I had my haemangioblastoma brain tumour removed back in October 1998 at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham. I was 28, and the operation was performed by the amazing Stefan Zygmunt. I’m from Scotland, but was living in a small town in rural Herefordshire at the time. So, it will be 22 years this October (2020) since my operation…

There’re some things I remember vividly – the hideous nausea/ hangover feeling which rendered me bedridden for 3 months and which I remember thinking I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I remember telling folk it was like the worst hangover you’ve ever had mixed with horrendous sea sickness…times a thousand. And I wasn’t exaggerating.

Pre-diagnosis, 1998. Feeding pigeons at the Botanics with Ronan – me in my wide-brimmed hat.

Then there was the photophobia – I had to wear a peaked cap and use an umbrella in the summer because I couldn’t stand the sunshine. It wasn’t just the brightness; it was the temperature – everything about the sunshine was bad. I remember having very mixed feelings when I took up yoga in the year following my op – the ‘salute to the sun’ didn’t sit right with me. Apart from the embarrassment that I couldn’t do a lot of the postures the others could, the sun had felt very cruel to me. I didn’t feel like greeting it warmly.

My son, Ronan, was only 4 at the time and I was a single parent. I managed to struggle to take him to his first day of school, but hated that the other parents thought I was drunk. And who could blame them – I couldn’t walk in a straight line, nor stand still without leaning against/ holding onto something.

Beyond the call of duty

My wee boy used to have to empty the buckets of wee and sick by my bed. I couldn’t manage to move my head, getting out of bed to use a bucket was like torture, there’s no way I could even contemplate going downstairs to the toilet. I can’t believe this happened now…

He would crawl so very carefully into bed beside me, because if I moved my head even a millimetre, I’d be extremely nauseous and violently sick. It was hideous.

I remember a friend phoning me and I told her that it felt like I was suffering the pain of a hundred people in my head. She laughed, but I’m not sure what she was supposed to say! It’s not exactly normal conversation.

I felt paranoid, and absolutely dreaded phoning my doctor. I couldn’t disguise my Scottish accent and I hated that ‘oh not you again’ feeling. I was given travel sickness pills and told it was labyrinthitis (an inner ear infection) – for 3 months. A different GP suggested that it might be psychological… I was making it up? I even recall my GP going through some exercises to rule out anything neurological!

Apology

He came round to my house the day after I got home from hospital, and apologised. I told him that it wasn’t his fault – that he hadn’t done it deliberately. And I meant it. He resigned the following week…

At around this time, my landlady announced that she was going to sell the house. I explained that I was in bed with labyrinthitis, but she still brought prospective buyers around.

Ronan plopping pebbles down the gutter into the watering can on the steps of our black and white house in Kington, Herefordshire, 1998

It was an original olde 16^th Century black and white house – every bit as amazing as it sounds! With woodworm in the beams and toadstools growing through the basement carpet; holes through to the outside where the bitter winter winds blew straight in (until I foiled them, cunningly, with scrumpled newspaper!), and my washing would actually freeze on the inside line I rigged up; a resident mouse (Billy); crooked walls you couldn’t hang a picture straight on; an spectacular, high vaulted ceiling which greedily gathered all the heat from our inadequate, but hard working Calor gas stove; and the most fairy-tale-esque crooked staircase leading up to the bedrooms in the ‘attic’. It was the best house I’ve ever lived in; it felt like home.

There was also a walled garden…
It was completely impractical and inefficient, but cheap, very very old, full of history, seriously awe-inspiring and I absolutely, utterly and completely loved it. I wish I’d taken more photos – there may be more in the attic, along with the picture I drew. It’s just as well I had other things on my mind, otherwise I’d have been inconsolable when it sold.

I have no idea what viewers thought though, coming into the main bedroom (with the amazing galley window overlooking the incredible sitting room), seeing me lying there in bed. I was mortified.

Healing

My son’s nursery teacher called me and asked if her husband could come to see me. Nobody knew, but he was a Bowen’s therapist and a spiritual healer. I’d have done anything and seen anyone! Later, he sent me a card with an amethyst stone. He told me that they’d prayed for me and sent me love ‘for what else is there in truth’. It touched my heart.

I managed to crawl downstairs and onto the couch where he came and sat patiently for me to painstakingly turn over, then he gently tweaked my tendons. I have no idea if that ‘did’ anything or not, but he did advise me that the travel sickness pills weren’t helping – they were blocking meridians, or pathways – so I stopped taking them. And my symptoms erupted.

What if

I am eternally grateful to him. Without his intervention, it is likely I would have slipped into unconsciousness, and I’m not sure what might have happened then.

The pain was unbearable. I remember the awful realisation… I’d always thought that soldiers maimed in battle would pass out with the pain – but now I knew, to my horror – that that wasn’t true. I suffered pain I didn’t know it was possible to endure, never mind survive. It was probably just as well, because that made my Doctor’s practice swing into action.

My good friend Claire, a single parent also, who had looked after my son (getting him to school, feeding him tea and being an absolute angel) called them and requested a home visit. This time a woman doctor came. I remember explaining to her that I discovered that the pain subsided a bit if I pushed at the back of my head, hard. The relief was wonderful. Thinking back, she must have known that this wasn’t ‘normal’, and called an ambulance to take me to hospital. Ronan would stay with Claire.

How can you ever thank friends like that enough?

I remember, because my house was hobbity kind of house, that the paramedics had to use a sit-up chair that they carried down the 2 flights of stairs, with me holding my head feeling utterly horrendous, trying not to vomit, and hoping desperately that nobody would see me.

I was taken to the Ear Nose and Throat ward of the nearest County Hospital, a good hour’s shoogily journey away. Given that I had barely moved in 3 months, this was torturous. The mere thought of sitting up, never mind being carried anywhere was nauseating. And I think I must have blanked it from my consciousness as I don’t really remember it.

Once there, I was made to do things like sit up straight from lying down – something I can barely contemplate now – and recoil at the thought of the potential consequence.

I later found out that two intensive care nurses at the hospital, whose sons were friends with my son at nursery, jumped up and down and demanded that action be taken. I was sent for a CT scan. I don’t remember that either, but I do remember lying in my little room beside the nurses’ station when a nurse came in.

She told me gravely that they had seen something on the scan

– they had?!

That I was going to be sent to a big hospital in Birmingham

– I was?!

And that they had a very good team of neurosurgeons there

– they did?!!

I felt thoroughly relieved!

There WAS something in my head! It wasn’t ‘all in my head’! I wasn’t making it up (I knew I wasn’t)!

Ae fond kiss

The nurse also said that she’d just spoken to my mum on the phone – and my mum had asked her to give me a kiss on my forehead. I can still feel it today. (My Mum and Dad had been on holiday when I was taken into hospital. They made arrangements on hearing I really wasn’t well and came down as soon as they could). I liked it after that kiss, because I got strong pain relief!

I don’t really remember the ambulance journey to Birmingham – it was 2 hours away – though I do recall being able to see out the windows and feel quite alarmed that the leaves were changing colour – it was now into autumn – and I had missed the whole of the summer…

The staff on my ward were amazing at Birmingham. Lovely nurses, thoughtful and caring. My friend came down from Edinburgh to see me. I asked her to write a letter I’d dictate to my son and my twin brother (who was making his way back from the Falklands on hearing that I was seriously unwell, in case I didn’t make it…). I was advised to write a will, so that was dictated too, and signed by whomever was required to make it legit.

I think I was either so elated to find out that I was actually properly ill (I know) or I was reacting to the drugs I was on, but we had an absolute ball! I remember belly laughing, tears streaming down our cheeks, telling my friend to write to my brother that ‘it’s okay – I don’t blame you for taking more than your share of the nutrients in the womb; I don’t hold a grudge against you, you mustn’t feel guilty’ etc. etc.

I got taken for an angiogram, where they put a line up through the arteries in my body from my groin (I wasn’t delighted about that) and into my head. I remember being told that it would feel a bit like sitting too close to an electric fire as they injected dye through the tube, to get a picture of where the blood vessels in my brain were. They were right – that is exactly what it felt like!

Bliss

Then, the most blissful thing in the world happened. It was the most incredible feeling, I’ll never forget… I began to lose consciousness. It was the sweetest relief, and if I could have stayed, I would.

I have a sobering recollection of the consutant telling me that that was my brain letting them know that I’d had enough now.

I was rushed into surgery where the 5cm cyst was drained. This cyst was the cause of my acute hydrocephalus – ‘water on the brain’ – the symptoms being the horrendous headaches/ nausea/ balance problems etc.

MRI scan – it is quite cool having one of your brain. I remember the nightmare of having to take out all 23 of my ear/ nose rings, and find/ remove the little metal ‘trinkets’ in my hair…

Pressure

The cyst was filled with cerebrospinal fluid (it’s funny that I still remember all these words I’d never heard before) – which usually flows up your spine and around your brain and back down again. It is apparently a commonly found bedfellow of haemangioblastoma, and my own cherry-sized haemangioblastoma tumour in the centre of my brain exuded into its cystic friend. Encased in skull – there was nowhere else for it to go, but to push on and squeeze my brain.

Thus the hideous symptoms and pain (and, scarily/ unfathomably/ squeamishly, my relief through pushing on it).

I’m sure I must have felt better after the cyst was drained. I have a finger-sized indent (hole) in the front of my skull where they went in. I remember the doctor telling me that they’d used a Black and Decker drill! It would have seemed more sensible to me for them to have entered the back of my head – where the cyst was – but who am I to argue?!

Apologies for the particularly hideous photo, (but this was in the days of ‘proper’ cameras with limited film, and…) it is the only one I have that shows the stitches/ hole in the front of my head. I have no idea what the other, lower hole/ stitches are for – first time I’ve seen them! You can also see the bruising and puncture hole in my neck – more later.

Brain Surgery

Anyway. I remember being wheeled along the corridor to go for my brain surgery mark II feeling pleased that Mr Zygmunt and his assistant had both told me they’d had an early night and slept well.

The porter told me that people don’t normally smile at this stage.

I couldn’t work it out – I was absolutely delighted! I wasn’t making it up – there WAS something wrong with me – all those phone calls to the doctor/ the stumbling to the school gates/ the looks from the parents/ the buckets by the bed were real – I wasn’t making it up!!

I remember the room, and the machines and all the people. I remember the absolute bliss of being knocked out… And then I remember waking up. I was somewhere different. I didn’t like it. My head hurt. Really proper hurt. Serious f****** hurt. But a different kind of pain.

I’d made it. 8 hours of surgery, and I’d come through the other side. And I really needed the toilet! Sparing you the details, after that, I had theee best cup of tea and hot cross bun you could ever imagine in the world! I was ravenous!

And after a while I started to amuse myself with the electronic charts – I realised that I could manipulate one of the bleepers and its graph by lifting the finger that the lead was clipped onto! But nobody seemed all that impressed/ concerned.

I got taken from intensive care to the 4-bed ward in front of the nurses’ station – a different ward from before. My favourite nurse, with far too much blue mascara, from the other ward came to visit me (she’d told the nurses on the new ward that she was family!) and I cried. I wanted to be back on her ward again…

I was reacting to the high dose steroids, and became highly sensitive. And psychotic. I could hear alarms going off at the other side of the hospital, and it is a huge hospital. I could hear nurses whispering on the phone. I could feel what the other patients were feeling, and knew more that I should about how the nurses felt.

It really wasn’t good.

I couldn’t sleep and thought I was in some kind of gruesome Nazi-style testing station – a guinea pig being experimented on. I rang my home phone number (this was the days before mobile phones!) and used up the entire cassette tape of recording on my answer phone – (yes it was a long time ago!) asking my mum and dad to come and rescue me from this place; to bring the ‘tartan army’ to come and save me.

It can’t have made good listening…

There were good nurses and bad nurses. Angels and devils. I don’t know if some sadistic people decide to become nurses for the power trip, or if perfectly good people become so dissatisfied, disenchanted and inured that their goodness slowly seeps away until their hardened shell is incapable of empathic decency.

I made an official complaint, but being psychotic wouldn’t help the credibility of my statement…

Skills

Mr Zygmunt was delighted with my surviving what he called ‘the most difficult operation I’ve ever performed’! He explained that he had had to use his fingertips on the tools, as the tumour had been so far away in the centre of my brain. I think he quite relished the challenge!

I was glad it was he who performed my surgery – I didn’t get the same air of capability from the other surgeons who I saw on their ward rounds.

I’ve since found out that as haemangioblastoma are so rare, very few surgeons have actually operated to remove them. So there aren’t many with the experience and skills necessary for the job.

How lucky was I?!

I remember having all these tubes and clips dangling from a hole in my neck, and being really annoyed that my brother (who’d travelled all the way back from the Falklands to visit me!) hadn’t brought my camera with him to take a photo of them before they were removed!

I asked what they were for – some were going to my heart so it could be restarted if it stopped, and the others into my brain, for similar purposes. It felt very strange when they were pulled out of me. I couldn’t feel them in my heart or brain – only in my neck. I wasn’t happy when the doctor put them in the yellow bin. I wanted to keep them!

The Worst Night

Maybe 2 days after my operation I had a dreadful night of pain, where every. single. second was unbearable.

And I had to start counting the seconds as they turned into minutes. And minutes into hours.

Minutes and hours filled of un-bearable seconds.

I think it was made worse as I’d already realised that there was no slipping away from this pain…

Unless I am just one seriously hard woman – I was going to suffer beyond words every second of the night. I was told off by nurses for pushing the emergency buzzer – they had beds to make up. Yes. That was what they actually said.

Another Angel

But, once again, there was a moment which almost made it all worthwhile. A change of shift. A new nurse. I called her over. She listened as I told her that I needed her to kill me. I know I wasn’t shouting out in pain as you might expect someone in pain to do

– there is a place beyond that hell, and that is where I was.

I told her it would be the merciful thing, to put me out of my misery. And I meant it.

Looking back, I’m not sure I have the mental, emotional and sheer f*cking determined strength of my 28-year-old self. To go through a night of hours, where every second was un-bearable and survive is, I’m convinced, beyond me now.

I couldn’t bear the intense, incredible, indescribable pain in my head. But I had no other option. That took strength I found out I had. It’s the kind of thing I don’t think about much, but it’s the sort of thing that could make you quite big headed if you let it. I don’t know how many people in the world have experienced and endured that level of pain, and not passed out. Or died.

I’m quite certain the people who bullied me at school would have crumpled at the first twinge. People who’ve taken advantage or overstepped the mark or intimidated me would wither.

I don’t know why I don’t let it fuel my fire more. I have been through things that most people could not begin to imagine. And yet, I can still be paralysed with fear.

So, this wonderful nurse held my hand and told me she’d heard me (I could have cried).

She told me she’d get help.

I heard her, with my supersonic hearing, whisper to the doctor whom she’d called in surgery that I was ‘crying out’ in pain – which I was a bit miffed at as I was clearly well beyond that stage – but realised that she had to say this in order for him to do something.

She came back with a suppository. I will never forget her. It was maybe 10 or 15 minutes later that I looked at my clock (the one I’d been using to count down the seconds through the night) and thought a thought. It was the first time that something other than insufferable pain had entered my head, and I cried. And my mind could acknowledge the warm wet tear on my cheek. It was incredible.

The tiniest of shifts away from the overwhelming everythingness of the pain.

An acknowledgement of something else. The word ‘relief’ is so ridiculously inadequate!

I made sure I thanked all the other nurses for ‘taking my pain seriously’ – and apologised for being a pain on the emergency beeper, but I had been given a suppository now and was feeling so much better…

I really hope that they have treated subsequent patients better.

The photo Keith did take the next day – showing the plaster covering the wound on my head and neck. I remember the agony of trying to turn around in bed to show him it. And my shaved head. I’d honestly just grown my hair in, after years of having it shaved at the sides. And now it was shaved at the front and back. Really!

My favourite nurse came one day and got me to stand up. He put his arms out for me to hold onto – I was very shaky, and he commented on how tall I was! Nobody had seen me standing up! My leg muscles had shrivelled away as I hadn’t used them for so long, but they are very keen to get you moving. There was a photo which showed how skeletal I had become, but I suspect my mum threw it out.

I remember being told to phone my folks and tell them I was sitting up. I found it absolutely exhausting. The first time I had a shower, it took me the rest of the day to recover.

I’m sure, had my tumour been ‘caught’ early, and I hadn’t spent the previous year feeling unwell, then 3 months in bed, that my physical strength would have been so much better – these things would have been an issue of making sure my wound didn’t get wet, rather than struggling to stay upright etc.

After a few days, I was taken to a different ward, where I befriended a woman with early onset Parkinsons. The neurosurgery department was a fascinating mix of folk like me with tumours, both in the brain and spine. I’d made friends with a roadie for Bentley Rhythm Ace (B.R.A. – I used to go to see Pop Will Eat Itself when they played in Edinburgh) who’d damaged his spine. He got the band to write me a wee note, and gave me their recently released CD of the same name. I also befriended a woman whose cousin played in the Stereophonics. I suppose Birmingham was more ‘cosmopolitan’ than my little Herefordshire town!

On the Move

One morning an ambulance arrived to take me back to the county hospital in Hereford, as they needed my bed in Birmingham. I hadn’t had my pain medication yet, and I found the trolley bumping over the joins in the flooring intensely jarring, to put it politely. I had been offered paracetamol, and took them, but commented to my friend that it would be about as effective as Smarties. She had shown me to rub above my upper lip with the side of my finger as a way to relieve pain, and I used this as a distraction until we got to the ambulance.

I do remember now moaning in pain, and the paramedic offered me gas and air. This was the pain of surgery – it felt like someone had cut through my neck and drilled a big hole in my skull before putting me together again with staples…

Once again that beautiful sense of relief!

Then I would hear a dreadful wailing sound. It sounded like an injured dog – then I would come to. I realised it was me making the sound, then sook heavily on the gas and air and off I’d pop again.

I remember thinking that it had had no effect whatsoever during childbirth. Either it hadn’t been attached to the tube properly, or this was a much more concentrated cocktail! At one point in the two-hour journey, I finished the bottle. The paramedic called the driver to stop and he changed the bottle. It hissed a lot and I said to him ‘leave some for me!’. Cheeky @*£%&!

He was absolutely lovely. He sat above my head and held my hands the whole way there. I remember him rubbing my fingers with his thumbs and it was soothing. I felt cared for. I asked him to tell my mum and my son that I loved them, if I didn’t survive the journey.

I think I made a bit of a commotion when we got to the county hospital (my new bed-neighbour mentioned I must have been in a lot of pain when I spoke to her the next morning). They gave me oramorph – morphine in a syringe that you sook. Then a hand help pump that you could press if you needed a top up. Utter relief.

And probably peace and quiet.

It had been observed that once I began to walk – using a zimmer frame – that I was holding my head at an awkward angle. I was. The wound on the back of my head/ neck was bloody sore! It was held together with 30 something staples, which it was decided could start to be removed.

They took out every second staple, but unfortunately it hadn’t healed properly yet.

At my first session of physiotherapy to start moving my head and neck, the wound burst open… (as evidenced above).

This was actually pretty bad news, as the cerebrospinal fluid started to run down my back! I had to have hand towels stuffed down my back like padding to soak it up. They needed regular changing. I hadn’t appreciated the seriousness of this until I was told I could get meningitis and would have to be sent back to Birmingham again…

Someone caught the moment the csf started to drip from the opened wound on my neck…

In fact, I hadn’t really appreciated the seriousness of the whole thing. As everybody in neuroscience deals with people like me day in, day out, it took a nurse to tell me that I had been through an emergency life-saving operation. My response – “really?” – it just all felt so ‘routine’.

Back in Birmingham, I got stitches in my neck to hold the edges of the wound together, which seemed to stop the csf running out. My son came to visit one day, and he wrapped his arms round my neck to give me a cuddle, and it burst again. More stitches. My mum was upset because this left a bit of a messy scar in a visible place. In contrast, I felt quite proud!

At some point, I remember having to have a lumbar puncture. This was to check the pressure of the csf. It was a horrible procedure, which is supposed to be painless, but the doctor found it hard to get the needle in the right place, and I can’t describe the sensation. Hideous – I don’t ever want to have one again.

After 8 weeks in hospital, it was deemed safe for me to go home. I remember my mum wasn’t happy because I hadn’t attempted to climb stairs yet – my house had a set of stairs up to the living space – but in fact it was fine.

I remember walking my son to school, and feeling so relieved that everyone knew that I hadn’t been drunk. Everyone was lovely. People had been very kind to my parents and had helped with my son.

Unusual

As I mentioned earlier, my GP came to visit me to apologise. I was pleased to be able to tell him how rare this kind of brain tumour is. His job was in general practice – not specialised neuroscience.

Haemangioblastomas make up just 1 to 2% of all brain tumours. The likelihood of you having a brain tumour in your life is tiny. The probability of it then being a haemangioblastoma is microscopically miniscule. I wasn’t really ever into ‘ordinary’!

As it turned out, my landlady sold my beautiful old house, and I had to move out, just 3 months after leaving hospital. I decided to move back to Scotland. So, I didn’t have to make the dreaded call to my doctor’s surgery again.

I have been remarkably lucky – after one or two outpatient appointments with Mr Zygmunt back in Birmingham, I was signed off.

Having a big hole in the back of my skull did take a bit of getting used to. (The entry point was too near the join of my neck, so too much movement to replace the bone or make a bone-flap). I remember my Dad driving me down to a Birmingham appointment and not liking the sensation of him braking – I could feel my brain ‘moving’ at the back of my head. It’s not something I notice anymore – though I have avoided roller coasters (on the whole!).

One side effect I’m most aware of is that I can’t always lie down on my back. If I go straight back (like on the dentist’s chair) I have a sensation that starts in my head as if I’m rolling head over heels down a hill. It passes after a couple of minutes, but it’s not pleasant! I’d like to know what it actually is – what is going on in there to make me feel like that?

I don’t do headstands or cartwheels, I try to avoid turning my head too quickly and need a good 8 hours sleep every night. Fatigue was really bad early on. I suppose I am aware of my head more than I might’ve been if this hadn’t happened. Having a hole there did used to make me feel vulnerable, but I’ve managed thus far not to get impaled; so I think I’m quite safe in that respect!

At the time, the late 1990s, the internet was in its infancy. I looked haemangioblastoma up in a couple of books, but being a very rare brain tumour, information was sparse. Limited to a sentence or two at most. Americans spell it ‘hemangioblastoma’ – without the ‘a’, and that seems to be more common nowadays, certainly online.

At my last meeting with Mr Zygmunt, I asked if I would ever be affected by this/ the surgery again. He told me that I should be good until I’m into my 60s. I wish I’d asked what he thought might happen then… It seemed such a long way away back then!

Phew!

For interest, here is the scar I’m left with. It’s not much, considering. You can see the places where it opened up, and needed stitching and re-stitching.  Gives ‘D’ye think ma heid buttons up the back’ a different angle.

 

I recently found all my Dad’s old diaries from those days. He’s recently moved into a nursing home as his Parkinson’s has deteriorated, but had noted all his journeys to and from Birmingham/ Kington – the hours it took, whether it had been a good journey or not. Very useful!

I hadn’t remembered the dates of exactly what happened when, but he had them all marked, from when they arrived to help out anyway. I still don’t know the date I was first taken into hospital, but I don’t suppose it matters that much! Writing it here as a record for my own interest – I don’t imagine it’s particularly fascinating reading for anyone else!

Saturday 26^th September 1998  – Jane moved from Hereford to Birmingham Queen Elizabeth

Friday 2^nd October – Haemangioblastoma removed

Sunday 4^th October – Keith arrived from Falklands to UK

Friday 9^th October – Jane from Birmingham Queen Elizabeth to Hereford

Friday 16^th October – Jane from Hereford back to Birmingham Queen Elizabeth

Monday 19^th October – Keith back to Falklands

Friday 30^th October – Jane back to Hereford

Friday 13^th November – Jane home from Hereford

 

Looking back, what have I done in these 22 years? A few of the bigger things that stand out:

Moved house, back to Scotland; transformed the garden; volunteered at Oxfam; got good at yoga; worked as learning support assistant in secondary school; became a beaver leader, helped out with various cub and scout camps and attended 2 international jamborees; adopted and built amazing enclosures for 4 rescue guinea pigs; swam in freezing rivers; camped out in thunder storms, snow and gale force winds with Ronan, for fun; watched him move from primary to secondary school; found all the sculptures in Grizedale Forest; gained an A in both my intermediate 1 and 2 maths!; studied and graduated with a PGDE in primary teaching; taught a multi composite class in a tiny 2 teacher school, met Malcolm – the love of my life, helped achieve ‘excellents’ and ‘very goods’ results for the school in inspection; adopted our long doggo, Rosie; learned more about mushrooms, moths and wild food to forage; learned the basics of how to copper plate etch; clapped proudly with a tear in my eye as Ronan graduated from university, with honours; started recording drawings/ prints/ writings etc. on the website Malcolm made for me; made a huge leap in starting to overcome my life-long arachnophobia; had a cornea transplant; helped my twinny to find the best care home for our Dad, and then our Mum; got the family home onto the market after 42 years (imagine the ‘stuff’); currently pioneering the ‘sandwich’ technique in contact lens wear and loving cooking with veggies grown on our new allotment plot!

I do wonder what the next 22 years will bring…