Sunday, 28th May 2006
'Frostbitten Leaves'

The final session of chemotherapy looms over me like a dark cloud. Fortunately the days pass leaving me with little time to dwell on how my body might respond to the final dose of unpleasant chemicals that await me on 30th May 2006. I have been going into work a few days each month (with medical consent and agreement from my employer) to stay in touch - people in the office have been so supportive - and also offer some management continuity on Voca's corporate responsibility programme. One of our projects has been kitting out the newly-built adolescents' room situated within the children's ward at Watford General Hospital and there are numerous community projects which we are supporting through a combination of staff volunteering or sponsored runs of one sort or another. I have been doing some volunteering too at our children's school helping out with fund-raising to develop the school grounds. Together with a handful of other parents I created a newsletter for parents and staff at the school to keep them informed of fund-raising events. The first issue went out on Thursday 25th May and it seems to have been welcomed by parents which was a pleasing way to end the week. For me at least, creating activities that channel my thoughts in a positive way has helped me cope with this most testing phase of my treatment and I would advise anyone else who is going through treatment like this to look at some sort of constructive activity to focus the mind. But there are hundreds of chemotherapy combinations and in the end people do what works best to get themselves through this rather sticky patch.

On a personal level I remain relatively well although my eyebrows and eyelashes began to fall out about a month ago and the penultimate chemotherapy session on 9th May made matters worse. I suppose my change in appearance has been gradual but when I caught sight of myself in the mirror yesterday I was shocked: I saw an alien form. Apart from looking tired, I also looked ill. And yet, the irony of it all was that the drugs have been wiping out any cancerous cells that might have been floating about in my body, so I was simply suffering from the after-effects of the drugs and not from being ill as such. This is an important distinction and while it may be evident to onlookers it is not always evident to the person at the receiving end of the treatment. I stuck my tongue out at my own reflection, it smiled back at me. Suddenly the face looked less scary and more familiar. I knew this was a transitory phase in my life, one admittedly I could have done without, but one that would pass by. However this physical alteration and the tiredness which has at times overwhelmed me during the past 10 days has made me feel less inclined to venture out and I have focused on what I see as my primary task: keeping the children watered, fed and clean. They don't properly understand what I am going through of course and in a way I am glad however at times my patience has been has worn a little thin when they quite naturally are less than co-operative. And that's when I have wished they understood a little bit more. After breakfast, and before we dash out to get to school on time, the main objective is to get them both dressed. Simple enough. Admittedly Benjamin still needs a bit of help, especially if he is to leave the house with his trousers the right way round. Joshua by contrast is very self-sufficient, once he gets going, except that it's the devil's own job to get him to that point. Despite several repeats of the command "GET DRESSED" he is quite happy to look out of his bedroom window and day-dream. So after a lot of shouting from the bottom of the stairs he finally emerges fully dressed,but by that stage, my nerves are in tatters. That's parenthood for you I guess.

In the meantime, I continue to be reminded of how fortunate I am to have such a caring circle of people around me. Firstly Bryan, my parents, my sister and in-laws continue to help out with washing, childcare, cooking and other domestic chores. Debbie recently provided another meal-on-wheels service driving all the way across London to deliver cooked meals. Somehow she manages to weave this in between her job as a designer and design lecturer. This meant that Bryan and I did not have to worry about cooking for a while. She continues to amaze me. Another friend, Shirley, appeared on the doorstep the other day with several bags of supermarket shopping and, a few days later, insisted on taking me to a garden centre for tea one morning. Then there's Myra, she of the lovely hair, who booked an aromatherapy massage for me followed by a lunch at a very good sea-food restaurant near where she lives as an 'early Birthday present'. And if all that wasn't enough to cheer anyone up, I became the proud owner of a digital camera thanks to my friend Suzanne.

Despite busy days looking after her young boys, husband and house Suzanne managed to find time to enter a local amateur photography competition. Suzanne has always been able to take good photographs and I have often thought how professional they looked. So it came as no surprise when, undeterred by the complications of the school run, getting food organised and sorting out laundry, she set out to explore an area of outstanding natural beauty near where they live to see what she could find that might merit an entry into the competition. In the end she took lots of pictures that wintry morning including several which simply featured woodland leaves. She decided to enter one of her pictures which she simply entitled 'Frostbitten Leaves' into the Winter category of the competition. This was the first time Suzanne had entered a photographic competition, so, several months later, in the Spring, she was completely surprised to be informed by the organisers she had won the Chiltern Woods in the Winter category. I later found out there were other categories including Woodland Feature and Woods in the Autumn. I asked Suzanne if I could go to the presentation ceremony which took place last month as I wanted to be there to show my support. It was all pretty exciting. 'Mum of two wins photographic competition' would have been my headline in the local newspaper. The award ceremony was to be held at the Ashridge Estate Visitor Centre
www.nationaltrust.org.uk.

So one Sunday after lunch we set off in two cars with what seemed like loads of kids (to be fair, I think we only had four), Suzanne's husband Chris and a visiting Aunt to the award ceremony. We made it just in time. Unbeknown to any of us the judges also had a prize for the best overall photograph shortlisted from the 155 entries they received. When I saw Suzanne's picture of the leaves I could see why it had won the Winter category. The detail on the frost around the leaves and the way the light was shining that day created an amazing impact and Suzanne had been clever enough to spot this and take a winning shot. The category winners came up to receive their awards and when the overall winner was announced it came as no surprise to me at least to hear Suzanne's name being called out for the second time. Her picture was the overall competition winner and she looked absolutely delighted as well as surprised when she went up to collect her prize of a digital camera and an enlarged framed picture of her 'Frostbitten Leaves'. It was a great day and all the winning photographs are featured in, 'Chalk and Trees', Spring/Summer 2006 newsletter of the Chilterns conservation board.

A few weeks later Suzanne and her children came for tea. She turned up with the digital camera and handed it to me saying she wanted me to have it 'for all sorts of reasons'. Under any other circumstances I might have tried to talk her out of giving this to me, after all it was her prize, but I was very moved and accepted her kind gift. I will always think of it as Suzanne's camera and the pictures that follow are both taken with the new digital camera. Unfortunately a combination of rainy days and other activities have prevented me from putting it to good use. However the arrival of the new garden shed and the playhouse have changed all that.