Walking through fire

 So... this week has mostly been about waiting. ... When I last posted, I was in self-isolation, waiting for a gastroscopic ultrasound, which was due to take place on Monday afternoon. Mid-Monday morning, we got a phone call from Alex, the wonderful Macmillan nurse, to let me know that they'd decided to cancel the procedure. After a weekend holed upstairs away from the family, with no hugs and minimal conversations, all at a distance, it was a tough one. She explained that the MRI scan results on my liver were still a bit inconclusive - in other words, they still weren't sure if the liver lesion was a secondary (= bad news) or not. So they wanted to send the images down to the specialists in Southampton to look at before proceeding. Precautionary principle, makes sense to me. And at least I could get downstairs, have lunch with my husband and hugs all round when the boys got back from school and college.  Next date in the calendar, Alex told us, would be Wednesday, when they w...

So my first post was rather starkly titled 'I have cancer' - because that is the reality I've been trying to get my head around for the last few days. But I thought in this second blog I'd try to explain why I've decided to write a blog and what kind of things I'm hoping to write about. I also want to give a quick update on what's been happening. The first thing to say is that writing and communicating generally is part of what I do for a living. I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about what words to use to engage people with issues like global poverty and international trade and climate change. So I guess it's natural for me to want to write things down. And while it's occasionally OK to get a bit personal in a work blog, nobody really wants to hear about me particularly so it feels a bit of a luxury to be much more personal. A bit self indulgent maybe, but hey, I feel I can allow myself a bit of slack. I constantly nag my colleagues to be c...

Just over a week ago, I found out that I have cancer.  It still feels unreal.  Bizarrely, I'm a very healthy person. I don't think I've had more than a couple of days off work for illness in the last ten years. I rarely get colds, I can't remember the last time I had flu, I've yet to break a bone. The only time I've stayed overnight in hospital was after having a baby. I'm sure every cancer diagnosis feels unreal. Maybe in a bit, I'll start asking: 'Why me?'. Right now, I'm still just thinking: 'Really? REALLY?!' It's a weird and completely unexpected feeling.  I have to keep going back to my memory of the meeting with the consultant. Keep remembering the image of the scan they showed us. The little patch of differently textured tissue in my pancreas, the other one in my liver. But when I reflect on it, I also know that my body has been telling me that things aren't right.  The first time I remember feeling pain was soon after...