Our friend from work, Colin, was a regular commenter on this blog back when Christopher was still alive. He and Christopher used to meet in town for coffee, and their shared sense of humour lifted an otherwise rather bleak situation. For the last few years, however, Colin has been battling cancer himself – an inoperable […]
Christopher got a letter today from the NHS. I opened it with considerable annoyance – surely they should have known that he was dead, since he died under their jurisdiction! The letter said that his medical exemption certificate to give him free prescriptions was about to expire, and would he please renew it. Since he […]
The story do far – due to a very significant pattern of breast cancer going back several generations on my mother’s side of the family, my sister and I are on an annual mammography screening programme. Meanwhile, Birmingham Women’s Hospital are undertaking genetic sequencing of our grandmother’s tumour (stored by Liverpool hospital for over 30 […]
There has been a great deal in the press over the last few months about the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of treating dying patients with sedation and withdrawal of both food and active treatment once it is recognised that they are very close to death. The pathway was developed out of methods of treatment […]
Hereditary breast cancer has been much in the news recently, what with Angelina Jolie revealing that she is a carrier of one of the dodgier BRCA mutations and having a double mastectomy. And bang on cue, the genetic consultant from Birmingham Women’s Hospital has been back in touch with our family to discuss next steps […]
“…You have a most unusual and very interesting family tree……” If those words were spoken by a genealogist or family historian, one might be flattered. But, as my sister says, when they come from a clinical researcher looking into a genetic predisposition to a number of cancers which run in the family, it’s a rather […]
I bumped into an ex-colleague of mine at work today, who used to work quite closely with Chris. She left several years ago, but still does odd bits of consultancy for the company. I hadn’t seen her since Chris died, so she asked me how I was doing and we had a quick chat in […]
My father has been enlivening his retirement by looking into our family history, and tracing both sides of the family back through many generations. It’s fascinating stuff, but some of it has more relevance to the present day than we had anticipated. It’s become very clear, looking at the family tree, that just about all […]
Christopher’s sister, Sophie, phoned last night to tell me that their father (and hence my father-in-law) Alan had died on Sunday. He’d been increasingly infirm for a number of years now, but mostly affecting his mobility and quality of life rather than anything terminal. However, Sophie believes that he went into a decline dating from […]
I’ve got Rob the painter here yet again all week, painting yet more of the outside of the house. This time he is concentrating on the woodwork at the back of the house, where I had a new utility-room window installed, the large stretch of replacement barge-boards and soffits where I had work done on […]
