. In fact she limped around Windsor & powered through a 6am Bender that evening whilst we all celebrated as a family but little did we know what it would actually lead too. I’m grateful now that we got that weekend together .. it was our first & last happy carefree weekend as a family of 5.

To go into minor details, that same area of pain in her leg, turned out to be one of the many places she would later have a diagnosis for metastatic bone cancer. Is there any wonder now why she was struggling to walk & do general daily tasks? I can’t begin to imagine her pain.

For months later my concerns became increasingly more & I would often get home from work to mam face down on the sofa or in bed, exhausted & in pain. She would openly say I spent hours , working from home counselling her to go to the doctor or just getting her to open up to me about how she was feeling and I know how hard that must’ve been for her. As we all count on our mams to support us, not usually the other way round.

Its just a real shame that it would take months for her diagnosis that would prove to be to late. .

Actually it’s a real shame that we had to beg borrow and basically steal for a true diagnosis. Unfortunately “due to covid” a lucid excuse I feel has been shamefully used to many times in the last 2 years .. my mam was unable to see her doctor face to face.

Her initial diagnosis was sciatica and anxiety & depression, she was told to seek help from a physio and a chiropractor, of which she did. What we know now is that this treatment could have been fatal, infact it could have left mam paralysed due to the sheer mass of tumours she has but that’s a story for another time.

Frustratingly time & time again mam was denied by her GP for scans. She had expressed concerns & truly she had a gut feeling that the big C had returned to her body for the second time, ironically in may I retweeted a post regarding misdiagnosis & knowing your own body. I really had no idea how significant that would relate to me just months later. After receiving rejection from private health care for an MRI due to mam not having a referral from her GP, we were left clutching at straws. Dad, had to call in mates rates from a neighbour who practically took one look at mam & sent her for a CT scan.

I remember this day vividly, my parents had been at the caravan for a week as this is where they’d been spending more time since they had the keys in April, Mam was more relaxed there , the caravan is flat and less steps for her to walk up & down , I guess you could call it her serenity.

They dropped off Max (the dog , also known as Chilo to mam) & they planned to pick him back up in the afternoon to go back to the caravan, she kissed me bye & then left in a hurry.

Looking back at that day now, I wish id kissed her more and held her tighter as Mam never came home the same person as the person she left & it would’ve been just under two weeks until I got to see her again.

That same day she got admitted to hospital straight from the scan, she had nothing with her just the clothes she had on & a handbag.

Taking the call from my dad about mam staying in felt surreal , he seemed calm but off. . & he asked me to get some of mams things together & pack a case for a few days & mentioned that mam was due to be on steroids, that they’d found some “shadows“ on mams scans & routinely they were keeping her in for some medication but he said everything was in hand & she would be ok.

Although the Alarm bells rang in my head , I proceed to go for a walk down the park with Max, Molly , Poppy, Hannah & Will and I remember saying to them I’m not sure but something doesn’t feel right ..

From previous experiences of mam on steroid treatment from her first cancer diagnosis11 years ago I guess I listened to dad and thought whatever it is she will be fine, I wanted it to be true of course I wanted her to be ok. I was going on holiday For my best friends wedding in two days, & by the time I got back of course mam would’ve been on the road to recovery & be getting better by then surely?! Oh how wrong was I? This was only the beginning …