Last week was not the best week. My sister, who is younger than me, has had some health problems and they diagnosed her as having a growth in her bowel. They’ve already removed some of her bowel and said she was okay. She’s not been well at all and kept going back to the specialist only to be transferred to another specialist. They’ve been pushing her from one specialist to another instead of dealing with her until eventually she’d had enough. They have finally given her a complete MRI and found that she has extensive bowel cancer. The ‘plan’ is for her to have major surgery and have her bowel removed in 3 weeks’ time. If they’d treated her properly in the first place, and taken her concerns seriously, I can’t help but feel this may not have been necessary. Our Mother is obviously extremely worried, as are all of us.

With our family history of cancer – both maternal grandparents died from cancer, my Father died from cancer, my maternal cousin has had cancer of the womb – you’d think they would take family history into account and take health problems seriously!

My Grandmother suffered a long and lingering death when she had cancer, and after seeing how much she suffered despite having treatment, my Grandfather kept his own cancer secret for a long time and refused any and all treatment. It was only towards the end that we found out he had cancer too.

I had to ‘nag’ my sister to insist that they took her seriously and now this. I reminded her that we’d lost our father last year, and that I wasn’t ready to lose her too. Fingers crossed that she will come out of this okay.

For myself, and speaking totally selfishly, the only ‘comfort’ I have is that every single one of them was, or is, at some time a heavy smoker whereas I never smoked. I’ve tried to get my other sister who suffers from bronchial problems and pneumonia problems to give up smoking, and also my brother who has already had a heart attack. Maybe this will get them to rethink their dangerous habit? One can only hope…