Motherload

My mother-in-law's raspberry cupcakes Ever the student, I have learnt a lot from this (fingers crossed) minor encounter with cancer. It's to do with how I cope best – through silence, telling almost no one, yoga, exercise, practicality, being Dutch about the whole thing, cutting out any white noise that derails me, being more ruthlessly focused than I normally let people know I am, looking at the positive and the concrete over the chimerical and the negative. And jokes. The negative is, of course, there, I don't deny it, lurking about in an anti-matterish sort of way, but, in my life, I have welcomed in far too much of that, felt I had to be negativity's caretaker. And that is linked to allowing myself to be bullied, and miserable. I'll take Newtonian over Quantum mechanics for the time being. The sub-molecular level will have to wait. What I've learnt is… that a well-timed joke has a therapeutic power as great as a surgeon's blade. I'll ne...

Pre-op Dutch Courage So Motherload fans, I've been quite absent from this blog for a while, and I've got an excuse. On Thursday I had surgery to excise some very early breast cancer. Now, this won't be a long post, because I'm still post-op and a bit tired. But I wanted to pass on a few things that have interested me on this journey. 1. I found my lump on 22 February 2016. This also happened to be the second anniversary of the death of a wonderful friend, Jane. She was the bravest woman I have ever met. She died of ovarian cancer. We met, the day after her diagnosis, when my little girl went round to play with her little girl. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. What is the etiquette for a playdate chat about ovarian cancer with a mum you've never met before? We became firm friends. We learnt mindfulness together during six sun-filled weeks in her kitchen, as her cat strolled in and moved around us, happy and curious. Another friend I'...