Firstly, apologies if anyone reading this knows my parents and haven’t heard what follows from them – as I’m sure you’ll understand although they have told various people, thoughts are obviously elsewhere at the moment. I guess this posting is more an effort to try and get my thoughts straight over everything, so apologies if it is a bit rambling…

Anyway, it’s strange how sometimes good news and bad news goes together. Back on Friday, when we’d decided to put our house on the market I phoned Mum and Dad to tell them the good news. However once I’d finished telling Mum, she said that she was going to call us anyway, as they had just got back from a specialist clinic in St Albans.

She explained that they hadn’t wanted to worry us up until then, but that a few weeks ago Mum had found a lump, and after their holiday had gone to see the doctor about it. He had referred Mum to the specialist clinic in St Albans. Until the visit to the clinic they weren’t sure whether it was benign lump or not, however the clinic had confirmed that it was possibly something to worry about, and today they went back for a more accurate diagnosis

Today we talked to Mum again, and she and Dad had been back up to the clinic where they had confirmed that the lump was indeed cancerous, and that they were going to operate to remove it in two weeks time, and put her on a course of radiotherapy and tamoxifen.

It’s one of these situations where in some ways you don’t expect it to happen so close to home, whilst we’ve known a number of people who have been diagnosed with cancer, it’s not the kind of thing you really ever consider happening to your parents. I guess in some ways I’m lucky to have got through 33 years without either parent getting a serious illness up to now, indeed I don’t think that either parent has even had a stay in hospital that I can remember. I guess in some ways it makes me pretty complacent, and certainly it did come as a shock. Having said that, I’m sure it still doesn’t make it any less of a shock, or any less worrying for someone whose parents have been ill before. Interestingly, on the topic of the chances of getting ill, talking to Mum she said she had filled in an online questionnaire to calculate your chances of getting cancer and it had said that she fell into the low risk category, at only 8% chance – definitely an important lesson that even if you think you are in a low risk group, you could still have problems, and it is important to get anything suspicious checked out. Better to be told that it’s benign, than to leave something.

Thankfully, the indications currently is that it has been caught early, and so there is every confidence that she will make a full recovery, certainly Mum and Dad seem positive, with Mum discussing with me whether an iPod would be a good purchase for the long hours of treatment that she will have. However it is still a worrying time for the family, and Beth and myself would appreciate it if people could remember my parents over the next few weeks as Mum goes through her treatment.