As most of you will know, my last scan comes back pretty clear with no lesions to be seen and no fluid in my lungs. This is amazing and brilliant and certainly adds time onto my life. I know we’re not all cancer experts here so it seems worth a moment of clarity. I still have cancer. I will always have cancer and will need to have chemotherapy every 3 weeks until something else happens. Another story in the press today says Kadcyla is NOT going to be approved for the Cancer Drugs Fund which means I am OK until April 2016 when something else will happen.

At the moment I have pain in my ribs which triggers a doubling of my morphine and prospective tests to have a look to see what is going on. After the CT scan good news, we go out and buy a really nice new Egyptian Cotton duvet cover and sheets in duck egg blue. Once the rib pain really gets going, it seems as though we’ve brought it on by celebrating with new bedding. It’s the start of our week off – a week with no appointments or work. We think about going away for a few days and then decide to have a staycation – visiting the places we don’t know around us. The rib pain comes on gradually during the week and I have to seek more pain relief although it makes me slur and feel out of it. On the final day, I have an appointment with the optician who is a lovely young man from Manchester and we chat about all sorts of things as he has a sense of humour which matches mine. He quickly discovers my left eye has deteriorated more than my right and when he puts a correcting lens in, I can see properly and realise why I have been feeling so unsteady when walking around. I am now longing for my new, very expensive glasses when I shall see the world right again!

Without my diary to hand, I can’t say what day we do what but it doesn’t matter and I’m not going to argue with myself on a point of when we were somewhere. We go to Donna Nook to see the seals again as there are more there now. The carpark is overflowing and I know there are Disabled spaces so get out of the car to have a look. Now at this point, I must confess that Mr Mason and I call them Selfish spaces. Now I have a blue card, they come in jolly handy but the ‘Selfish’ tag came long ago when, in a car park, we found lotso of Disabled spaces empty. “Look” said Mr Mason, “The Disabled people can’t even be bothered to come and use their special parking spaces. How selfish”. Of course, he said it with tongue firmly wedged in cheek and now we have a blue badge, we call it our own Selfish badge. So, I set off round the car park, stick and selfish badge in hand, to see if there was a space available. Indeed there was but a car was just about to reverse into it. I approached the driver and said “Did you know this is a disabled space?” He didn’t like being approached at all and I should have taken a sharp, pointy stick with me but alas, my stick has a flat, rubber bit on the bottom. I might have to modify it…… Anyway, he tried to ignore me so I spoke to him again. “No, it’s not” he said. I pointed out the Disabled signs. “I can’t see them” he said, which made me think he may be blind and, therefore in need of a Selfish spot but equally should not be driving. I pointed out that there was a bay or 4 or 5 parking spaces. His wife was looking more uncomfortable by the moment. “Well,” he said, still not looking at me “I’ll take my chances” and reversed back into the space. I stood nearby, thinking I was not going to make this a comfortable experience for him but his wife couldn’t stand the strain and got out of the car, looking at the signs all along the fence, clearly showing it was a Selfish bay. She went quite red and got back into the car, gesticulating wildly and made him drive off. Not before his parting shot which, had Oscar Wilde still been alive, would have envied it. “Have you been here this week?” I thought about it. “No” I said, and away he drove, thinking ‘Take that, you selfish disabled person’.

The beach at Donna Nook is fantastic and has hundreds more seals than on our last visit. We walk up and down, listening to the pups crying for their mothers with an eerie “Mum! Mum!” call. I am sure one seal is due to give birth at any time and, of course, while we walk off, she does. But really, they are dropping them like crazy. I take a film of two mothers having fisticuffs over the ownership of a pup with Mr Mason talking in the background about how he is going to buy a sausage bap and a coffee. I’m sure it wasn’t this hard for David Attenbrough. There is also a video of a pup struggling through grass, not its natural medium, calling for its Mum. They sound incredibly like small children. Anyway, I’d like you to know that in downloading the baby seal video to this blog has almost made me give up the will to live. It is INCREDIBLY SLOW and we can do nothing else on the computers but sit around and sigh, poking a key or two every so often. It’s now at 96.6% and the excitement is overwhelming. If it doesn’t work (you can’t add video directly to a WordPress blog – it can only be through a link) you will hear me yelling and carrying on for miles.

But it takes me ages to write this blog because I am so, so tired. Whether it is the medication or I am just going through a tired phase, I don’t know but it means I have to finish this post here. Mr Mason is so patient while I try to write with my eyes closing and I’m not sure it all makes sense but he deserves a lot of credit for this one. A few nights’ good sleep and some fresh air will help enormously and this is why I am going to post without spell checking or anything else. Just hit the button and switch out the light. Good night.