Last week I said goodbye to Beryl, a lady I had become very fond of. Sometimes when you are surrounded by the possibility of death it’s hard to see that for the person who has passed it might be the right thing at the right time! I felt bereft because Beryl has been a constant at the hospice since I first started coming here and I loved to listen to her reminiscences. She was a wonderful lady and we all miss her. Attending her funeral gave me a chance to say goodbye but it also bought back the realisation that my mortality is very fragile and I hate it when I have to think about dying. I call these days black days and I am trying to find a way of dealing with them but my efforts don’t always work and I have to just get through as best I can.

It’s a weird thing knowing that you have an incurable disease. Some days you feel ‘normal’ and it’s hard to think your life could end sooner than you want it to. These are the days you make all your plans for the future and sincerely believe that you will achieve all of them. At the moment that is where I’m at. All my symptoms are under control and I feel ‘normal’ and am making plans for holidays next year and for visits to see my grandchildren in between the ups and downs of my chemo cycles.

Start

I was first told that I had cancer in May 2007. The manner in which the news was delivered to me was poor in the extreme and left me feeling that death was imminent. One of the younger doctors in the Consultants’ entourage must have seen the sheer shock on my face and when their ward round was over she returned to my bedside and gave me more information. By the time I left the ward I knew that I was not about to die but I was still devastated. How was I supposed to tell my family?

After five months of being housebound due to the amount of fluid I was carrying in my abdomen (a symptom of my disease) I was given a McMillan nurse who arranged a place for me at the hospice. It was like being given a lifeline because I had become lonely and isolated at home. My family were all at work in the day and although they kept in touch regularly by telephone it was not the same as having personal contact with another human being and being left alone with nothing but my thoughts made me spend far too much time dwelling on the fact that I had cancer.

At the hospice I feel ‘normal’ because everyone else is the same as me. Outside I do not feel normal! One of the last things I think about when I am at the hospice is that I have cancer – I know that must seem strange but the hospice is a happy place and we talk about normal everyday stuff for most of the time. We laugh and chatter about everything like any group of women would. Often griping about the politicians and the state of the country and what we would do about things given half the chance!