Feeling very isolated with the loneliness of what is happening to us and the secrecy of it - if the children were smaller, or perhaps older, we would not have to protect them from the bush telegraph like this. But I suppose more than that we're protecting them from the truth for every second that they don't need to know it. I re-read today the email traffic from around the first summer of Rose's treatment and I get comfort again from the support of friends and family that we had then and can't have just now - I know it's out there and when we need it it will all be there again.
In the autumn we were referred to the Family Therapy unit at the Maudsley by our GP for the children to talk about what they have been through but this week Simon and I ditch the kids, go alone and tell our story. It's a place for the two of us to face the future together up close instead of trying to Christmas shop and drink our way through it. It's the most appalling hour since the day we were told but it's a tiny start at taking it out of its box and looking at it. Then we put it firmly back in its box and go home.
Tonight Felix decides to skip scouts, Simon is at his Christmas party hopefully seeking anaesthesia in alcohol, and the kids and I decide to light the fire, put on a dvd and open a big tin of quality street. Just as I am cooking supper and the kids are ballroom dancing around the kitchen Kathy, Rose's oncologist, phones from the Marsden. She wants to run through Monday's forthcoming meeting with the thoracic surgeon and remind me that Simon Jordan will not operate if the tumours have got bigger or more have grown since the first scan. Just in case it's slipped my mind.
