Do you have no shame Val?

Just had an audio card from Macmillan through the post with Val asking for a gift in my Will. You know what Val, I might actually have considered it if I thought for one minute that you would use it to help people, like my mum, rather than just using the donation money to get your teams of bods (with huge fat salaries taken from said donation money!!!) together, to creatively look for new fandangled ways to get people to give more money.

Yes Christmas is upon us and we will once again have images strewn across our TV of people falling in corridors, well that was my mum last year Val and you didn't even have the decency to return one of her numerous, numerous calls. I remember chatting to her as we sat watching your adverts wanting to cry, she said your marketing guru's had captured exactly what it feels like to find out!.... So thanks Val but no thanks. I would like you to actually use the donation money to help people and not waste it on your fat cats with their clever marketing skills or by sticking audio cards or free pens into envelopes, to help us to fill in the direct debit forms.

I will be giving my money to local hospices whom I know work from donations and have witnessed the difference they make to people's lives on numerous occasions. I am sure I will have upset people by this and for that I am truly sorry, but the free audio card they enclosed with their request 'A GIFT FOR THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE' was the straw that broke me....... still raw

AND THEN THERE WAS.... ME!

Time to pick up where I left off on the blogging front, I figured months ago that it would be wise to make a start again to get it all out of me and onto paper, before I lost my marbles, but these last few months have been truly awful so I waited until things got just decidedly a bit more wobbly and here I am...Well life has been extremely bad, my mum passed away after finding out nine months ago that she had Lung Cancer (just linked the whole nine month thing… genius I know?!?)  I did the only thing that you can do in such a situation and walked away from my job and much to my mum’s annoyance, back through her front door to provide whatever help I could.  For what it was worth and whatever good it did, I really have no idea.  None I guess, I suppose it was quite selfish really, I needed to believe I was doing everything I possibly could for my mum.

I only hope our time reflecting on the good old days, reading until the early hours, trying new foods, meditating, deeksha , listening to music, learning Chi Kung, our hilarious attempts at Tai Chi and cramming in every memory  we possibly could in what little time we had, made it a little bit easier for her, I really do, but I don’t really know if making it easier was even possible, but I tried?  Listening to the numerous people telling me so often what a wonderful daughter I was, wasn’t necessary, if anything it always made me feel bad I guess with the underlying realisation that the memories were actually for me.

Being with mum just seemed the right thing to do, it is what she would have done for me, what was the point in staying in a job which made me miserable every day, through what could potentially be, well you know where I am going with that particular line of thought.  The only thing I will say is at no point did I really believe in my heart of hearts, that I would ever truly find myself in this situation, without my mum.   In truth I still find it hard to believe she isn’t here and I keep expecting her to call or walk through my door at every given moment.

Anyway the last nine months have been a ridiculously hard time for my mum, she struggled tremendously through various treatments, all of which she didn’t want, she just felt she had to have otherwise people wouldn’t think she was doing everything she could to live.  Not trying hard enough?  We sat on countless nights until 2am/3am sometimes into the daylight, scouring the internet for survivor stories for lung cancer just so she could get some sleep.  Survivor stories of which there are very, very few.  On the rare occasion when we stumbled upon one, mum would always point out to me that they are all in America… and you don’t stand a chance, the only smallest fraction, or glimpse of a chance you might have is if you are in the US and even then they are extremely rare and she always said ‘unless you had breast or prostrate, where all the charity money and attention seems to be focused, then you don’t really stand much of a chance’.  I always tried to reassure her she would be the one, the one good luck story and that it would all be okay but then I still couldn’t allow myself to believe that she actually had cancer.  We would be up reading until the early hours so she would be so exhausted sleep was her only option.

In reality, it was the barbaric treatment which killed her, it is every kind of wrong and I don’t think, sorry, I know people have no real idea of what ‘Chemotherapy’ and ‘Radiotherapy’, words which seem to roll so easily off the tongue, really entail.  You think ‘only chance of life’ I think - Barbaric, the equivalent of Electric Shock Treatment or Blood Letting back in the day.  In 5 years, Doctors will be saying ‘I can’t believe we actually used to do that to people’.  I was going to say 20 years but I think/seriously hope medical advancement is quicker than that and more people don’t have to suffer at the hands of these lunatics!  With my mum on the frontline I saw her become a statistic, the minute she was told she had cancer she was no longer a person of passion, of integrity, with pride and beauty... they stripped everything from her and she had been stuck in a queue of ‘Yes, that particular treatment was effective in this instance’ and ‘dead’.  It really is that simple, that is the truth, the truth that people don’t see and all of the adverts of people falling over in corridors is all part of the money making cancer industry.  I will say that whilst watching this particular advert, which is always aired at Christmastime, the best time to make the biggest impact and tug at the heart strings, get us all dipping in our pockets to give, give, give…. I was sat there with my mum whose turmoil was unbearable and she was still waiting for Macmillan to return her numerous phone calls, for this so called support.  Returned phone calls which never did come, she too fell in the corridor when the doctor first told her the news, it was all very raw for mum. 

  
Spend a day in a cancer hospital and watch the industrious Cancer wheel go round.  I have spent the last nine months of my life and my mum has spent the ‘last’ nine months of her life there.  Nine months which could have been spent touching up on our Tai Chi and laughing at how poor we both were, walking Barney, travelling, listening to music, listening to the waves, people watching, meditating, singing and again laughing, just belly laughing at everything…. Watching the world pass us by, not sat for hours upon hours, wasting what time she had left in a Cancer hospital waiting for her to be poisoned and burnt, spending the last two months of her life unable to swallow because her insides were raw, scared that she would starve to death because she was too afraid to eat.  Watching my mum who I have admired and adored my entire life waste down to five and a half stone and cry because every time she saw her reflection in a mirror all she could think of was concentration camps.  I would say it truly is the most horrific thing I have ever seen, which broke my heart daily, but sadly that is not true, that would come later and that I will not share with anyone because I am not ready.    

To think the day before she found out, you never in a million years would have thought she had lung, or any form of cancer.  She walked everywhere with Barney, was very active and working as a support worker helping people overcome their addictions a job she was very passionate about. Helping people was always mums passion, only a week before she died she was talking of her return to work.  From the day of the diagnosis, even if she hadn’t have had the treatment which eventually killed her, the stress and pressure of the news itself would have killed her because from the day she told me, behind all of the talk of treatment and fighting as hard as she could, I could see behind her eyes, all real hope had gone, she never honestly believed she had a chance, she hoped but she never really believed... 

One of my friends said that they believe once someone hears they have cancer, all hope is lost, I believe this whole heartedly now.  The really sad thing is, once you hear those dreaded words the only thing you do have left is hope, the same hope which the nameless, faceless; Oncologists, Doctors, Nurses and Consultants, so many Consultants, beat out of you each visit.  I used to lift her up and then they would break her down and I would have to start all over again and I now find myself completely lost without my mum, my world, my best friend….

All of the reading did lead to the truth though, the truth that it was too late for mum which scared the life out of her.  In truth the GMO food we are blindly fed (the option of organic has been priced off the supermarket shelves), the ‘alzhiemers causing’ fluoride in the water we drink, the toxins in the air we breathe, the chemicals in the cosmetics we smear onto our skin, the toxins in the plastics that people microwave their ready-made GMO  meals and your Chinese takeaway is delivered in are all the contributing factors to the multi million pound industry that is Cancer and if you scratch beneath the surface it is widely known and publicised that all of these things and more are causes of Cancer and yet nothing is being removed from the supermarket shelves, in fact in a recent visit to the US one large supermarket didn’t even have the option of fruit or vegetables never mind Organic produce?

It is also known that cancer loves sugar and it thrives where sugar is present, this fact is alarming when to detect if you actually have cancer in your body they inject you with sugar?  Again, we are just statistics in our data hungry, consumer driven, corrupt world.  Please do something with this, I am just numb….

I have the memory of an elephant so please stop lying to my face...

I have lost track at the amount of people who have lied to me today which makes me curious, at what point did blatantly lying to someone's face become okay?  I clearly must have missed it... Oh well, note to self, time to go against my own values and join in with all this lying.

p.s. Just because you said it, doesn't make it so... I remember the last conversation we had and that was somewhat different.

p.p.s I really need to stop offloading in my blog

Awkward

That awkward moment when just after losing your job your idiot boyfriend thinks calling you lazy is a good idea...time for a rethink!

That is all...

Lightbulb moment

That awkward moment when you realise the difference between pity and love and that never the twain should meet... that is all!

Passed at last!

Insomnia has struck again for the first time in a while so I thought I'd pop online for a little update...

Yay, passed my test on Georgies birthday 19/1.  Thomas told me the morning of the 27/12 (which was my wedding anniversary, also the forth time I failed), 'You will pass next time Mum', and he was right (it would seem that the 27/12 is my personal Friday the 13th and I shouldn't set out to succeed at anything on that particular day!).  When I picked them up from school and told them both the first thing he said was 'I told you so', I have never seen him so positive about anything in his life it was bizarre. 

A lot had to be said for meditation too as I am pretty sure that is what got me through.  I was told by a friend to take some beta-blockers but figured driving drug induced would probably not be the best way to tackle anything, especially those miserable instructors.  I was also pretty worried that they would become a  driving tool like glasses and I would have to result in pill popping every time I get into the car, which obviously isn't the best idea ever so drug taking was out but the meditation has stuck.

I should have started the meditation years ago it is great I am so much more patient and calmer.  I am not going to start ranting about meditating but if you do need some peace in your life, it is definately worth a look!

Anyway the driving lark has only taken me 20 years but I got there in the end... although I did think thought the instructor was only joking when she had said I had passed. 

I have a car now which also feels really good, (its not the first one I have ever had but the less said about that the better!)  I keep looking out of the window to check because I can't quite believe its mine.    

On another note South Africa and the Safari has been booked for the 1st of April so I will keep you posted when I have all the holiday pictures!

Take 2

Well managed to sign off and catch a few z’s before everyone was up, I say catch a few z’s more put the cover over my head and hope for the best.  I think I may have drifted off into some dream world or other for a moment but then my waking thoughts are equally as bizarre sometimes I couldn't really tell the difference.

The giving up smoking is going well, six months in now and only a few little blips, although I don’t really putting on weight that generally goes with it and so I am trying to diet for the first time in my whole life. 

I have borrowed some of my friend’s books and have put us all on a diet, which unfortunately for me seems to be working a lot better for everyone else (which is really pissing me off because s I am the one doing all of the cooking).  I also have to remind myself to have breakfast and dinner each day as my usual poison is just lots of strong coffee.  I have also discovered cooked breakfasts are a complete waste of time because by the time I have chopped and trimmed the fat of everything it is time for dinner.  All of the eating involved on this diet is really tiring me out!

I also started my driving lessons ‘again’ recently and passed my theory test, ‘again!’.   I can't believe how different the theory test was to when I first passed.  I hope that I can finally pull my finger out and be driving by Christmas because I really need some freedom and to see my friends again.  I really hate the way Facebook waters down all your friendships and turns them into annual birthday message’s, lol’s, likes and pokes.

 

and then some but I can't really share so...