I was originally going to write this as an open to letter to a couple of Neighbours Actors. Neighbours are running a Cancer storyline right now, the second time in my memory that they've gone full blown "You've got Cancer" to a character. Currently it's with a character called Terese who just last year lost her son to the Lassiters explosion, lost her husband to his first love and one of her two daughters to London. She's now living with her Daughter. Piper, Piper's boyfriend Tyler and Paige her ex-husband's daughter that he didn't know about. It's a long story and if I try to explain it I won't get to what I want to say. So anyway.
My Mum, my beautiful Mumsy who is thirty years older than me is being eaten away by the worst of all the diseases. The disease that killed my Dad, two months before my wedding. The disease that has already tried to take her down once before, striking her in the ovaries which she only kept after her hysterectomy so she didn't hit the menopause too early. This time it's hit her in the bowel and I am terrified. This is where my Dad had it and disintegration wouldn't be too strong a word for what happened to him. Sorry to any family that are reading this, to bring this all back again but I need to write this. This is the only way I know say how I'm feeling right now.
I am not ready to say goodbye to my Mum, and the good news is that I don't think I'll have to. Because she had that first bout of Cancer she had regular checks in case it came back. My Dad was not so lucky, they found it too late. He'd been taking care of an Aunt of his, as usual looking after others before himself. He'd told me prior to his diagnosis that he'd been feeling ill, that driving was uncomfortable, that he was having to stop more often than not on his long drives up to Scotland. When he rang me and told me he had Cancer I knew that it was terminal and the only thing I could do was be with him as much as I could. He never sugar coated things, I knew he thought he was going to die and wanted to prepare me for it. I went and watched him marry his partner of many years and he looked so happy.
So I'm sitting here, getting slowly drunk on a Monday night (for once being unemployed is paying off) because my Mumsy had surgery earlier, apparently to check to see how effective the radiation they've been pumping into her has been, and now she's in intensive care. This was unexpected. When I saw her yesterday she was just the same as normal, making jokes, telling me news about her friends and how surprised she was at the end of the most recent Linwood Barclay. And now, I'm going to see her tomorrow and I've no idea what I'm going to find.
So Mav, Rebekah, Carla, do the storyline justice please, I'll be looking to you to support me through this, to remind me that plenty of people survive, that all we can do it carry on along the journey that is life. That love never disappears whilst you hold it in your heart no matter what.