Being a Grandma.

All through my treatment I kept looking for things in my life to keep me going, ofcourse my family and friends all helped me a lot, encouraging, helping and loving me. When Mom died unexpectedly it was such a terrible blow, she had always been there for me, helping me along, phoning me up to make sure I was okay, generally fussing, being a Mum. Then she was there no longer, and it hurt so badly. I know she found my illness so painful, hard to cope with, and I realise how difficult it all was for her. I blamed myself for a long time for her death, thinking the stress and strain had pushed her into illness, but she was 84 and had suffered angina for a long time and the doctor said her death was due to her heart and old age. She went suddenly, found on the floor of her flat by my beautiful daughter, the trauma of the moment was with her for a long time afterwards as you can imagine. We were away, down in the Cotswolds, just for a short break. I needed to get away for a couple of days, to have a couple of days to relax, not think about what was happening to me, take the pressure off a bit. When Mom died I felt awful for leaving her, we had said goodbye before we left and she wished me a lovely time, I never thought I would never see her again. Heartbreaking.

One thing which kept me going when I was ill was the fact that I wanted to live to be a grandmother myself, I kept telling myself that I had to live to see grandchildren, to help my own children through the minefield of being a parent, the thought of holding a baby grandchild in my arms kept me pushing myself to good health, determined to beat it, this cancer which had somehow found its way into my body.

My beautiful granddaughter is now 15 months old, she is called Poppy Hope, she is the light of my life. The getting of Poppy was not easy, she was an identical twin, and she also had a triplet, non identical, her twin and triplet did not live, Poppy was born 10 weeks early, spent 6 weeks in hospital. She weighed just 3 pounds 4 ounces, so tiny we could not believe it! We willed her to live, and she certainly had enough will of her own, she was determined thats for sure. She started walking a week or so ago, she smiles all the time and is a joy. The treatment I went through was not easy, but I got through, thankyou God.