True love

We are in a tiny village on the outskirts of Santiago do Cacem. This is my mother's home town. Very quaint and sweet. She has been looking to buy a 'monte' (small holding/farm) here for about ten years. About a year ago her and my step dad found a lovely house with some land not too far from town and bought it for a rock-bottom price because of the 'credit crunch' and as it had been on the market for about 5 years. They put forward an offer I suggested as a joke (it was SO low) and the seller was obviously desperate and accepted it.

A lot of work has to be done on it. I hated it at first but it's now growing on me as I can see familiar things around me that belonged to my mom.

The problem is that she gets fed up with coming here now. Alain bought it as kind of a 'symbol' of his love for her and her background. He would have never bought this huge project in the sticks had it not been her dream to have a house here and now she never wants to come! I feel so sorry for the guy - he has the patience of a saint!

So now they are downstairs watching the evening soaps - which I find deathly boring. Alain - who hardly speaks a word of Portuguese - sits through countless hours of dramatically ridiculous TV just to spend time with my mom. I remind you - he understands NOT A WORD!

Now if that's not true love then I don't know what the hell is...

What a day!

Wow! What an eventful day!

This morning started off very well. My mom was up before I was - full of energy and wanted to go and feed the ducks at the park. We both got dressed and then she changed her mind and decided she wanted to go swim instead. So I went down with her but didn't swim as haven't really groomed my ladybits well enough as wasn't anticipating swimming today in my teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini.

So I read my book whilst my mom swam - well paddled around as she can't swim all that well... Then she decided she was getting too hot so we came upstairs and I started to make lunch. It might be helpful to know that we live in a large apartment block in front of the sea with a communal pool. I was preparing for a tuna salad and cutting tomatoes and chatting to my little cousin Afonso who's 10 and...

Oops - I chopped off the tip of my left ring finger.

FFUUCCKK!!!!

It was just a flesh wound but it hurt SO much. My poor little cousin was busy telling me a story and you could tell he didn't know whether to carry on with his story or stop. So he carried on telling me his story.

Now I am someone who tends to get quite giggly when in pain. My aunt was also at home and I went to tell her what had happened and she ushered me to the bathroom and tried to find a plaster and stop the bleeding as it was bleeding like a stuck pig. She then asked me if I had kept the other bit - by that I think she meant the chunk of flesh that I had cut off... My poor cousin promptly went to the kitchen and came back clutching the little bit of white flesh handing it out to me as if to say 'Did you want it?' My aunt wanted to put it in the plaster to see if it would grow back on. UM - NO - How repulsive? Chuck it in the bin!!! I wouldn't even touch it.

When I was convinced that the bleeding had been contained by the 6 plasters over my finger I went back to finish preparing the lunch before my mom got back. Poor little Afonso was following me around silently with a mop as the blood had just filtered through the plasters and was leaving a steady trail of drops on the floor.
Thank the Lord that my mother wasn't there or she would have FREAKED! She can be a bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to me.

They came back and continued making the lunch and I came to watch a bit of the sound of music DVD to cheer me up...

I had lunch. My step dad always puts LOADS of water in the salad dressing and I really don't like eating drowned salad. Anyway - we ate and then I went to watch some more of the DVD with my mother and cousin and went to have a little nap. I was determined to do as little as possible as a result of my injury as it's normally me ding EVERYTHING!

This evening I was determined to get at least 1 reader/follower for my blog.

These were the things I tried:

1. I tried to join a 'blog community' but ended up creating my own bloody community by mistake which no one joined

2. I tried to 'follow' loads of other bloggers in the hope that they would see me and take a look at my blog

3. I had a brainwave of joining a popular 'chat site' and messaging everyone to read my blog.

The third attempt at gathering followers had some hilarious repercussions.

I had this one guy - male009 trying to chat me up.

I asked him 'Do you blog?' and he asked me what that was and then went to the general chat page to ask whether blogging was some kind of new kinky sex technique! Oh my word - save me NOW!

I was trying to convince everyone to read my blog. Most people ignored me - some were real sweet and started chatting to me about their own personal experiences with cancer and family members with terminal illnesses and then there was this one guy and this is what happened...

I wanted to try and copy and paste the hilarious conversation between myself and the Serbian internal medicine doctor about my finger. But no joy... Poor guy he was so sweet. It's a real pity I can't share it with you.

Besides for about 99% of the people on there who were obviously out to get their freak on there were actually some real genuine people (all 2 of them - thanks Taylorrr and Serbian doctor man) who actually read through my whole blog and commented on it.

Goodnight nobodies

Love Apple x

The Jane Austin Book Club

Tonight's blog will be a short one.

Watched 'The Jane Austin Book Club' with my mother and Alain, my French step-father. A lovely film - I would give it 7.5 out of 10. It has encouraged me to read her books again as it was so long ago that I read an Austin novel.

My question for you is: how does one hold on to the special moments one shares with a loved one who's days on this earth are numbered? My mother spent most of today in bed. I cleaned the apartment and went to see her often to see how she was. We shared some jokes and some cuddles. As I was holding on to her I thought to myself 'How am I going to keep this moment with me forever? How do I preserve it in my head?' I often think about how things will be once she's gone. She told me today that she thinks she does not have long left.

My mother is being followed by the same Professor who treated Kylie Minogue for her breast cancer and being treated by a wonderful French oncologist at Hopital Tenon in the 20eme arrondissement in Paris. This oncologist has told her on several occasions that she is INCREDIBLY lucky to still alive and that it's a bit of a miracle. But that's my mother all over - a fighter and a survivor.

I really hope I manage to find a way to hang on to these special moments I am sharing with my beloved mother!

Goodnight

AA x x x

Routines etcetera

Caring for someone with a terminal illness can be very draining. Although I'm not in bad spirits... I have the idea stuck in my head of getting a dog. A small one. From the SPCA.


I will be moving into my new apartment at the end of August, at the same time as starting a new job (which I feel very under qualified for), caring for my mom and I just thought - let's throw an abandoned puppy that will crap everywhere for the first two weeks into the mix!


I'm trying to jazz up my blogging style as an attempt to get even 1 follower. Although, let's face it - who wants to read about a 24 year old and her dying mother. There are FAR more interesting things to read out there like Sarah's blog - far more sophisticated than mine and cheers me up no end. Check it out - www.sapporosarah.blogspot.com


Anyway - this blog was supposed to be about routines and how messed up they can get. In particular - how messed up my routine is at the moment. I tend to stay up very late keeping my mom company while she watches TV, either writing this blog or catching up with friends via but a lot of the time I search the web aimlessly trying to find something interesting to do or read. Eventually when my mother falls asleep on the sofa I try to wake her and get her into bed and go to bed myself. Consequently, I would wake exhausted and ended up sleeping in the day at the same times as my mother would sleep. Now when she goes to bed I am not very tired as have slept for several hours during the day and end up having to take one of hr sleeping tablets which make one feel really groggy in the morning. Hence the exhaustion or lack of now. It's a vicious cycle that I seem to have gotten into.


Taking mom for blood tests was hard today. There is no parking inside the hospital so we had to walk from a spot I found not so far away. They won't even let you drop people off inside and ten find a spot! She was very weak and had to hold on to me. We had to stop several times for her to rest. I am so strong for most things to do with her and he illness but little things just make the reality of her cancer too clear - she was frail today like an old lady. She has mentioned on several occasions that she is tired of life and fed up with her body. She gets 'electricity' in her legs and can't sleep because she's so restless. Tonight she's gone to bed with a headache (from brain tumours) and there's nothing I can do.


Have just heard her bedroom door open so will go and see if she's OK.


Until tomorrow - if I can be bothered to write to nobody!


Anonymous Apple x

Day 3

Today I took my mother to the South African Embassy in Lisbon. We are currently living near Lisbon and she is selling a flat she owned in Pretoria, South Africa. The experience was far too overwhelming for her. She was shaking and just couldn't seem to handle the experience. She goes out very rarely now and it was hard to see her like that today.

She seems to move between her bed and the couch although I'm not sure whether it is out of habit or pure discomfort and fatigue.

My step-father and my mother bought a small-holding in my mother's home-town near Santiago do Cacem and they go there for the odd weekend or few days. We went there for a night on Saturday and my mother seemed to have more energy while we were there. We even went for dinner at the neighbours house and saw the Brazilian Samba singer 'Martinho da Vila' in Santo Andre. I asked her at several points during the evening whether she wanted to go home but she said no, that she was enjoying herself. I'm happy she had such a nice time, although half of me was hoping she'd say she wanted to home as I was tired and uncomfortable sitting on the grass.

After we got home from the embassy today mom went straight to bed and looked awful. She slept the rest of the afternoon and my step-dad came home about 18:30. I made dinner for everyone - roast potatoes and ratatouille. I sat on the floor next to her bed to peel he carrots and potatoes to keep her company (the onions and garlic burning on the stove in the interim!) What was lovely was that most of the produce came from the small holding in Santiago. I will try to up load some picture of the veges etc.

Tomorrow is pre-chemo blood tests and he hospital and I hate going there. My mother is currently being treated at the Capuchos hospital in Lisbon. The blood test place is a like a cattle market. Rows of people waiting with their arms out to be pricked. No screens or curtains or bedside manner. I should be very grateful though as the treatment she is receiving now is so much better than the majority of the world receive. Although the treatment she received at Tenon in Paris was much better.

Oh well, I hope everything goes OK tomorrow. Her veins are all porous and the nurses now struggle to find veins for her and have to dig around a lot. She has been doing this for 7 years now. What a strong lady. What a fighter!

Goodnight

AA x x x

Getting to know us...

So today was a rather uneventful day in the life of mother and daughter so I will take this opportunity to tell you more about our relationship.

I refer back to the abnormality of our relationship, which I mentioned yesterday. My mother, born in Portugal, moved to South Africa when she was 20. She married my father, a rather British South African, when she was 25 and had me when she was 28. I don't think she ever wanted to have children. She was a young, extremely beautiful air hostess and was pushed into having a family by my father who had always wanted a large family.

They divorced when I was 3 years old, my mother was 28. We lived alone together in a small house in the suburbs of Johannesburg and I remember her to be a very kind and loving mother as a young child. She worked very hard to do her best to look after me but often lived the life of a single lady with many admirers. To this day that always made me feel rather uncomfortable. Although her boyfriends (and there were a few) were always nothing but lovely to me - she made sure of this. I enjoyed their attention and all the gifts they gave me to win her over. I can't say that she ever made me feel like a burden - she never did. She was away a lot on flights and took me on as many as she could without taking me out of school. I have just asked her about her studies and it turns out she was doing her Honours at that time too. I remember staying up late into the night writing her thesis.

The stresses of being a single working mother started taking their toll on her when the company she worked for underwent major changes while South Africa was coming out of the dreaded apartheid era. Her place at South African Airways was no longer secure and she was unhappy. She came home bad-tempered and used to take it out on me a lot.

I used to go and see my father who lived not too far away every other weekend. I hated going. My dad was OK but he remarried when I was 5 and my step-mother used to terrorise me. Literally. She was so unkind to me and that is when I learnt about unhappiness and fear and being inadequate. Things are different now but I remain very hurt and affected by some of the incidents that happened and my father's house.

I took the anger out on my mother and as she was going through her own - very difficult - stuff, our relationship deteriorated. As she still used to fly a lot and my step-mother refused to let my father look after me while my mother was away I stayed with my Nanna. And guess what? When it was time to go to Secondary school the step-mother arranged for the little girl to go off to boarding school. This broke my mother's heart. And broke my head, if it wasn't broken already.

In my first year of Secondary school my mother met a lovely French man called Alain and they have been together ever since. He had been more than a father to me and has been a wonderful companion to my mother.

They offered to take me out of boarding school as my mother stopped working for the airline but I was too scared of my father and my step-mother to object. So I stayed in boarding school and both my mother and I remained unhappy about it. I saw her only 4 days a month, as much as I saw my father and continued to take out my pain and suffering on her which made our relationship very difficult.

I always blamed her for our bad relationship but looking at it now - I realise it was probably more my fault than hers.

This is all I will write tonight.

Until tomorrow...

AA x

My first blog

At first I called it 'Maria Fernanda's Daughter' because that is her name. But then it felt uncomfortable, strange, like I was writing about someone I didn't know. I may as well have named it 'Marilyn Monroe's Daughter' for a name is a name but my mother is only mine so I had to change it to make me feel closer to her. A proximity that I am trying to hold onto, however badly, as she slips painfully through my fingers.

I am writing about my mother and her struggle with cancer. Partly, because I am finding it hard to sleep at night and have nothing to do and partly because I don't feel as though I am handling the situation as well as I could at times and feel the need to get it off my chest. Talk about it. But not to people who know me - they will judge me and say that they understand, but they don't. For there are people who have been through very similar, even identical situations, but not with my mother. You will understand better when I tell you more bout her. And I can tell you. You are allowed to judge me because you don't know me and I don't care, because I don't know you.

I will try not to make too many grammatical or spelling errors. I am no writer so keep that in mind while you are reading this.

You will find that my mood and the situation I find myself in will impact greatly on what I write about my mother on that particular day. I can sometimes be vile about her. Sometimes her behaviour is rather vile. She has always been this way but the cancer has made it worse. Heightened all the bad aspects of her personality and almost nullified all the good points. She can be wonderful and crazy and full of life too, or she was. She is the strongest woman I have ever met - a medical miracle ( so say her doctors). You need to know how strong she is - that is important.

I would like to say that I really love my mother. Unhealthy as our relationship has been in the past and continues to be now, at times, I do care for her very deeply and feel a great amount of pity for her.

I'm sorry that this first post has been rather morbid but hopefully I will be able to lighten it up a bit when we get to know each other better and I feel like you know a bit more about my situation.

Until tomorrow, or the next day,

AA x