SUE MCKAY

Most people I know have lost loved ones to cancer, each story unique and heart-breaking, I attended a friend’s funeral just last week.

My life was incredible until May 2011. I lived a wonderful carefree life in the UAE, teaching piano at Sharjah English School, running and training a lot, great friends all around and my mad menagerie of animals. Life was good. Then we had the news my dad was unwell and it transpired to be adenocarcinoma of the stomach and oesophagus.  My gilded life fell to bits and I flew home to be with my beloved family, dad Barry, Mum Fran and brother Paul. As tight a family unit as can be found. Eleven weeks after we learned of dad’s diagnosis he died at home, surrounded by all of us, his brothers, all the cousins too. My mum was numb and struggled to cope with losing her partner and best friend of 50 years. We all got on with things in spite of our deep grief and I flew home to the sun about 12 weeks later. On November 27^th 2012 (my 46^th birthday) my brother called me with the news that mum hadn’t felt well with severe back pain and had been to the doctor and they thought it was cancer.

I was on the next flight home and went through the investigations at my mum’s side and were told she had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow. No cure possible but treatments which could extend life, sometimes very significantly.

Unfortunately this was not to be the case with my darling mum, she underwent daily chemotherapy since diagnosis and the second treatment almost finished her off, then she deteriorated in spring 2015 and was admitted to hospital twice with a “deranged” blood profile. She had no immune system at all and sepsis set in.

We celebrated her 77^th birthday in hospital on June 20^th with a cake and presents, and she was semi-lucid but the doctors informed my brother and I the day after she was dying. We managed to get her home and she passed away in our arms, surrounded by family and close friends at 10.32 on Tuesday June 23^rd 2015.