This week’s post features unwitting guest blogger, my mum.

Regular readers may recall that Dalrymple HQ’s mum has been experiencing some pretty exhilarating health issues over the last year or so. (See Mond und Licht for a concise summary of the early stages).

Never one to go along with the status quo, she’s kept us on our toes.

One week she’s dying, the next has defied the odds and will live forever. She survives a period of nine weeks spent shivering and cursing in hospital, only for later scans to reveal her newly regrown liver like a Christmas tree twinkling with cancerous lights. Fast forward through four months of chemotherapy and a solitary bulb burns forlornly.

The latest: the D for Dalrymple mothership has been told that, with the right treatments and a bit of luck, she can expect to remain in approximate orbit for a good while yet. There’s more surgery on Tuesday, but before that there’s roast chicken, and cake, and Mother’s Day.

She said it a lot better than me.

…

Honestly, this illness thing can be very confusing! One minute you’re being a brave little soldier marching down a short dead-end road, not all that hard, more like a bit incredible since you feel fine; next minute someone takes a look at your innards and tells you the problem seems almost (but not completely) to have gone, vamoosed, disappeared!

Prognosis last January, 3 months to 3 years; this Jan, more like 10 years probably! Go figure. Anyway, seems that the chemo and all the other stuff that I and my family and friends have been doing has worked.

As you can imagine, incautious tho’ it may be, we have been rejoicing up here and hope you will be too, although my father echoes over my shoulder, ‘anything for a bit of attention’…

Also, human brain, mine at least, behaving very oddly: I feel a strange sense of guilt, of letting down my nearest and dearest by not living up to their expectations (indeed, likely to exceed them, will they think me a coward by backing out? Or shall I just bore them by hanging around for ever?).  And I might have to go back on all this next week, am not that confident they can be right with such a different prognosis. Apparently very unusual. New treatment options, too, of which more anon, if you’re remotely interested.

Plus the perceptual difficulty of lengthening focus to a longer-term future…harder than you’d imagine, I’ll stick with the short, I think, makes me so much more appreciative, moment by moment…

Love you loads.