Every morning since my surgery except the first when a very young sweet nurse, a baby really, gave me a bed bath I have washed myself in front of this bathroom mirror. The first time was a bit of a shock, a single breast, mastectomy scar and skin lesions, nothing new there, but then there are the angry red blotches from the heart monitor stickers, that I am so desperately allergic to. The swollen abdomen, a wad of dressing covering the wound where they cut…Continue Reading “Heart “

  Just like that the lights gone out, the spark has gone. That spark that sustained me through invasive ductal carcinoma, bone and hepatic metastases. The spark that kept me joking through mastectomy and joyous despite right pleural effusion. Now there is just a tiredness, an apathy infiltrated by deep saddness, occassional anger and sickening self-pity. And she’s not surprised by significant progression of bone metastases to the thoracic, lumbar and sacral spine. It has been three years after all, aren’t I lucky, she thinks…Continue Reading “Spark”

1.If you ask for help you will most likely get it. People can be very kind and generous if you ask. 2.When you are brave and open hearted amazing things can  happen and incredible people can walk into your life. 3.We all have an energy/a vibration that attracts similar souls. 4.You don’t have to know people very long for them to become part of your tribe. 5.I am truly blessed, I have incredible friends and now finally accept that this is a reflection of me….Continue Reading “What Barcelona has thought me”

And who am I without you, would I even know.You found the crack in my walls,you saw the light, picked away at the plaster and allowed my heart to show. Somehow you always saw it, always knew it was there. Through paranoia and drama, madness and mania, still you stood beside me, called me friend and continued to care. Even when I treated you mean and pushed you away.When I was irrational and impossible, depressed and unlovable, you held tight and decided to stay. And…Continue Reading “Friends”

I’m sitting here in my sexy green (much more preferable than white) support stockings and a very well-worn hospital gown. I have completed the ensemble with a large fluffy oversized if a little short dressing gown. I am relaxed and slightly sleepy, but fine. My friend has left to go to work and I am alone, but that’s okay. I know I am loved and I am happy for the peace and quiet. Today I lose my right breast. To be honest it barely resembles…Continue Reading “Leave me Breastless (January 2015)”

So I had wanted a child, to be a mother, I’d be a make and do mother, a baking mother, a singing mother, an honest and open mother, a firm but gentle mother a batty and embarrassing mother and the best mother I could be. I left it almost too late but it was still possible until cancer came and danced all over that dream. So I put it to bed and got on with the task at hand, staying alive! I live alone and…Continue Reading “Dog Days”

Christmas in Norway A  Christmas cliche maybe, but my christmas ideal, wrapped around me like a cosy blanket. They are not mine and if I wasn’t here I wouldn’t be missed, but how wonderful to know that this exists. The huge rambling, shabby chic wooden house overflowing with well loved antiques and the laughter and conversation of woolly socked extended family. Mellow nooks and huge fires, festive tunes played on the piano, glasses of port and beer chilled in the drifts, mountains of food laid…Continue Reading “HYGGE”

There is a place you go when you get this kind of news, a place where time stands still and you exist in a kind of hazy bubble, a surreal underworld. You shut out everything and indulge yourself, you wallow in your selfishness. It is actually quite a pleasant place to be despite having to pass through hell to get there. You do everything to push it down to distract yourself, eventually you pull it back and toy with it, you try it out for…Continue Reading “That place”