Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Hello All,

Update from me, things have settled down since our 'dog napping' saga. With the Christmas build up this December as gone very quickly. In the weeks leading up to Christmas I tried to keep busy sorting Iona's pressies and doing all the things us guys normally take for granted. Apologies if any men reading this and think hang on a minute I do as much as anyone!, but I admit I said that because I normally get off lightly on the Christmas organising. I'm not complaining though, it was a focus that took my mind of things.

Iona and I chose a lovely tree, she did a fab job decorating it. I thought I'd have to redo it once she was in bed but no, it looked fab.

Joan returned to Edinburgh a few days before Christmas with Iona, Laura and I went up on the 23rd. It was the first time in 9 years I was going to spend Christmas day with Laura! usually I'd see her just for a few hours. Laura gets on well with Helen ( Diarmids daughter) and they went out all day Christmas Eve shopping, well and a two hour lunch apparently!

Anna and Ed offered to do Christmas lunch and we all gathered at there house. Well done both of you, it was great. Dick Place would've been difficult without Vicky around on Christmas day. In fact it was extremely hard being in Edinburgh without her. I've never been there without Vic. I was awash with emotions. I miss her so much, and being up there it magnified this void. Time I know will heal. I have to believe that.

Iona was very excited I'm pleased to say though. The arrival of a fat man with a white beard, who drinks at every stop whilst in charge of reindeer's still did its magic. Christmas morning we opened all her presents from Father Christmas and the rest Anna's later. Iona is spending New Year with Joan. She loves being up in Edinburgh. Except maybe when Frankie finds a box of chocolates, eats 16!! yes 16 and gets dog sick. Not pretty.

Thanks for all your cards and messages of support. Diana, huge thanks to you for putting me in touch with Jo, great help. Next year will soon be upon us and I wish you all a very happy 2008. I will continue to blog, to keep you up to date with this new Journey.

Martin X

Dog Nappers!

Hi All

We had some drama here this weekend. Joan was out shopping on Friday afternoon, she’d taken Frankie with her, tied her up when she popped into a shop. When she came out after only being there for a minute or two, Frankie was nowhere to be seen. As luck would have it a community police woman was walking passed. Joan ran up to her and explained the dog was gone. Then to her utter horror the policewoman said she’d just seen a couple walking passed her with a small dog under his jacket!

They both searched in vain for this couple, but eventually had to stop as there was no sign of them. Joan was so upset. As we all were. So Joan call the local paper to see if they’d put a small piece about Frankie. Well when the reporter found out there was a very human side to this story he wanted pictures. And we thought if it was going to help, why not?

A photographer came round late on Friday night and took a pictures of Iona & Joan holding a picture of Frankie. He had to take a few pictures, because Iona wanted to smile! Not good for the heart strings a happy child who’s just lost her favourite dog in the whole wide world!!

On Saturday morning Joan, Iona and I went to the Gloucester Road with posters, and successfully persuaded shop keepers to put them in their windows. We all felt so helpless. Dogs home on standby. We managed the school Christmas fair.

No sooner had we got back home Saturday evening I had a call from a man saying he’d found Frankie that morning. He was very difficult to understand, I thought he sounded drunk. I did eventually get his address, only after he asked me about the reward! And saying my first offer wasn’t much! Now I wasn’t sure if I was being held to ransom, but we just wanted Frankie back. Could this 60 year old man be the mastermind behind it all? Or did he just find Frankie that moring? Paid him anyway.. 10 minutes later Frankie was in the back of my car going bonkers and licking Iona to bits!

Phew! Our emotions were absolutely shot! We were all over joyed to have her back. Joan has vowed never to leave Frankie outside a shop again.

The end!

The generosity from you all was amazing and you donated over £1,650 for St. Peters Hospice and £750 for Zimbabwe Association. Thank you.

I’m not bothering watching Sports personality this year doesn’t seem quite so interesting without V telling me who’s going to win and who shouldn't. Joan is helping so much at the moment which has taken a lot of pressure of me. Well, when she's not trying to get into the papers that is !

Hope you’re all ok.

Martin x.

Memorable Day

It's still quite unbelievable.. The cold fact that Vicky is no longer going to brighten up my days. Looking back over the last six weeks it all went so fast. It does really seem all blurry.
From some small sense of excitement of getting away for a holiday, to this bleak emptiness is really hard. Events unfolding, feeling so so out of control with no way of stopping any of it.

I am thankful for the support I received. I want to start naming you all, but then I run the risk of missing some people out. So I’ll just say a global thank to you all.

The Funeral was so hard. All week I talked myself into thinking I’d be ok. Soon as I arrived, surges of emotion welled up from deep. Glad I did that poem, without going to pieces.Phew that was tough. When I see acts of such kindness it really gets to me. Forgive me if I was a little vague at times but.. Can you imagine just how hard it is to remember all of you? It’s not easy when I knew that you were a really good friend of Vicky’s but I’d only met you once or twice!! And so many of you!! Some of you drove a long way to be there, early starts, we did appreciate it.

From the comments I received everybody thought it was ‘memorable’ it’s hard to use words like lovely, nice and great when you’re describing a funeral. But I know what people meant .Vicky did choose most of what happened on the day. That’s planning for you! And we did try not to waver from that. The people that spoke gave a different perspective from there experiences with Vicky and that gave a really interesting, sometimes funny but very personal interpretation of Vicky. I hope you agree it work well. Iona sat next to her best friend Orla. They didn’t move, just sat and listened. Fab.

I said earlier I didn’t want to thank anybody in particular but I do want to say something about Colstons School. It more that a place of learning for our children, or a great primary school. I certainly haven’t experienced anything like it. With out exception, all you Mums and Dads have been just fantastic. From offers of childcare, Food parcels, the visits, it goes on and on.. All of you with your love and genuine support has made this last year easier to endure. No pressure but I hope that continues.

A lot of you asked me about Iona, well at the moment we haven’t seen an out pouring of grief. She’s six. What can we expect? Who really knows? All we can do is be there when she does need support. Margot gave Iona a beautiful memory box today and a memory book. The book asked questions like what were mummies likes / dislikes. Favourite foods and more direct things regarding death and she wrote quite candid responses. It’s important she knows she has nothing to fear about her future, and with the help of our family and friends we know she has nothing to fear.

We haven’t had chance to sort all of your generous donations yet but will get back to you in the near future.

Martin X

Further Details

Thank you all who have sent such kind messages to us either online or in other ways. We have wanted to make the most of our farewell to Vicky and so with heavy hearts have turned our mind to her funeral arrangements. Like her we hope these will be a little different!

The funeral will be held at Memorial Woodlands, Earthcott Green, Alveston, Bristol on Saturday 24th November. You can find a printable map at http://www.memorialwoodlands.com/contactus.php. There will be a secular service in the chapel there, starting at 11am. After this Vicky's immediate family will then accompany her body to the local crematorium for a short committal ceremony, before we return to join you all.

We hope that everybody will stay and share the food and drink that will be provided in the reception rooms at Memorial Woodlands until and after we rejoin you. We intend to provide mementos of Vicky's life and exploits there and hope that you too will bring along anything you would like to share that will help keep her memory with us. There will also be a Book of Remembrance for you to add tributes.

We have the whole of the Memorial Woodlands site for ourselves until 5.30pm, so hope to get the chance to see you all.

Instead of sending flowers we would prefer that if you wish to do so you make a donation to St Peter's Hospice who cared so compassionately for Vicky and us in her last days. The facility to do this will be provided at the funeral.

Love from Diarmid and Martin

Stop all the Clocks...

We know that you are all waiting for more news, and all of you are dreading the message that leaves all of us shattered and empty, and will change our lives completely. But we are so sorry to let you all know that our dearest, lovely Vicky died this morning at 3.15am. She fought a very brave fight but was, thankfully, pain-free at the end. She wasn’t on her own as Martin, Anna, Diarmid and Kerstin were with her while Joan was unselfishly looking after Iona. Afterwards Kerstin swapped roles with Joan, allowing Joan to see Vicky.

Vicky’s last thoughts were on her dearest Iona. Vicky was clearly put at ease as Anna showed her pictures of her lovely girl.

We are now arranging the funeral, but as you know this takes some time. We will gather in Memorial Woodlands (www.memorialwoodlands.com) on Saturday 24th November. We will tell you the final details as soon as we know them.

With love from Vicky’s family

New surroundings

As Vicky's brother (Diarmid, special request blogger!) I have been given the task of making sense of the last few days. As a doctor myself by training, it can be difficult to separate the medical facts from the emotional response.

Readers of Martin's last blog will know that the news was very bad last week. During the holiday to Spain Vicky became very ill very quickly and the scan on her return showed that the cancer had spread to the lining of the brain and the spinal cord. This is not only very difficult to treat effectively but causes extremely unpleasant symptoms of awful headaches, neck stiffness and vomiting. It's really a low grade meningitis.

The priority for Vicky has therefore been to reduce inflammation and swelling around the brain and relieve her headaches and sickness. It has taken some time to really get this under control, with a terrible up and down 2 or 3 days, during which her immediate family (Joan, Anna, myself and my wife Kerstin and my kids) have travelled to be with her, but with injections of steroids, strong painkillers and anti-sickness drugs, she is now alternating between relaxed sleep and times of alertness, when she is her usual funny and strong-willed self, generally trying to get the family organised!

This morning Vicky was moved with her consent to St Peter's Hospice, where the surroundings are much more relaxed than the Oncology Unit and the focus is very much on maximising the pleasure Vicky and her family can get from what are almost certain to be her last few days or weeks.

She seems to be wonderfully calm and concerned more for her family and friends than herself, dispensing hugs to her nephew and niece (Helen and Andrew), among others today. Iona seems to be understanding and participating in her own way what is going on, and her smiling and laughter with her cousins has been a great comfort to us all.

Over the last few days we owe many thanks to many people (particularly but not exclusively!) Jackie, Hannah, Shane and particularly from me and Andrew, Skye the cat.

Thanks for all of your very kind messages. As ever we are relaying them to Vicky.

Diarmid X

Back from Holiday with news...

Ok all you passengers where do I start?

We got back from Spain last night, as you know we hoped it was going to a really relaxing break however things didn’t go to plan..

Vicky had travelled to Spain without too much difficulty, Heathrow to Barcelona then to Almeria. The next day V was naturally a bit tired so we didn’t do much at all. From the Monday things started to go down hill. She felt very nauseas and began to be sick regularly. A couple of days later she developed some nagging headaches.
Of course she took anti sickness and paracetamol but to no avail.

All she could manage was to stay wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa or in bed. We did try and go out a few times just to a beach but that was not much fun for V. Something was seriously wrong.
Iona and Joan made the most of it though. Joan got straight in the sea and Iona played nicely. We did try a small venture to some shops but Vicky we noticed was getting very unsteady on her feet! That was a bit alarming coupled with her headaches.

We really were getting worried and pondered the possibility of getting flights home. Vicky just couldn’t keep anything down. So she text Dr Braybrooke. We are very lucky to have such an approachable consultant on this bus, and he rang back. He suggested Vicky take some steroids. This did help. And Vicky’s headaches in the Day time did subside so did the nausea.

The night time was a very different matter though, as the steroids wore off and back came the sickness and painful headaches. We didn’t sleep much at all the last three of four days.

It was such a shame because Joan had picked a beautiful house. It was up in the hills with fab pool and stunning views. Iona was amazing. On the few sunny days we did swim a lot in the pool. She has a small dingy and was the master of the waves. You wouldn’t go near her the way she swung the oars about! Other days Joan took her out on walks, or she read.

The journey home was difficult, Joan (speaks V good Spanish) to the rescue though and she organised a wheel chair from the plane at Barcelona and Heathrow. Might have been last of the plane but straight through the queues at security.. Phew, no way Vicky would have stood for that amount of time. It was Joans birthday to.. typical V more worried about spoiling it than worrying about herself.

Dr B had organised a MRI scan for today (Monday 9am) and wants her in hospital for a while. Chemotherapy is on hold, was due Thursday. We have a meeting with him at the hospital later this afternoon.

I WROTE THAT FIRST PART EARLIER.. This is post meeting….

Vicky’s scan confirmed our worst nightmare. The Cancer is back in the brain. It’s very difficult to put into words what we are feeling now. Dr Braybrooke words were "this is extremely worrying". Radiotherpy isn't an option. Vicky definitely didn’t want me to mention any time scales and I won’t, but things have taken the most serious turn for the worse.

I Want to say a big thanks to Jacqui & Shane solid as ever.

Please keep blogging. I will print all your comments and take them in to show Vicky.
She is going to be in there until next week. Then hopefully home Tuesday.

And we'll take it from there.

I will keep you updated.

Martin X.


Help needed: Joan is moving to Bristol for a while, we need to rent a flat, in Bs6, 1 or 2 Bed, Furnished, and accommodate a small dog, if any of you have a contact in letting then please can you pass them our details. Thanks.