Cancerversary/Exciting news..(if you can get to the bottom)

Friday is a pretty incredible anniversary for me. It’s a day that is seared into my memory.

It was 1pm on Tuesday 12th January 2016, I’d had my gallbladder removed and was recovering well. I still had my staples in my abdomen and so I wasn’t back to driving. My friend was picking Niamh up from school for me and I was just reading a book when the house phone rang. As usual I expected my mum to be on the other end of the line. I was taken aback when the lady told me she was my surgeons secretary and he’d asked her to contact me immediately, he wanted me to go to the hospital as soon as I could. Time froze… My heart dropped and panic set in. I remember shaking, literally shaking because I knew this was not good news.

I had read everything there was to read about the procedure, I knew that every gallbladder is checked in the pathology lab and you never hear from your surgeon again unless something is wrong, I knew something was terribly wrong. I rang Andy who was working locally and I remember saying to him get home, you need to come now, Mr Abdelraziq wants to see me as soon as possible. I then rang my mum, I needed someone here for when Niamh was dropped home.

We made it to the hospital within an hour, I was still sore from the surgery, I couldn’t even wear a bra, I was in such a panic to get there I was even wearing my slippers, can you imagine that, I must’ve looked homeless, slippers, no bra and a big jumper and leggings, I don’t even think my hair had been brushed for days! But there we were, sitting anxiously in the waiting room. He left us waiting for an hour, that was shitty of him, but he eventually popped his head out of his door and invited us in.

I realise now how naive I was, he sat us down and asked how I was recovering, asked me to get on the bed so he could check my wounds, all this relaxed me, I genuinely thought to myself ‘aww how lovely to bring me in to check on my recovery…’.

I sat back down and the next words out of his mouth floored me, took my breath away, my heart felt like it stopped for a second or two..

‘We found cancer in your gallbladder, I’m confident you will be ok but I have spoken to my colleague Stephen Fenwick at Aintree hospital and he’s happy to meet you to discuss a liver resection. I’m actually seeing him tonight, I’m going to Anfield with him to watch Liverpool v Arsenal’

Now, that isn’t total verbatim but it’s as close as I recall. My verbal reaction? ”Ok, erm (welling up clutching Andy’s hand) who do you support?”. He told us Liverpool, I told him I hoped Arsenal would win as I support Man Utd and I started laughing. That was the end. Like literally, it was the end of the conversation. We managed to stumble back to the car, (in my braless and slippered state), in silence. The world crashed in on us both, the realisation hit hard, how am I going to tell the kids and my mum, what the fuck am I gonna do, I don’t even know what he was talking about, I have cancer or I had cancer, is it gone with the gallbladder or is it still in my body… Omg the questions whirling in my head, I just heard the word cancer and thought oh dear god I’m going to die, like I could die in a couple of days, I have cancer, or had it or might still have it…FUCK KNOWS!!

That was 8 years ago, a lot of things have happened obviously in those years but I guess the overriding thing has been how my adenocarcinoma which has metastasised 4 times. It hasn’t acted the way all the text books and medical journals say it should, it should have taken my life (according to the doctors) 3 months after my first diagnosis yet like my spirit it won’t be broken, it doesn’t give up, its a lazy one, it can’t be assed with the effort of running riot in my body, it doesn’t act right, it dances to its own drum and I’m more than good with that. I’m insanely lucky, I’m incredibly fortunate that I’m still around all these years later, living with, not dying from gallbladder cancer.

The timeline is insane really, I’ve had these conversations so many times, sitting down with a surgeon to tell me I have cancer seven different times is a lot to take. It never gets easier, the absolute fear and panic is exactly the same every time and do you know what? It’s not something you ever get used to and you never should I guess. I react the same, every time. I reply ok, I smile and I usually say right so is there a plan? Then I interrupt them and Andy has to tell me to stop talking. I become agitated and animated and upset. I stop listening a bit because inside my head there is so much noise, my mind is screaming oh god not again please, how am I gonna tell the kids, this isn’t happening again. But anyway this is my cancer timeline..

January 2016 I had Gallbladder cancer.

March 2016 The Gallbladder cancer had spread into the gallbladder bed.

August 2017 I had Thyroid cancer.

October 2019 The Gallbladder cancer was back in my abdomen and peritoneal cavity.

December 2019 The Gallbladder cancer was in my bowel.

January 2019 I had Ovarian cancer.

July 2022 The Gallbladder cancer was next to my urinary bladder.

I endured chemotherapy twice, 32 infusions in total and the only treatment available was GemCis which is a combination of two drugs. There have been no advances in over 10 years for treating Gallbladder cancer, which incidentally falls under the BTC (Biliary Tract Cancer) umbrella. That is until the below announcement TODAY….

nice.org.uk/guidance/TA944…

OMG THIS IS HUGE NEWS

I can’t begin to tell you or explain how excited I am, clinical trials and dedication has led to NICE now passing this drug in combination with GemCis to be given on the NHS to my fellow BTC sufferers!!!

So yeah it’s almost my cancerversary but I think I’m actually more excited about the new treatment available for me and anyone else with this fucking awful type of cancer ❤️

Colette xx

Well that was a year…

As we come closer to the end of 2023 I find myself reflecting on the past year, what a mixed bag it was too.

I’m weary in all honesty, it’s been a chaotic year of travel, don’t get me wrong I’ve enjoyed every single trip but it was like I was on a mission to fill 2023 with as much fun and adventure as I could possibly squeeze out of the year. New York, Ibiza, France, Japan, Brussels. We aren’t quite finished yet, we have one more trip as a family to Krakow and then that’s us done for a little while.

Health wise I’m in a good place, although I’m a bit surprised that my foot stomping refusal to have cancer this year worked out for me, I’m not sure if it was pure luck or total stubbornness? I don’t know the answer but I do feel that a positive attitude and a good mindset can set the tone for how we cope and deal with life. I think it’s inherent in my genes rather than a conscious decision. I wonder if there is an area of the brain that can literally boss the body into submission? Like, a bit of the brain that tells bad cells to stop being dicks and get their shit together? I know that sounds like I’m naive but it’s just a thought.

We took some hits in our family this year, it doesn’t get any easier saying goodbye to loved ones does it? But it also makes me reflect on the time we spent with those lost ones too. We had some wonderful times and we have treasured memories. Florida has a special place in our hearts and losing both my aunt and cousin within a week was incredibly difficult, another lost link in the chain.

I’ve met some truly lovely people this year, I’ve been surprised by some, disappointed in some, inspired by some but mostly I’ve had an absolute joyous 2023.

Happy Christmas and Happy New Year

Colette x

Merry-go-round..

The saying ‘swings and roundabouts’ has got me thinking of more clichéd sayings today. If you think of them in the literal sense they are quite funny, for example ‘He gives with one hand and he takes with the other’, well whoever he is, he sounds a bit of an arse to me. ‘Think outside the box’, erm what box? ‘Grab the bull by the horns’, no fear you’d catch me having a crack at that!

Life is full of cliches and today I’m all about it. We all roll them out at one time or another, to empathise, sympathise or try to motivate. My particular favourite was one my mum used to say, ‘say nothing til you hear more’, that one still makes me smile 😊

Anyway, life as they say is full of clichés and I wonder if it’s the only comfortable way we can deal with difficult situations, a coping mechanism humans dole out in times of stress?

I like a good cliché, I am literally a walking cliché, over the last 7 years or so I have spewed out so many of them I’m confident I’m the biggest cliché user that I know. It’s the first thing I do to make others feel better about my own situation. From the very get go I realised I was uncomfortable with anyone showing sympathy or empathy towards me, so I would say things like ‘tomorrow is a new day’ or ‘it is what it is’ and ‘why not me, I’m not special’. I have used so many that I reckon I can come up with one for any given situation 😀.

So today’s cliche of choice is the first cliché I mentioned, my life is all about the swings and roundabouts right now and that’s something I’m trying to accept. On one hand I’m delighted I had a clear scan again, no evidence of disease and a lovely 4 months until my next scan for the Gallbladder cancer, so that is the swing…the roundabout is nothing bad, but my Thyroid Cancer medication was changed a couple of months ago, my dosage wasn’t right and I had some tweeks done.

These tweeks had me losing weight and finally there was an explanation for the huge weight gain… 28lbs in a year and a half to be precise. Well I lost 10lbs over a month and felt I was finally on the right dosage and getting back to feeling a bit more confident. That was until I got a call last week from my cancer nurse. My latest bloods showed a significant impact on my levels of T4, they’re much too high and I had to revert back to my previous dose. Apparently having a high T4 level can have a significant impact on my heart health (for fucksake) and so the roundabout means I’ve got to accept I’m gonna be fat but I’m ALIVE.

That’s something I’m finding difficult to adjust to, weight has never been on my radar, nothing I ever concerned myself with until I realised the scales were going up and up no matter what I did it just hasn’t stopped creeping up. The experts tell me it’s a combination of my age, the hysterectomy, the medication and treatments I’ve had.

I’m going to make a concerted effort to get my mind to be kinder to my body. I always mention or point out my weight gain before anyone else can and that’s not healthy, I am hurting myself so it starts right now!

My name is Colette and I am a ginger nut

🤣

Shook…

I recently found the blog ‘Scamanda’ and I am shook to my core.. it’s the story of a woman named Amanda Riley who started to write about her experience of being diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgsons lymphoma. She claimed she was terminal and after 7 years of blogging about her journey… It was FAKE, all a lie, a story of utter bullshit. She has never had cancer, she ripped people off for financial gain and attention. She got her dream job, she started a charity… All on the back of the most heinous lies.

It got me thinking, why do people do that? How do their nearest and dearest not know or, do they know? Do they just go along with the lies? And how utterly exhausting it must be to live every day with a lie so huge, what character flaw do they have? Is it narcissism or just something as simple as greed?

Anyway, I’ve known of people in real life who have done this, claimed to have cancer, going as far as lying about what treatment they need when they don’t have cancer. I know of people who are so desperate to play the social benefits system that they research what significant affliction will get them the biggest financial gains with the least evidence required,

I know of people who diagnose themselves with so many different ailments that they actually forget what they have said, I see the lie, I hear the lie and I just wonder if a life of benefits fraud is something that they aspire to? Like, do they wake up one day and say to themselves “Eureka, I’ve got it… I don’t need to work for a living, I’ll become a medical magpie, (I have said this before I know), I’ll use Google and friends or people around me, I’ll listen to their stories about health, cherry pick the ones hardest to prove, I’ll visit my doctor, I’ll tell him I feel I have this or that, I’ll cry, it’ll get added onto my medical record, then bam… There’s my evidence, now, what can I get next, oh that’s right I’ll apply for every single benefit I can. I don’t feel ashamed because I’m a narcissist (maybe), I’ll post about it everywhere because that way my narrative becomes fact and everyone will sympathise with my plight…”

Yeah I know people in this category, they make me angry, but I suspect they don’t sleep as soundly as the rest of us, the fear of being caught out surely has to outweigh the attention and financial benefits, look at Amanda, imagine living such a deceitful existence.

So at the moment I’m a little pissed off, (can you tell?🤣) I’m trying to be patient and grateful but do you know what? It sucks. I had my CT scan on 25th October, the one that checks if I’m still tumour free… It’s what us incurables do, we live for 3 months then have that fucking scanxiety time, that fortnight every 3 months that we wait from scan to results day.

Well I’m having to wait almost a FULL MONTH to find out if I’m good. The NHS is literally on its knees since their ‘Summer staffing issues’ and therefore there’s no one to review my scan yet.

We aren’t even into Winter yet…god help us all.

Colette xx

Can’t think of a title…

Well, I’m back from Japan with a bit of jetlag but nothing I can’t deal with. It was a long journey home. We flew from Japan to Doha in Qatar then on to Manchester, a gruelling 19 hours on 2 flights. Our cases didn’t make the connecting flight to Manchester but they did arrive at my front door the next day, Qatar airways were superb.

I had my 4 monthly monitoring CT scan yesterday and I have my next appointment with my oncologist on the 7th November so I have a fortnight before I get the results. This is the anxious period and also the reality of living with (not dying of) incurable cancer. It’s a bit shit really, but I’m still in a positive mental place and still believe this year has been and will continue to be a good one.

So, back to my trip to Japan. No amount of planning and research prepared us for the spectacle we encountered. I find it incredibly difficult to describe the place. It exceeded both our expectations and I can 100% see the drawer of the country and why once you go you fall in love with it, the people are just wonderful.

We met some really nice people on our first real night in Tokyo, Marlon from Miami and his girlfriend Tomoka from Tokyo in a tiny little bar in a back street. The owner Machi was in a jazz band and plays bass guitar and so he whipped out a little acoustic and played a couple of Beatles songs for us. It was surreal, ‘an Englishman, Irishwoman, an American and a local all sat in a bar’ reminds me of a lame joke 🤣. But anyway we had a blast and knew we were gonna love Japan.

After Tokyo we caught the bullet train to Kyoto, this was our favourite city on our whirlwind tour. Culturally it was spectacular. Step across the street and you were in an ultra modern city, step back a street and you were in another world, cobbled back street alleyways. We met another couple of people, Australian sisters and had a brilliant night on a rooftop bar, ending up in a Japanese version of an English pub 🤣. The hangovers were bad the next day..

Osaka was our next adventure, wow that was something else entirely, it was noisy, and brash and a bit dirty and completely unapologetic, we loved it! We took the train to Hiroshima which is what you expect, a place of reflection and peacefulness but with its history in front of you laid bare. They didn’t shy away from their role in what happened but the horror of the consequences of the A Bomb was hard to get my head around.

A quick 10 minute ferry took us to another world, Miyajima island. It was breathtaking, I genuinely mean that, when I stepped onto the ferry and we set sail my breath literally caught in my chest. After an overnight stay we hopped onto the Ropeway up mount Misen, I was scared to death of the little swinging carriage but it was so worth it, spectacular.

We did so much on our adventure, Nara park, the 1000 shrines, Universal studios, Bamboo forest, Observatory decks… And so much more.

Our first mum and son trip was everything and more and now I’m going to spam the rest of this blog with photographs that all my friends have seen but maybe you might not have.

Colette xx

I did a thing …

My real world friends and family already know about this and so don’t have to continue reading this post as I’ve talked and posted on social media a lot about recently 😂, but I felt I should write about it as a reminder to myself in the future that I can achieve anything as long as I have the right mindset and determination to succeed.

It might not sound like a big deal but to me it really is because I try to do one charity event each year and the one I signed up to this time is without doubt the most personal one to date for me. Clatterbridge is my cancer hospital and their charity wing works incredibly hard to raise funds for patients and staff. Most of the money raised is ploughed into research and development within the hospital trust. And, unlike national charities such as Macmillan Cancer support or Cancer Research and other none cancer charity events I have raised money for previously I thought it was important to recognise that any funds I raised will stay locally.

I decided this year I would have a look at what charity events Clatterbridge were hosting and see if any took my fancy…I chose the abseiling challenge. I honestly didn’t think about it in depth, I just thought oh that might be fun and if I can raise the required £100 to do it then I’ll go for it.

Well the event happened 2 days ago, I abseiled 150ft down the side of the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool. We had a couple of false starts due to a lightning bolt and thunderclap just as I was about to be harnessed at the top of the platform and a torrential downpour on the second attempt, again as I had climbed the last part of the ladder onto the platform 😯. When the cathedral organ started playing a hundred feet below where I stood I thought oh fuck this, it’s a sign we shouldn’t be messing about in god’s house and I’m gonna be smited by god if I carry on this attempt!⚡⛈️⚡

Long story short, I did it, I was harnessed up and told to lean backwards and go… Worst experience EVER, I do not recommend it, it was scary as hell and all I could say was fuck fuck fuck….. But I raised a whopping £820 and I’m delighted, I didn’t quit, I didn’t call it off and it was the biggest challenge I’ve ever done.

When it was over and I had my medal and certificate a lady tapped me on my arm to ask if I was taking sponsorship money? I replied no sorry it was done online and she pushed a ten pound note into my hand and asked if I could put it towards my donations 😯. She was emotional and after I said thank you I’d make sure Clatterbridge gets it she walked away with tears in her eyes and it made me really quite emotional. I was really grateful but also really sad that this poor lady was too upset to speak to me about how cancer has clearly had an impact on her and how Clatterbridge obviously played some part in her life. That simple act of kindness stayed with me all weekend, a total stranger feeling the need to give me money to pass on to the charity actually made it all worthwhile.

So my total was £830 and I’m really delighted with that, especially as my original target was £100.

It also happened to be Andy’s birthday so we had a great family party and I can’t thank my family enough, particularly my eldest brother and his wife for coming up from London to watch my Abseil, my sister for hosting us all at her house, Niamh and Harry for their constant support and my husband for being my ride or die I love you ❤️

My ride or die ❤️

My brothers

Come rain or shine they support me

What a month….

It’s been a while I guess since I wrote anything of note or had anything to say worth sharing but it’s been a pretty hectic time over the last couple of months.

Firstly, I went to Ibiza with Niamh for a week of sunshine and pool days… Well that was the plan however it seems Ibiza was having the worst weather in recent history and our 7 days of glorious sunshine amounted to approximately 3 days of sunshine and 4 days of thunderstorms and torrential rain.

We did make the most of our time though, we had a wonderful day at one of the island’s hippy markets (buying overpriced shit that I didn’t really need), we spent some time in Santa Eulalia, that was lovely, eating ice cream on the beach front and watching the world go by. I was last in Santa Eulalia almost 28 years ago as a newlywed on my honeymoon with Andy, so it was nice to reminisce with Niamh. We also watched the spectacular Ibizan sunset down at the famous Sunset strip, which was genuinely glorious. We really had a lovely time until day 5 and I rang home to speak to the boys…

Harry had recovered well from his bowel surgery, he’d had some pain in his back a few times but we suspected it was trapped wind. Well, it wasn’t that at all, Andy rushed him to A&E on Friday night as he was in a lot of pain. The hospital was marvellous but advised he needed scans and it was advisable to go to his IBD hospital (Liverpool) get them done faster, long story but he was in Bolton so definitely not local. They discharged him Saturday morning… That’s when I called home and Andy told me about it all. I was a bit frantic but knew he was in capable hands with his dad. Later that day I video called the boys and Harry looked dreadful, I’m not sure why but I asked him to show me his eyes, they were yellow and I absolutely in total honesty shit myself, yellow eyes, pain in his back, oh fuckity fuck…. gallbladder!!

It was so hard being thousands of miles away, and the fear that my son had a gallbladder issue? It’s hard for me to describe the panic but I felt sick, I felt genuine terror and went into fight mode. His pain had subsided at this point but I insisted if it came back he had to get to Liverpool and made them promise they would… 8pm that night Andy had him in hospital for the second night in a row.

My instinct was this is gallbladder, I have fucking incurable gallbladder cancer and this is not happening to my son, I relayed all this to Andy in a panicked call but he was brilliant, he was calm but asked the doctors if gallbladder issues are hereditary, they said yes.. he told them my story and our fears. It was a bank holiday, the scans needed couldn’t be done for a few days but, they were brilliant at the Royal Liverpool, they started him instantly on IV antibiotics, checked his bloods everyday and finally after 6 days found the cause of his full blown jaundice (he was so yellow), a gallstone was trapped in his bile duct. He had a procedure (awake 😯) and they managed to remove the stone. So, what a drama, poor Harry, he lost 11lbs of weight in a week but he’s on the mend, and will hopefully be going back to work in a couple of weeks!

So yes it was a pretty traumatic time, I was out of my mind, I fucking hate the word gallbladder, I hate that it can cause the most painful experiences and the little sack of shit isn’t even needed in our bodies, it’s some weird little throwback to caveman times (like the appendix) that can cause a world of pain and heartache it doesn’t really have a purpose. Ok so it’s an overflow for breaking down some shit but we can survive without it.

So, tomorrow is my least favourite day, it’s results day. My 3 monthly face to face appointment with my oncologist. I had my CT scan just before I went to Ibiza and it’s D Day tomorrow. I’m feeling well, I have zero symptoms, I have a strong mindset and a positive outlook but, there’s always that little dark cloud hanging around my head at this time every 3 months. And as much as I’m positive I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit I’m a bit scared of tomorrow’s meeting. It’s a necessary evil, I have to face whatever I’m told with a smile on my face and a can do attitude, it’s my thing you see, it’s how I deal with it, how I’ve always dealt with it, head on.

So yeah, that’s what you may or may not have missed, but I’m good, I’m in a good headspace, I have eternal optimism, I still believe 2023 is my year no matter what the results are tomorrow and…. I’m off to beautiful Bala Lake with Andy (and Betty) this weekend,

Colette xx

Hippy market purchase

Ibizan sunset

❤️

The flip side..

On New Year’s Day I decided 2023 was going to be my year, I’m done with cancer and I’m having a year off…

However, I am currently experiencing what the last 7 years have been like for Andy and the kids and it’s not a particularly nice view. You see our son Harry has Crohn’s disease and for the last 4 years he’s been trying to manage it with biological medicines but alas, the disease didn’t respond to these (almost chemotherapy) biologics and he’s never had any remission.

So the decision was made that surgery was the best option in his case. He underwent a hemicolectomy and bowel repair last week and it was one of the hardest things to witness for us as parents. Seeing our child experiencing the same kind of surgery I’ve had, knowing how difficult it is to get through it, how uncomfortable and painful it can be has been hard but, he has coped incredibly well, he hasn’t complained once and now we have him home we can breathe again. He is actually doing remarkably well.

But, it isn’t all pain and discomfort, (well for the rest of us) because I have my second holiday of the year coming up… Andy and I are off to France in a fortnight with Betty, which I’m really excited about. We’ve booked a train into Paris for a day which is exciting and we are visiting Lille too.

I am then off to Ibiza with Niamh for a little sunshine and sangria in May, woohoo! And if New York, Paris and Ibiza aren’t enough for one year I am going on a holiday of a lifetime (literally) in October.

Harry is taking me to Japan for 18 days!!! It’s not a place that was ever on my radar, but he loves all things Japanese and he planned to go either with friends or alone. He decided to ask if I fancied going with him and if you know me, I never turn down an opportunity to travel!!

So, this time Harry has off work (2 months) is an opportunity not only for him to recuperate but it also gives us every chance to have the most amazing itinerary for our trip. He started learning Japanese last year so at least we won’t starve and if all else fails Google has an excellent translator app. We are staying in Tokyo, then Osaka and Kyoto and then back to Tokyo to finish our trip and I’m really excited to see Mount Fuji and take a trip down to Hiroshima too! What I’m not keen on is 20 hour flight to get there but where there’s no pain there’s no gain I guess.

Colette xx

Start spreading the news….

Well, New York was amazing. It was noisy and dirty and scary and I loved it. I spent 10 days in the city that never sleeps, with Niamh who was working New York fashion week and once again smashed it, Vogue, Vanity Fair and numerous other fashion publications featured her work. She really is remarkable, quietly unassuming but with a fierce determination to succeed in a business that is incredibly tough.

I had a ‘mum day’, a day spent wandering the city, revisiting places that I hold dear to my heart, places I visited with my mum. I took a little photograph of her with me too. Our favourite breakfast spot, Cafe Manhattan, was particularly emotional for me, it hasn’t changed one bit in 16 years! The same decor, tables and wall art is still there and I sat for an hour or so just eating breakfast and remembering our time together in the City. I also went into St Patrick’s on 5th avenue and had half an hour of quiet time just thinking about my mum and how much she loved the city. I know it sounds a bit morbid but it really wasn’t, I had a wonderful time on my own that day, it was perfect.

Now, my story has this weird “coincidence/voodoo could put some people off going to America” vibe to it you see because it goes like this..

Florida 2016 – came home and was diagnosed with Gallbladder cancer…..

Florida 2017 – came home and was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer……..

New York 2022 – came home and was diagnosed with metastatic gallbladder cancer….

So there is a weird/voodoo pattern to it, although to be fair the first metastasis and subsequent Ovarian cancer diagnosis was in 2020 and no one was going anywhere because of COVID, but a couple of days before we went to New York recently I had my routine 3 monthly CT scan, I wasn’t nervous about the results but the family were. Anyway I’ll get to the point, I had my oncologist appointment this morning, and I was right not to feel worried because my CT scan was CLEAR, no evidence of disease was seen!!

This gives me another 3 months of trying to forget about it, I’m cancer free right now which is beyond amazing, whatever beyond amazing is, spectacular maybe? 🥳.

I’m a realist, I know my situation is unlike most people with this disease, I’m well aware of the fact that I am incurable, but a win is a win, and once again my beautiful insides are managing to stave off this wretched cancer, so well done to my insides, I’m proud of you, my lovely blood systems and immune systems and strong genes, you fucking rock 😂.

Colette xx

What a month..

Well I can hardly believe it’s the 1st of February already, what a really busy time it’s been in our house!

On the health front I am incredibly well, I have my next scan CT scan on Monday but I’m hopeful I’ll still be in the ‘no evidence of new disease’ category’.

Because it’s a new year I’ve (insanely) signed up to do a charity abseil in summer 😳. The hospital I receive all my care and treatment at have their own charity wing and I saw a post about abseiling off the cathedral in Liverpool and I decided to sign up, I must stress I don’t like heights, my legs get a bit wobbly but I guess I won’t need my legs to dangle off the side of a giant cathedral 🤷‍♀️…

In other news…

Our daughter Niamh flew to Paris on her first solo trip and what a trip it was, she was invited to work at Paris haute couture week as a makeup artist and wow what an incredibly successful week it was for her. The work she produced was featured in so many articles we couldn’t keep up with them all, big names like VOGUE, Vanity Fair, ELLE, my mind was blown. As you can tell we are ridiculously proud of her, it takes some guts to go solo but there’s no stopping her now.

New York fashion is next for her, but I’m going with her for this one (not a cat in hell’s chance I’m missing a trip to my favourite place). And then she’s off to Milan fashion week 2 days after we get back from the States!!

Our son Harry had his first trip to Berlin with his mates at the same time Niamh was in Paris so it was the strangest feeling for me, having both kids out of the country at the same time, it seems to be a year of firsts for our family!

This year is the 7th since my first ever diagnosis and after 7 years of bad(ish) luck healthwise I’ve decided that’s it, I’ve done my time, I’ve had my 7 years punishment for maybe breaking a mirror or walking in front of a black cat or whatever delusional shit people believe in 7 years ago and so 2023 is going to be better, it’s going to be a year of firsts, and it’s going to be our year!!!

Colette xx