The Trick Is To Keep Breathing
To Zeeland and a hospital visit with my Mum. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, with secondary tumours in the liver. So far she's on hormone treatment therapy and is doing fine all things considered but today we got to hear that the tumours in the liver had grown slightly - about 3mm - and that a new small one has popped up alongside the other two.
She's getting a new medicine, Palbociclib, that has some side effects that we need to be aware of. Tomorrow another meeting with the assistant to the oncologist to hear exactly what those side effects are, and how to deal with them. I'll stick around until tomorrow and go with her to that meeting and then return home. Reading the side-effects it may well be a difficult few weeks coming up.
She's in good form besides. I guess when you're 85 a cancer diagnosis doesn't hit home as hard as when you're 15 or 45, but then again, a cancer diagnosis is never a good thing regardless of age. So, she's taking it well, all things considered. Not sure if I'd take it well if I had a cancer diagnosis. She's still doing her Wordle every day, and her knitting. She has good support from the neighbours which is a good thing considering I live two hours away, my brother over an hour. She's not alone, which helps. She's getting on with getting on. Like she says herself, what else can you do.
Reminds me of one of my favourite books - the trick is to keep breathing.
Here are some photos of Zeeland I took a while ago. I normally take my camera everywhere but didn't bother this time as I thought I'd only be here a day.
Podcasts I Listened To The Rest Is History - Britain in 1974 - Listened to this on the way down to Zeeland and will listen to the rest on the way back home tonight. I'm a big fan of Dominic Sandbrook, as well as this podcast.