I retire to my bed, and Dave takes Katy on her bike to cubs. They are doing a cycling badge. Dave is on his bike too. I realise, after she has left that she had no helmet on. Oops!
Martha joins me in my bed and is finishing her numeracy homework. It is very tricky because she is getting upset about not being able to write her conclusion to a problem solving question. If you add up the numbers of three adjacent houses, does the sum divide by three? Can you do it? Martha can do it, but then struggles to write down her final summary. We end up putting it aside, and I ask Martha what she would like me to do.
Martha wants me to come downstairs and sit with her on the sofa while she watches TV. This is very Martha, and of course, something of a pre-tumour routine. I would sit on sofa with her and watch TV. I agree to do this. We find ourselves watching a recording of Johnny English, which I found very funny (in a steroid kind-of-way). Martha finds me funny too.
Katy arrives home at the end of the film, which is perfect timing.
Martha asks me if I will read to her. Again, this is part of our pre-tumour routine. I say that I will but that I will have to sit on a chair in her bedroom. She suggests that I read to her in my bed, which of course works very well for me. She gets a new book - Cinder - and I begin reading it. The words are in very small type, so I ask Martha to find my reading glasses. They have a prism added to them (lots of lines across a clear piece of tape), which I happily remove. I no longer have double vision. My double vision was removed with Shirley. I read to her. When I finish, we talk about the book and she says that she doesn't get it yet, and neither do I! We agree that we will continue and see what we learn. Cinder is a robot and talented mechanic who has met a crown prince ...
Martha then asks me, when will I be better? "How many days, weeks, months or years?" Wow, what a question! I say that I am waiting to find out when I have an appointment at the hospital. At this appointment they will tell me what they found inside my head, and we will talk about how to make it better. I do not know yet what the treatment will be, but that I expect to be told that the tumour is malignant (cancer) and that I will need radiotherapy and chemotherapy. I say that I think I will be ill for the next 6 months. She asks how long have I been ill already, and I answer 3 months; Martha says, so you will be better in 3 months. Of course, I have to say no.
When Anna came to see me recently she suggested that we have a worry box. This is a little box that Katy and Martha can put any worries in, any questions in; they can put anything in it at any time, as I can. I bring up this idea for Martha.
Martha really likes the idea. She calls it an "ask it basket", which I believe they use in school for PSHE questions. She begins describing to me how we will use it. We can have a time when we look in the basket to see if there are any questions. Questions are anonymous. We can take it in turns looking and seeing if we can answer the questions ourselves. These are all great answers for me. While I talked with Katy she is very happy to have an ask it basket too. Returning to Martha, she has made a lid for the box. The box was given to her by my sister. It is a small wooden box with a lid that lifts up. The lid is now decorated with "worries: ASK IT BASKET".
Martha and Katy, I love you both.
Mummy xxxx
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