Here’s to being here!

“Today you are you, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is youer than you.” – Dr Seuss

Tuesday 26 September, marked the 17th year of hearing the ‘R’ word for the first time. R for remission. I remember vividly the day and looking back I have no idea how I held it all together. 

The R chapter is there in the book to read and I am not going to revisit it. 

I have seen a lot of celebrations of being cancer free over the years and some of them involve the ringing of a bell. That wasn’t an option for me and I didn’t mind as it would have felt strange to me to being announcing to everyone in the day ward that I was cancer free while they were still in the midst of it. 

I remember back to the early days of being in the day ward for treatment and not having any idea about what was really happening – not understanding the how or the why of it all. The nurses and doctors did their best to ensure some level of privacy but I used to overhear things being said to other patients – things I wasn’t physically or mentally ready to hear. I used to have my ear phones in so as I could drown out some of the reality I wasn’t ready for at that time with some of my favourite songs and radio shows. 

In time I got over the fear factor and wanted to consume every answer to every frequently asked question about my cancer. I even managed to come up with some that had never been asked before! 

Now, 17 years later I am in still in and out to the hospital. I am not a member of the day ward club any more but I pass it once every few months when I attend hospital for a check up and a chat with my consultant. I am always grateful to get in and out again with no more than a glancing brush past the top of the day ward where the really serious, sad and heavy duty treatments and conversations are taking place every day. 

So I type this with an attitude of gratitude for 17 years of memories and mischief made. 

I honestly thought back then I might not get to do a tiny fraction of the things I have done. I am happiest to have been able to be part of the lives of my children. It’s not the milestone moments but the millions of tiny little day things that have made up the last 17 years.

I love our Dungeons and Dragons sessions. Our board games (just not Monopoly) and Wii games. The movies we have watched together in movie fests – introducing them to all the great 80s movies and passing on my love of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and all sorts of comedies. 

I have seen both of them through primary and secondary school. They were so young and so hard done by when I was diagnosed. Cathal was 2 and Emma was 9. How unfair a hand to be dealt. But they have borne it brilliantly and living with a Mam who had battled a bit has given them a great outlook on life that and a wonderfully kind and compassionate streak towards the world around them. 

As for himself. He’s the Rock! There’s no quote I can borrow that will do him justice. 

None of this was promised or guaranteed, It’s the same with all cancers. There’s the medicine, there’s the personality and the will and I also believe there’s a large dose of luck involved in it all. 

So here’s to being here! 

B 

PS Not sure what happened to the first of these posts but it went off on a trip into cyberspace. Apologies if you receive this twice.

The Life Lists Podcast

Episode One

The first episode of our mother/daughter podcast is here and was recorded when we thought we wanted to call our podcast The Podcast Our. We have since changed our name to The Life Lists but this episode captures the essence of the LISTS concept and so we wanted to keep it. 

In this episode we talk about the list of things that make us cry as they relate to our own story.

Remember the episode of Friends? The one where Joey has to put a copy of the book Little Women into the freezer as he doesn’t want to read the part leading up to the sadness about Beth?  Well our list is like that.

We talk about our family story of living with cancer and how this diagnosis changes the way we view things in life from books, movies, songs and life itself.  

[Notes: The song we fail miserably to remember is called ‘Heaven’s Not Too Far’ by We Three and the actress we equally fail to remember is Abigail Breslin!]

Have a listen to Episode One here.

Paddy Drumm and the Lavally Lisheen children in Gort

Grief is the price we pay for love.

‘If you make me bread and jam, I will say thank you’, Paddy would say with a cheeky grin to the neighbours in their kitchens as he passed by and played with friends in Gort, Co Galway. It was 1943 and Paddy was four.  He was the much-loved eldest son of my Grandmother Mary Elizabeth Drumm and my Grandfather Michael Drumm. He was big brother to my father, also Michael Drumm. 

Paddy was a character. He was known around the whole of Gort. He was feisty and gorgeous and his adoring Mam always said you could tell he would grow up to be one of those ‘fine men of the world’. He would charm the bees and he charmed quite an amount of jam from the other mammies.

My grandparents lived simple lives. Grandad was in the army and my grandmother kept things together at home, collected eggs from her hens and sold them. Her own brown bread was legendary with two freshly baked round loaves made every other day.

Times were different back then and kids as young as three and four played safely on the streets of their town. It was their back yard. Nothing ever happened.

The accident happened in a split second. There was a builder’s yard and Paddy and his friends were always in and out for a look at the work. Paddy was standing where he shouldn’t have been when some of the load came off the truck as it was reversing into the yard. Paddy was hit by some of the blocks. His leg was badly injured. My grandparents took him to hospital where the leg was set in plaster.

My grandmother visited him every day he was in the hospital. She would cycle much of the journey and get lifts some of the way.  

Paddy had been in hospital for less than a week when a message came through to say that he was a bit more poorly than he should be. He was so ill that when Gran arrived she was initially refused entry. I still feel proud of her today when I recall what she told us she said to them – that no one would keep her from her child! 

The minute she saw her Paddy she knew he was dying. The doctor explained that there was sepsis. The plaster, while protecting the broken leg, had also disguised the gangrene that developed. 

Paddy, aged four, died from his injuries in his mother’s arms on a Summer day in 1943. 

A grief descended on the town.

‘Paddy, the Drumm boy’, people whispered. 

‘Paddy, the bread and jam boy’, the other Mammies said as they shook their heads and held their own children close. 

Paddy, the apple of the eye of the entire town.

Paddy, aged just four, was gone. 

The day of the funeral came. My grandmother didn’t go. She couldn’t go. It was not unusual in those days for the men folk to take care of things like that. Paddy was taken in his small white coffin to a burial ground called Lavally Lisheen just outside Gort where many other infants were buried. 

There was no inquest into the accident. No inquest into the medical care.  But some months later, there was a quiet transfer request put into the army HQ and my grandparents left Gort with their infant son Michael. Staying where Paddy had died was just too much for them to bear.

They moved to the other side of the country and with no car, there was no weekly visit to the graveyard, no monthly visit. We never understood why. My grandmother spoke about Paddy all her life and we knew his story well from we were little. Even when we had our own cars and could have taken her, she never asked to go to see him.

And yet, his name was one of the last on her lips when she died in 2006. She told me she was going home to Paddy and to her husband Michael – it was a reunion she had longed for her whole life. 

A phone call to my father in 2019 from Gort was a huge surprise. They had tracked him down through the local Garda Station in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, from an old newspaper article with his name as Garda Mick Drumm.

The call was from a local historian to share the news that the local community of Gort had come together and had reclaimed the burial ground which had been overrun by thick brambles for decades.  They wanted permission to refurbish Paddy’s grave and to repair the headstone which had bent over with time. They also wanted my father to be there for a special event in August. 

A road trip was necessary and so my son Cathal, Mum and Dad and myself set off to Lavally Lisheen just outside Gort. The graveyard was down a long and winding track that could just about be classed as road. The graveyard itself was really just a hollow in the ground adjacent to a train track. 

We reviewed the old grave – three generations of family seeing it for the first time. It was ornate and decorative with four pillars, metal bars almost fencing it in and a beautiful Celtic Cross. We agreed the work and said we would be back for the celebrations by the community later that Summer.

Two months later we were all back in the graveyard for the blessing and service. Paddy’s grave was the centrepiece of the day, beautifully restored. All the other graves were flat stones on the ground and some were names on beautiful marble and stone slabs secured on a new memorial wall. It was surreal to be back 76 years after Paddy was laid to rest there. After decades of no one visiting the graveyard was packed with the sounds of voices of all generations, and the laughter of children caught on the wind.

The son of the man who owned the yard where Paddy’s accident took place heard that we were in Gort. He asked if my father would go and see him. He did. The man said his family never really got over the accident and that his own father had taken the guilt to his grave. We finally solved the mystery of why Paddy had such an ornate grave –  the man who owned the yard where the accident had happened built the finest memorial to Paddy that my Gran could never visit.  There was healing in the conversation between my father and that man. 

Back at Lavally Lisheen burial ground, there were prayers, music and poetry and the names of all of the children that were buried there were spoken aloud for the first time ever. There was tea and sandwiches provided by the townfolk. It was like a wake for Paddy and the other children.

As the crowds left and the sun started to set on Paddy’s grave, the Seamus Heaney Poem Mid Term Break came to mind, especially the lines:

“He lay in a four-foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars…..

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.”

Sleep well Paddy, the boy who never grew up. The uncle I never knew. 

It takes a village to raise a child and it took a village of people, of family,  to give you back your name. 

ENDS

Paying his respects to his brother Paddy

My mother Margaret and my Dad Michael

The beautiful celtic cross

Word count: 1030 

Portrait of the artist

Before late 2019 I had never painted a single thing. I had been your average scribbler and doodler in school but was encouraged to do music rather than art at the end of first year in secondary school. Apparently, I wasn’t really cut out for the art!

It was a shame as I always felt it was important to balance the heavier subjects like maths and geography with the more arty and cultural ones like music and art. Not that the exams were easier but it changed the pace of a day of learning.

Years later I would often colour something in chalk on the wall of one my kids’ bedrooms. I did Elmer the Elephant which was easy as he really is just a blob with lots of squares of different colours. I was also copying from my son’s picture book.

I would doddle and attempt to ‘colour in’ with the kids and I always found it quite satisfying. Then again I still love Lego.

It was Summer 2019 and for some reason I picked up a pack of acrylic crayons and started to draw a pear. It came out ok. Then I drew a few more things and they were okay but I decided sure I would have a go at some paint. I headed up to Art and Hobby with no idea of what to get or what I would paint with. I started with a sketch pad and some acrylic paint.

For the next few months there were quite a lot of failed blobs that were supposed to be sea scapes and landscapes. I knew better than to try portraiture – who would I be kidding?

I stuck to a restricted palette of colours and kept going. My family surprised me with a proper easel for my birthday that year. I was delighted but also daunted as this was becoming something that we were investing in. No pressure. I added to my brush collection and my paint collection. I grabbed a corner of the conservatory as that’s where the light was the best and set myself up there.

I played around with sunflower and dandelion paintings and eventually tried oil painting. Several good tops and trousers have been ruined in the process but I am now a happy ‘oil on canvas’ painter.

I was so happy to have the art to take my mind off the madness of a global pandemic. I was able to retreat to the ‘studio’ and spend an hour or two painting. Initially, I would bristle if someone made a comment about ‘oh another seascape’ or ‘oh another straight lined painting’. I wonder did Van Gogh have to put up with that?

In January of this year I decided to take some proper art lessons onSaturday mornings. I was petrified by the idea of having to show my art to complete strangers and to a really gifted artist named Reza. But from January-April it became my thing to do for myself on a Saturday morning. We started at 10am and went on until about 12.30pm. It was one on one and group work. I would get to Naas early and go to the French cafe and order a latte and a slice of the most gorgeous lemon meringue. It was bliss. Then it was over to art school.

The advice Reza gave me was to slow down, step back, pause and not to be afraid! Lessons for life too if you think about it.

I was thrilled with the first panting (below) I produced under his encouragement. I really disliked the second one I did but I was learning how to use techniques like palette knife work etc. The third and fourth were two of my best to date (bottom of the page).

After 16 lessons I decided to take a break to see what might come out when I am by myself. I re-did one or two of my old pantings and changed them fundamentally after Reza’s art and life lessons. I have even decided that I will frame one or two of the paintings.

I have been brave enough or maybe cheeky enough to send small canvas paintings to my best friend. She tells me it is displayed on the book shelf.

I would love to get enough paintings together to eventually have a modest show. I will also go back and do some more lessons in the weeks or months to come.

I wish I had been painting all these years! I really wish that.

I will try and make up for all the lost years and I will fail, but I will enjoy myself while failing along the way.

B x

Painting 3: Cottage in the bog after Kenneth Webb

Painting 4: After Monet

Living life to the full

I thought I had best pop on and revive this blog. I recently finished up a volunteering project that took up a lot of my free time and so I admit I neglected this blog. Now that I have my writing time back I intend to get a little bit better at posting here more regularly.

So how are you?

It’s been quite a while since I said hi. Who knew a global pandemic was on the horizon? I really hope that you avoided it! I avoided it all the way through by keeping my distance, wearing my mask and just when I thought it was all over, I picked it up on a work trip to Rome in June 2022. I was pretty sick with it but thankfully came through it with the support of jelly, pot noodle and lucozade. Before I was finished with it I passed it on to Bryan and Emma!

Since I last wrote I have changed jobs, have finished doing school runs and lunches as both kids are now well and truly through secondary school and well into college. I have become an auntie again to an adorable little boy called Oisín.

I have taken to art and will add a thread to this blog to share some of my average and really terrible pieces of acrylic and oil painting.

This is a very quick lunchtime hello. I will get in later and give the blog a lick of paint and some new carpet.

It’s nice to be back.

B

xxxxx

Malta

I was in Malta in June for our annual meeting of media officers and spokespersons from Bishops’ Conferences across Europe. We were 50 participants from 27 countries meeting together from Monday 17 until Wednesday 19 June. It was my 10 or 11th such meeting but my first time on Malta.

I flew out on Sunday 16 June on the one flight going from Dublin to Malta that day. It was uneventful, which is the way I like my flights. I will tell you about a Ryanair Berlin flight experience another time that involved us having to call the airport police upon landing back in Dublin.

I used the opportunity on the flight over to catch up on some reading – a nice holiday read that I completed in the 3 hours and 40 minutes it took for the flight. The book is Still Me by Jo Jo Moyes. It’s the first book of hers that I have read. It was grand really. I found myself slightly invested in the main character but a little bit more invested in the apartment building and the elderly neighbour with the dog. However, I can just visualise these characters coming to life on the big screen.

Anyway, back to Malta where I bumped into two colleagues from Switzerland at the airport and we shared a taxi from the airport to the hotel and after check in had a quick bite of dinner in a small Pizza place in Valetta.

We stayed in the Hotel Excelsior which was a more than a pleasant surprise as usually we stay in a monastery or a seminary. It was dark when we got to the hotel so it was early Monday morning before I had a chance to have a proper look at the facilities of the hotel and the view out across the harbour which was spectacular.

It was a breakfast of champions with miniature hash browns, bacon, baked beans [a favourite] and all the breakfast pastries you could wish for. There was fresh fruit and pancakes or omelettes made to order.

Several mini hash browns later I went back to the room, grabbed my swimsuit and headed off to the pool where I only intended to stay for half an hour. Three hours later I was still by the pool reading up on my notes ahead of the one pm start of the meeting. There was no time for lunch as I grabbed a shower and a quick change of clothes – work suit and make up and it was off for the start of the meeting.

We were hosted for our meeting by the Archdiocese of Malta in the Curia (HQ) which is a beautiful building with a creamy facade that seemed to sparkled in the blistering sunshine and the 36 degrees celscius heat. It is an old building belonging to the Jesuits now in the care of the Archdiocese of Malta.The walls of the room were covered in frescos and it was wonderfully cool and air conditioned which was welcome to someone who had come from 9 degrees celsius weather in Ireland the day before.

The meeting is organised each year by the CCEE  and the theme this year was on Crisis Communication, something those of us working in Communications and PR know quite a bit about. Over three days we would hear from speakers and have a chance to chat together and to share experiences on this topic.

Each day began with Lauds, included a beautiful celebration of the Eucharist and ended with Vespers. The Mass and prayers were multilingual.

Our Vespers and Mass on the first day took place in St John’s Co-Cathedral which is a beautiful space that boasts not one, but two Carravagio paintings which I was transfixed by, even through the lens of my iPhone.

This pic was taken by the official photographer and capturing me as I captured pics became a bit of a standing joke during the trip. Still it was lovely to have someone else behind the camera as I normally come home from a trip with loads of pics of everyone but me. The photographer is Ian Noel Pace and he also operated a drone camera for some of the events we completed while in Malta so we really do have a 360 degree memory of the event.

On day two of the meeting we left the hotel early and would not return from our meeting, dinner and Mass until 11pm that night. Even though the hotel has a 24 indoor pool, it was too late, even for me, for a midnight swim. Instead it was Netflix and chill back in my room as I poured over some of the main points from day two of the meeting.

We went to Mdina for Mass on Day two where we had a chance to visit the tomb of Saint Paul and where we had Vespers. Then a short walk later through the streets of Mdina and we arrived at the beautiful Church where Archbishop Sciculna celebrated Mass for us – mostly in English this time – but with some of the prayers in Italian, Latin and French. I read the bidding prayers.

After the Mass we were hosted by the Archbishop in a restaurant close to the church in Mdina where we got a chance to chat to colleagues from across Europe about our work, our families and life in general. Our table was also engaged by the recent Chernobyl documentary as we had a colleague from Ukraine with us.

A wonderful harpist played in the background and as I played a mental ‘name that tune’ game I recognised the Game of Thrones theme tune; Ed Sheeran, Paul Simon and Adele as well as Danny Boy.

Wednesday morning was another early start as we were collected at 8.15am for Mass in the Curia. This was another multi lingual celebration of Eucharist with music and singing provided by a local choir.

The final part of the meeting saw us joined once again by Archbishop Sciculna who encouraged us in our work as communicators calling it an important mission for the Church.

We concluded the meeting with a very informal and simple lunch at the Curia and then we had some free time before meeting up again for a tour by boat around all the parts of the island. We were shown the dry dock, the cruise ships the size of floating cities, the old and the new, as well as the places where scenes from Game of Thrones and Gladiators was filmed. We were shown many more splendid churches [there are 366 of them to see on Malta].

We left the boat and the harbour behind and some colleagues said their goodbyes.

There was a little bit of time for a swim and then a walk around some of the streets as well as a night time look down over the harbour. As the shadows dropped in there was a gorgeous quality to the light against the buildings and the sky.

A simple pizza at a small restaurant in and then back to the hotel to pack.

Work was done and with my flight back not departing until 3pm on the Thursday, I spent the last morning by the beautiful pool and had a dip in the Mediterranean.

It was a great meeting in many ways – it was great to catch up with colleagues from other countries and to meet new people. Our hosts were warm and welcoming and nothing was too much trouble. I said as much in the short video interview I was invited to do on the last night. Some of the subject matter considered during the meeting was challenging but it was important to have the opportunity to speak together as European colleagues.

I really didn’t want to leave Malta. As we took off I promised myself that I would go back.

If you haven’t been I urge you to add it to your travel list because of the people, the place,  the pace, the food, the friendliness, the sights, the sea and the sun!

Go visit Malta!

Brenda

xx

 

 

Details:

I flew Ryanair direct from Dublin to Malta.

I stayed at the Hotel Excelsior which is gorgeous – book in advance and check out the deals too – they have great facilities and a huge variety of rooms and packages.

 

‘Herself’ the Book Tuber

Yeah that’s a thing apparently – book tubers! These are people who review books [with or without spoilers] on YouTube. You learn something new every day.

Anyway this is a quick post because ‘herself’ as I call her – my daughter Emma – has created her first book tube video and a new channel on YouTube called The Disreputable Reader.

The book she has reviewed is a Young Adult Fantasy called Sorcery of Thorns and this is the video 

If you like it you might give it the thumbs up and leave her a comment of encouragement on YouTube.

As ever I think it’s great as she speaks so confidently and with such passion.

That’s it for now.

Brenda

xx

 

 

12 years a survivor

“Today is life–the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”
– Dale Carnegie

On this day 12 year’s ago [9 July 2007] I received an autologous stem cell transplant in the hope that it would give me a new lease of life after being diagnosed in January of the same year with an incurable cancer called Multiple Myeloma.

The Science Bit

Myeloma is a type of cancer that develops from cells in the bone marrow called plasma cells. Bone marrow is the spongy tissue found inside the inner part of some of our large bones. The bone marrow produces different types of blood cells. Myeloma can develop wherever there are plasma cells hence the name Multiple Myeloma.

Each year in Ireland approximately 250 people are diagnosed with multiple myeloma and 170 succumb to their disease.

An autologous stem cell transplant uses healthy blood stem cells from your own body to replace your diseased or damaged bone marrow. An autologous stem cell transplant is also called an autologous bone marrow transplant.

Using cells from your own body during your stem cell transplant offers some advantages over stem cells from a donor. For example, you won’t need to worry about incompatibility between the donor’s cells and your own cells if you have an autologous stem cell transplant.

An autologous stem cell transplant might be an option if your body is producing enough healthy bone marrow cells. Those cells can be collected, frozen and stored for later use.

Autologous stem cell transplants are typically used in people who need to undergo high doses of chemotherapy and radiation to cure their diseases. These treatments are likely to damage the bone marrow. An autologous stem cell transplant helps to replace the damaged bone marrow.

The Reality

That’s the science bit in relation to the stem cell part of the treatment which also has an amount of advance prep and treatment that in my case took almost six months.

The process of the transplant meant being in isolation in a hospital room away from family and friends and the outside world for a month.

Despite reading and researching all the treatments and side effects I was still unprepared for the sheer awfulness of the treatment but I had no choice if I wanted to live.

At the time of diagnosis we asked what would happen to me if I didn’t have the treatment and they told us that I would succumb to the disease quite quickly. I could not allow that to happen as had so much life left to live and I was not going to risk having to say goodbye to my kids Emma (who was nine at the time) and Cathal (who was only two).

So I had the treatment – it’s well documented else where on this blog so I have no intention of revisiting it. But, it was horrendous and there were times during it that I felt too weak to fight.

A lasting memory from the treatment was the sheer will power it took every day to do the most simple of things like getting up off the bed, walking to the shower and washing myself. There were offers of help when I was literally too weak to stand but I used to sit on the bed sometimes for over a hour doing the actions in my head and waiting for my body to catch up with what I was trying to do – walk to the shower.

I had every other side effect going. I lost my voice at one point. I dropped four stone in weight during the month of treatment and went down by five dress sizes. I was unrecognisable coming home after more than a month in hospital in the early days of August 2007.

But the transplant worked and so far I have received 12 years of complete REMISSION. I am really one of the lucky ones as I know many people who were with me on the myeloma journey that have succumbed along the way.

The past 12 years have been full of good times and a few blips along the way. As a Myeloma survivor, I have a somewhat compromised immune system and I don’t react the same way as someone with a health immune system does to things like a cold or the flu. I was plagued in the early years post-transplant with infections that took hold and that I had to be hospitalised for. I also had a Pulmonary Embolism in 2009 and was pretty lucky to survive that.

If I was a cat I reckon I would have used up more than half of my nine lives.

Whilst I am in remission, I have never been let totally off the hook by my doctors. I used to see them fortnightly, then monthly, then bi-monthly, and now I see them for a full check up every three months. Some people might see that as a chore but I see it as a security blanket. It does mean butterflies every three months as I await the results, but those butterflies have thus far always evaporated into little flutters of relief and joy.

Cancer changes everything

You don’t often get to read a huge amount of the detail of a cancer survivor’s story – you get the headlines without getting a real insight into the day to day practicalities. The devil is literally in the detail.

As someone diagnosed with cancer you temporarily have to stop planning everything from family holidays to career goals to the most routine of things – it all comes to a stop and you gradually have to build your life up again around the cancer.

Initially it’s around the treatment where you are managing sick leave, sick certs, drugs payment schemes, health insurance and what it does and doesn’t cover, hospital appointments. Then there’s the myriad of meds that are part of the treatment as well as learning the combination and sequence of each of the drugs, self-injecting when red cells are low etc etc

As a Mother with Myeloma you still have to also keep the home show on the road and ensure that all the normal day to day family things get done – books, uniforms and lunches. It’s important to keep family life as routine as possible.

You can be facing into the most serious of treatments of a given day and find yourself running around the house in the early morning looking for a lost science book or PE gear that has gone missing. It’s a strange juxtaposition of the normal versus the most abnormal life altering diagnosis.

I also had to temporarily give up work for a minimum of six months. The transplant hit me very hard and my return was delayed. Then when the plans were in place to go back before Christmas, I  got shingles and had to be readmitted to hospital. That meant more re-ordering and readjusting.

I thought that having Myeloma would mean that I would have have to give up on my job ambitions and that I would always be looked at as the person with the serious cancer.

Career dreams. Life dreams. Family dreams. Relationship and marriage dreams. Holiday dreams were all put on hold while we absorbed the seriousness of the diagnosis and tried to get answers about how long I might have to live.

There is no exact answer to that question about how long I might have to live when it comes to Myeloma as it is such an ‘individual’ disease and each person presents a little differently than the person before and responds in different time lengths to a transplant.

But here I am 12 years a survivor.

Career dreams. Life dreams. Family dreams. Holiday dreams were all put on hold while we absorbed the seriousness of the diagnosis and tried to get answers about how long I might have to live.

I am go grateful that I did not give up on myself or any of my dreams back in 2007 because each and almost everyone of them has been gradually reignited during my remission.

Memories, Milestones and Dreams

It’s been 12 years of amazing family milestones from primary school graduations to secondary school and into college. My daughter has graduated from college and I got to be there for her! I am getting to watch my children grow up. What an amazing thing to be able to say.

I am also blessed in my marriage with my husband Bryan who has stood by me through the sick days and has stood even closer on the dreadful days during the past 12 years. The dreams we had to put on hold are coming back to life too and we are genuinely looking towards retirement and more adventures together.

I have also fulfilled so many other dreams from travelling to see more of the world and more of this beautiful country I live in, from taking up new hobbies and being able to get back to walking and swimming again. I have joined a choir and sung for the President twice. I have had a piece of art in a 1916 exhibition that was hosted in the Botanic gardens. I have climbed a mountain, joined the scouts, taken up knitting, painting and gardening. I have experienced a multitude of new things and loved every moment of it. I have made lots of mischief too with the kids.

I had a concert with Brian Kennedy in our living room. I wrote a song and almost had a Christmas number one. I helped develop a Pope emoji, met Pope Francis and made him laugh!

I have also fulfilled many career dreams. While I am happily in the same job I was in when I was diagnosed I have also gotten to achieve so many of my career dreams from representing the Church at various Irish and international events; from being a published author with two books coming out this year relating to my work in the Church and digital media. I have visited the Somme as part of a centenary pilgrimage and made my first mini documentary. I also became a radio presenter/broadcaster in my forties and had two one hour weekly radio shows that I was part of for seven years. But the biggest event in my career to date came about  last year when I got to be the Media and Communications Manager for the World Meeting of Families 2018 and the Papal Visit to Ireland. Back in 2007 immediately after diagnosis, I never thought I would be adding that to my CV.

Advances in Myeloma treatment

For those with Myeloma it’s important to know that 12 years is a long time in medicine and the side effects that I went through are probably better able to be managed now. There are also all sorts of new treatments and drugs available for those of us with Myeloma and in many ways Ireland is up there on the world stage in terms of holding its own with advancements in treatment.

There is life after cancer

As I celebrate the 12th anniversary of my transplant and my 12th year of remission, I want to impress upon those with cancer and their loved ones that there is life after cancer, there are great advances in research and treatment and if you want it there is a career for you after cancer too.

But most importantly after a cancer diagnosis there is always hope …… and a time when you can dream your dreams into reality once again.

Brenda

XXXX

 

 

Busy Bee

This is just a quick update to say hi and sorry for not posting for such a long time but I have been a Busy Bee for the past couple of years.

Someone contacted me on Twitter and told me that he and his wife have found the myeloma section of my blog to be of great use to them after a diagnosis. I said, “I had better write an update to the blog in case people think I am dead”.  He said he would love to see the blog come back to life.

So, here I am. I will finish the book chapters and get back to writing some more MUSINGS and I am also adding this new section called Busy Bee where I hope to post blogs about day to day life, travel and other adventures I am involved in.

So again, sorry for the radio silence but I do hope to be a more diligent blogger starting from now.

Brenda

 

Don’t ignore audio because video hasn’t quite killed the radio star

Remember when video content was supposed to kill the written word and create a more visual web?  Remember when video was supposed to have killed the radio star? Once again it seems the ‘experts’ may have written audio off prematurely.

In our digital age where time is the new currency, there is an increasing pressure to take advantage of every second. As a result, it’s the rise of audio and the evolution of podcasts that is now taking centre stage.

Many people are also turning to audio assistants in their daily lives like Siri, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, and Google, because it is has become easier to search for information using our voice. Mainstream users are already getting comfortable with speaking to their devices rather than tapping things out on a keyboard or a phone.

It was back in 2005 that Apple first added podcasts to iTunes back in 2005 but we are only just beginning to understand the value of the human voice. Engaging with an audience on the other side of the world by beaming your voice into their ears is now possible for anyone via a podcast. But one of the reasons why podcasts have suddenly become so popular is that they are almost effortless on the part of the consumer and they can be engaged with while you are doing something else like exercising, commuting or walking the dog!

Is audio replacing music? Not quite. We all still love the idea of being able to access any song or any album at the touch of a button but Spotify continues to add more podcasts to their platform.

Podcasts are also finally bursting out of the limitations of iTunes and available on other platforms such as Amazon Echo and Spotify.

The Vatican is getting in on the audio act too with a new APP to help listeners to tune into the Pope now available for mobile devices in five languages.

Created by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, the app “Vatican Audio”  can be downloaded free from the App Store and from Google Play.  One can also scan the QR code above to open the link to the download page of “Vatican Audio”.  After installing, all you need to do is to choose your language and simply listen.

Pope Francis, who generally speaks in Italian, can be heard live in Spanish, English, French, German and Portuguese.  When he speaks in his native Spanish, the app also provides the audio in Italian.

Pilgrims and visitors attending papal events in Saint Peter’s Square can also follow the Pope in the five languages.

This service is in addition to the live broadcasts in different languages already available online and on radio.

Search for “Vatican Audio” in the App Store and Google Play as a free download and tune in to Pope Francis.

This is a wonderful development that will now bring Pope Francis even more followers on the various digital platforms that he is present on.

I read a quote online recently where someone described the way we consume information now, saying that we are all raconteurs now that share our unique stories around virtual campfires. Video may attempt to kill the radio or audio star in the future and platforms will continuously change, but how we consume content remains largely the same.

Official hashtags for WMOF2018 and a new Pope emoji 

Many will receive this September issue of Intercom Magazine in August just as we are about to begin the World Meeting of Families 2018. The official hashtags for linking in with the visit are #popeinireland and #papaineirinn

There will also be a Pope emoji which will activate during the visit of Pope Francis when these official hashtags are used on Twitter.

For more on the digital output of WMOF2018 follow us on Twitter and Instagram as @wmof2018 and find us on Facebook as World Meeting of Families 2018

This article is courtesy of Intercom Magazine, in which I write the monthly Get Connected column. This article was first published in the September 2018 issue of the magazine.