Hello Strangers

So…. It’s been a long time since I wrote a proper post for this blog and, I have to confess, it’s been deliberate. It’s very hard to write cheerful and positive things when your heart is breaking. At the beginning of June, my sister’s two year old son was diagnosed with stage four germ cell cancer. After nearly six months of sheer hell, yesterday my sister and brother-in-law were given the news we’ve all been praying for – he is officially in remission.

I cannot begin to explain the relief and elation we all feel (and a certain sense of numbness too), and I can’t begin to explain the awe I feel towards my sister and her husband. Cancer is a cruel disease at the best of times, but when it involves such small children, it’s especially heart-breaking. To witness your own child go through something so horrendous is nothing less than a living hell – the way they’ve coped has been little short of awe-inspiring.

When my nephew was first diagnosed, he was so poorly he spent two months in hospital with my sister by his side 24/7. As a family we all rallied round, and during my numerous visits there, I became obsessed with the doctors and nurses and volunteers on the oncology ward. How could they do the jobs they do, amid such suffering, and still keep their compassion? The more I obsessed about it, the more I became determined to write a book with the heroine as a female paediatric doctor (after all, who deserves to be swept off her feet more by a gorgeous billionaire than a woman who dedicates her life to making children better?). And so I wrote it. Spookily, that book (number four for Presents/Modern) was accepted on Wednesday, literally twenty-four hours before my nephew was given the all-clear. 

It’s come full circle now. We can breathe again.

Take care all xxx