Hello again

Unfortunately, as many of you may know by now we have reason to re-start Pauline's blog. After a second round of chemo last year and radio therapy early this year, Pauline's illness has returned.

In just the few days since this has become clear, as the word has got around, Greg and Pauline have received so many messages of support and concern that we have decided to re-start the blog to enable us to keep everyone up to date on how Pauline is going and to allow family and friends to leave messages for her.

Pauline has probably known better than any of us that neither of these treatments could safeguard her future, but she has pursued all options and has looked fantastically on top of things. However, given the nature of this recent recurrence, Pauline has accepted that further treatment would not be effective and is unlikely to to offer any relief.

Pauline is already quite weak, and tires easily, so it is with much sadness that we reluctantly request that her many dear friends please call before visiting to ensure she isn't exhausted on any given day. She truly does know that she is loved and that each of us wants to help in whatever way possible.

Any messages left on the blog will be read by or to Pauline, and if at all possible she will make some posts. Please note that if anyone has difficulty negotiating the blog or would prefer to send a more private message they can email Pauline at scott.pauline@optusnet.com.au

It is already clear that my sister is going to travel the next leg of this journey with infinite grace; supported by Greg, Bridget and Danny and surrounded by our love. She will make it as easy for all of us as she possibly can.

Pauline's sister, Aunty Rose.

good bye dear blog ...for now

Hello all my blogger friends,

After much consideration I have decided that I will probably not make any more entries for awhile .... mainly because I don't really have much to say. Life is going on well .... the kids are great, I'm feeling pretty well, Greg is coping well and I feel like its just a bit boring for you to hear that everything is going well.....

Its a bit like when you see all the relatives at a funeral or a wedding and you say "we must catch up more often" and everyone knows it won't be until the next wedding or funeral. However I would love to catch up individually with anyone that wants to keep in touch by email ..... scott.pauline@optusnet.com.au
I hope that I will hear form you all and I do thank you so much for your entries that have cheered me up so much and lifted my spirits when I most needed them.

No doubt at some stage the blog will return but until then send me an email ......

Love
Pauline
xxxxx

Still blogging on !!!

Hi fellow bloggers ...... you must be wondering if my blog has died or whether I am still alive !!! Well no to the first and yes to the former. I haven't worked out how to get a holiday snap on the blog but I promise it will follow.

I have had a fantastic holiday on Queensland ..... it was the best family holiday I've ever been on . Not only did I survive 2 weeks on the Gold Coast with an unlimited theme park pass, 2 children and hours of the Simpsons, Futurama and Neighbours and NO BABY sitters I actually loved almost every minute and had a first ever "no fight" holiday. Greg and I got on really well and the kids had a ball..... I was aided and assisted by Greg taking Danny off for extra curriculum theme park visits leaving me and Bridget to play more games of 500 (because the four hours all ready per day was not enough for Bridget the kitty hog ... and yes if you know 500 you would know that she got that disease from ME the number one kitty hog of all time) and the name game and her new one .... lets play being journalists and making up news stories or writing essays.

I took my Peter Temple (fantastic Australian crime writer ... just won the best international crime novel award for 2007) books every where I went and even managed to go on ONE scary theme park ride ... much to every one's amazement. All I can say about the dreadful Pirate Ship is that my suffering was brief but very intense ........ and confirmed my life long belief that I do not enjoy or tolerate any motion apart from driving a car. I was very glad to get off and feel very glad that some times you do make the right decision about life time habits!!!I'm not just a scaredy cat!!!

To be honest I did have a few in the middle of the night scary thoughts about what was going to happen to me and how long I would be around to not go on scary rides etc . but I think that's pretty normal . Despite all my attempts to be positive and take each day as it comes, and live in the present moment, and realise I have no control over the future and to focus on love, kindness and forgiveness and cancel negative thoughts etc etc etc..... I still am only human and have no answers.

Welcome to the human race. I know I am not alone.

I will always look back on that time away with a great feeling and thank my Mercy friends for their kindness and love in sending us off in such great style!!!

Since being back I have seen my doctor the lovely Peter Grant and he was very kind and spent a lot of time with me and Greg answering my rambling, repetitive questions and I felt like he had all the time in the world and I was his only patient in the world ..... He was very encouraging and we both walked out feeling very lucky and relieved. I may have a little hot spot on my hip which may need some radiation but Greg and I are going mattress shopping today just to make sure its not a joint problem So keep your fingers crossed.

I learnt a long time ago from a long time survivor of ovarian cancer that the secret is "to keep on keeping on" and I'm starting to understand what she meant.

In the meantime I have found a delightful little Austrian psychiatrist who spends hours and hours with me and bulk bills!!! and we are working on spontaneous healing (the mind can make you sick the mind can make you well.....) Apart from any thing else he is a really nice, intelligent man and I enjoy listening to his words of wisdom and wealth of knowledge. Greg and I have also been listening and reading Eckart Tolle (The Power of Now) which has been great. Aided and abetted by a good bloood thirsty crime novel ... also very therapeutic.

Any way thanks for all your love and support ... I am off to my friend Leanne's beach house for the second week of the school holidays (thanks Leanne!!!) and I am looking forward to more walks on the beach and the sound of kids laughing as they play chasey and hidey and putting my feet up with a good book and a couple of good friends (thanks Jenny and Anna!!)

Life is good.

Love
Pauline
xxx

Hello ....

Hi there everyone,

I am enjoying my post chemo days ..... and getting back to feeling better each day .

It has been a wonderful but sometimes tricky transition because once you finish chemo whilst the body feels much better the brain can start playing tricks in terms of anxiety and worry......will it come back , will I be OK, how much time do I have, what about my kids ????etc etc .....I am sure you can imagine the general theme.

So I have been off to a 3 day meditation retreat and had a wonderful session with a doctor that specialises in this kind of thing. Basically the advise is ... face your emotions such as fear, grief , anger and just acknowledge its OK to feel that way .... sit with it through meditation and allow myself to feel these emotions without being critical or trying to control them. So far this advise has been fantastic and working well.

The other important advise which I think is very true, although once again not always easy to adopt, is that the timing of all our deaths are unknown .... No one really knows how long they will live because it is out of our control.

So for a confirmed control freak like myself it is actually liberating to leave that to the Lord/ Higher Being/ Unconditional Love/ Nature/ you can fill in the blanks .... and accept that there are many many people who shouldn't be alive today who are and vice versa many people who should have lived who are gone ... What doyou think???I'd be interested in your thoughts.

I am enjoying spending time with the kids and Greg is enjoying my improved cooking .......given that I have all day to think of something to cook. No more excuses. I even ironed a couple of his shirts the other day for the fist time in about 25 years!!! Oh dear I have turned into the little house wife after all this time!! To tell you the truth I love it ....

We are all off on our wonderful Queensland holiday in about 2 weeks and Danny is all ready counting down the "school days" left till we go.

Its pretty exciting and I can't wait.

SO I am in good spirits and enjoying life .........especially walking my little doggies through the parkland's and gradually catching up with friends.

Love to you all

Pauline

Finished!!

Hello everyone,

I am so happy to be finished with chemo and to have my life back to normal again.

I practically skipped out of the day chemo unit last Friday and have had a beautiful week off without thinking about fronting up for another round.

the last 18 weeks have been very difficult for Greg and Bridget and Danny and of course yours truly but it is lovely to have finished and to have had the great support of all our family and friends.

So thank you everyone from the bottom of my heart.

I am off to a 3 day meditation retreat tomorrow at the Gawler foundation so as usual I leave with mixed feelings (should I go?What about the kids? How will they manage?) and will hopefully return inspired and more geared up for daily meditation.

I am still very tired but I think that is pretty normal and it will take awhile to get back to a normal sleeping pattern. I am well and truly back on the healthy diet and all the vitamins and minerals so I hope they are doing some good. Haven't even looked at a licorice strap for over a week!!! I think I am cured of my chemo induced junk food phase!!

Treated myself to a front row seat at King Lear last week and loved every minute of it (well OK 3 hours was a wee bit long but I only nodded off for a minute in the endless sub plot bits!!)

Looking forward to holidays in September....Mermaid Beach here we come.

Love to you all.

Pauline

One day to go

Hi everyone,

Do I sound excited??? I never look forward to chemo but in this case I feel like I want to "bring it on" now!!! I am so looking forward to getting healthy again and being able to get back to doing all the things I enjoy without the continued grind of fronting up for those heavy duty drugs and all the related anxiety about reactions and side effects and IV lines etc.

I have been enjoying myself this last fortnight and basking in the glow of almost being finished. I have demolished a few good blood curdling crime novels. Nothing like an escaped psychopath to keep my mind off the nausea (The Sleeping Doll by Jeoffrey Drever in case your interested).

I am always in a good mood when the Saints are winning (they slumped when I was sick and are now coming into good form like myself!!) I fell asleep listening to the game last Saturday and thought that we had lost by 4 points. I felt quite deflated and kept trying to get an update throughout the night ..... to no avail. I was very pleased to hear in the morning that it was a bad dream and we had won by 17 points!) All that wasted angst for nought.

My lovely neighbour Anna, and fellow dog walker, introduced me to a very secret path in the Darebin Parklands that leads to a lovely sheltered natural rocky area next to the creek and is a real sun trap on these winter days. It was meant to be on the proviso that I did not tell a soul. Sorry Anna! No body goes down there and you feel like you are all alone out in the bush with lots of sun and birds and the water and best of all no snakes because it winter. I took Danny and Bridget down there yesterday on their Curriculum free day and they loved it ... Danny was having a little Tom Sawyer moment by the rushing creek (we are reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer at the moment and he's right into it !!! I think it makes him feel less naughty and rather superior as naughty Tom and Huck creep out of houses at midnight, go to cemeteries with dead cats and pull hair in church etc etc!!)

I also received a fabulous "present" from the Mercy 8 (Julie C. Julie T. Katrina, Jan, Chris, Catherine, Denise and Lisa ) who have given me and the family a 2 week holiday on Queensland, return air fare and enough cash to splash to ensure every theme park and restaurant on the Gold Coast is well frequented. I was the guest of honor at a wonderful dinner and heard all about their Movie night and Camber well market stall. Whilst they made it sound like they had a ball I know it was an enormous amount of work. So thank you once again. Mercy people are very special ( that includes ex Mercy!!)

We are going to have a ball and I have a picture of the beach that I look at in the kitchen when I'm cooking. They gave me a shoe box full of money and Danny's eyes nearly popped out of his head when he opened it. Needless to say the money was solemnly "counted" about a hundred times by Danny and I am pleased to say he resisted the urge to pinch a little along the way (see I told you he was better than Tom and Huck!!) He was very disappointed when I took it to the bank for safe keeping.

I have to go now and check if Miss Bridget is in bed. She was last seen "straightening " her hair by the heater in the bathroom because it was crinkly after being in plaits!! She thinks I am very mean because I wouldn't let her watch Neighbours tonight. We have a TV free policy on school nights. Then on Monday Bridget smiled beautifully and said "Excuse me mum do you think I could possibly watch Neighbours just this once please because there is going to be a wedding tonight ... " How could I resist? Then the next night. "Excuse me mum after the wedding there was a terrible car crash on the way home and we find out tonight if they are alive or dead..... and so it goes on and on and on!!I can remember HATING my mum for brief periods when she didn't let me watch whatever show I was addicted to at the time. The injustice of it all.

When I speak to you next time I will be in my next phase ..... living each day and remembering how lucky I am to be alive to enjoy it .

I thank all of you for your support and love during this time ... I have felt very connected and that has made it much easier to get through. My world is full of very kind people and I am very lucky.

Regards
Pauline