7 years ago my dearest mother was diagnosed with a rare form of eye cancer, identified originally by the optician, as mum's vision in one eye became as she described it, "like looking through frosted glass". We were told there was a one in 7 million chance of contracting this condition so it was pretty unlucky to be that 1 in 7 million!!!

 

7 years ago my dearest mother was diagnosed with a rare form of eye cancer, identified originally by the optician, as mum's vision in one eye became as she described it, "like looking through frosted glass". We were told there was a one in 7 million chance of contracting this condition so it was pretty unlucky to be that 1 in 7 million!!! I remember when we first heard about it, I wasn't too worried, but when I made a comment about Macmillan nurses getting involved with people it wasn't a good sign, Ma piped up oh I've got a Macmillan nurse, it's not necessarily a problem, brushing what I had said under the carpet, however, my feelings now are that actually I was right on the money with what I was thinking.

There were 3 places in the country with specialist eye clinic's, she could have been treated in Sheffield, Liverpool or London. Lucky for us, as I live in Sheffield, she received alot of her treatment in Sheffield, it was also convienient as mum worked in Worksop which is only about 30mins away from sheffield. I remember mum went for an operation at sheffield's Weston park hospital during the summer term of my first year of teaching when I taught in Thrybergh in Rotherham, the operation involved having her eye removed and putting a "radioactive piece of metal" about the size of a 5p on the melanoma to try to kill of the cancer, I remember ma spent the week in a leadlined room as she was "radioactive" whilst the treatment was going on. She went through the treatment and had time off work to recover and then other than going for regular scans and being injected with dyes etc, if you didn't know about ma's illness you would never have realised that she was unwell. After everything ma went through not once did I ever hear her moan about it, she was an example to us all, she just gritted her teeth and got on with it!

The next significant landmark as far as I saw it was in 2008 just around the time my nanna was really poorly, ma was unwell on and off. On the day of my nanna's funeral in October (strangely nanna and ma passed away on the same day 3 years apart - the day before nanna's birthday - 24th September 2008/11) mum was obviously in pain during my nanna's funeral - Helly described her as rocking in pain as the pressure in eye had built up to astronomical levels, once the service for nanna had finished, Jo drove mum to sheffield to the Hallamshire hospital, they had been trying and trying to save her eye, but as I recall ma was eventually admitted to the hospital that sunday and then she had her eye removed I think it was the following Thursday if my memory serves me correctly. Following this operation mum went back to Lincoln and had some follow up appointments in Lincoln to get her prothetic eye made and fitted - was like a contact lense (not like the glass eyes we have all heard about). Mum was then off work till probably at least the following January 2009.

I think mum had a reasonable spell in 2009 as I think this is when Ma and Pa went on holiday to Turkey and possibly France.

2010 proved to be the start of things to come, mum was not right over the beginning of 2010 and she went for various scans, and in true mum style never really telling us the actual results of them. However it would appear that when you have had eye cancer the next most likely organ to be affected with regards to secondary cancer is the liver due I believe to it's size and central location. In July / August time we were told Ma had "2 small lumps" in her liver and she was booked in for an operation to have them removed within a week or 2 of the results of the CTs / MRIs / scans / x rays she was having - they merge into one as she always seemed to be having one scan or another. I remember the day as it was on the first day back at school after the summer holidays in 2010.

The hope was that the operation would be able to be done via key hole surgery, which would mean a much quicker recovery time. However once in theatre, they successfully removed one of the lumps by keyhole, but were unable to find the other one - so unfortunately they had to open mum up, turned out the other lump was on the total opposite side of the liver which explained why they had struggled to find it. Mum left hospital with a proper full width "frankenstein style" war wound that was stapled together right across her midriff. As I said to mum she didn't need to worry about (not that she did) because her bikini days were behind her and she could borrow some of my bio oil that as well as being good for stretch marks is also meant to be good for scars and even if it didn't do much good it smells nice!!! Any way, when some one says "small lumps" to me I think raisin or peanut sized, to keep the food analogy these 2 lumps were apparently satsuma sized - more medium sized lumps if you ask me!!!! I was conscious that Christmas 2010 spent in sheffield (it was a nice Xmas spent together) was more than likely going to be ma's last one, sadly I proved myself right.

In January we booked to go on holiday to Devon with Ma and Pa in August - we had discussed going in May half term but because of her marking ma had opted for August, sadly however it was not to be, ma was too poorly to make the journey down to Devon in August, if only we had gone for May, ma might have made Devon and enjoyed it, we can't live our lives on what ifs though.

Following this operation I think mum went back to work in the following January, although she obviously wasn't right at this point though it seemed to take ages for the hospital to come up with a reason for her troubles / pains, I think it was about April time when mum told us the cancer had spread to her lungs, and I remember asking which part of the lungs and her saying it was kind of spotted all over her lungs, which rather filled me with dread, as there didn't appear to be any obvious treatment that looked like it might have any realistic or helpful effect, certainly not in the short term.

Ma was adamant that radio or chemotherapy was not for her and to be honest I couldn't blame her after 7 years of being pricked, poked, cut up, having dye injected into her, being made radioactive, given frankenstein style wounds, endless scans, CTs, xrays, MRIs, I think she just wanted to be left alone. To add insult to injury a month or so later she was told that not only had her cancer moved to her brain she was now no longer allowed to drive due to her condition, I think it was May June 2011 when we found this out. What was Ma's response to being told she was no longer fit to drive? being in sheffield? ring her daughter who only lives up the road to drive her home??? Oh no don't be so stupid, she said blow that I'm driving home any way!! Ma and pa got home ok, but losing her license was a realisation point for ma, knowing this meant she would now definitely be unable to go back to work, which I think had up to this point been a very welcome distraction from the inevitable

From this point on Ma was going gradually downhill, becoming more and more poorly, her last trip out was the day pa got his driving license back which was a blessed relief and I am pleased ma knew he had got his license back, I was away on a hen do the wk end of the 9th sept and ma had her syringe driver fitted at home and the district and macmillan nurses were visiting everyday, we went to visit the following week end and I stayed to help look after ma, as it was too much for any one to do one their own at that point, sadly Ma passed away about 8am on sat 24th September 2011. 

I will be running in her memory and in the hope that other people with similar illnesses to ma will benefit from Cancer research

With us every day in our thoughts and sorely missed

lots of love xxx

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