Pretty much in the first line at my birth I came out in fetal distress and I haven’t stopped since then.
Today was just an ordinary day until I went to the spar. I don’t understand why as I entered the building all the staff smiled as if they were joking and then the song “It must be your fault!” was playing as I was browsing the wares. I then went to the counter paid for my stuff and walked out all the while the ladies were smirking like chessire cats. Ill leave this situation in God’s hands! Okay okay so you must think I’m weird but ever since my best friend died in 2014 feels like the world is against me. I don’t know why you’re listening to me I don’t know why they’re watching me but I do know this that is listening to them and God is watching them however they may be they will get caught out 1 day and I hope its soon because it makes me weary and then it puts pressure on my other half which I found out today it truly is.
My real journey started today in 2004 where I was working in a very hot environment and I was drinking 1.5 L of water a day and it came out as a dribble. I then proceeded to go to a clinic in Wrexham with my parents and a few weeks later the doc told me I had 15% function of my kidney left. They also told me that within a year I would be put on dialysis. After that appointment I went to the bathroom and cried mainly because my parents hadn’t told me that I would need a transplant and they knew before I would it speak. I thought if any person had a half a mind they would realise after that many UTIs but you would need a transplant but I was blissfully unaware of the need for dialysis let alone a transplant. So the year of the transplant began. First I had to quit my job and then my sister’s graduation with a big highlight for me was. I had loads of energy I even had enough energy for a job. I worked in principles a dress shop in Bracknell. It was one of my favourite places to shop. I had the job for about three or four months until one day while carrying a box of shoes up the stairs from the store room I couldn’t catch my breath and that was the end of that job. For the rest of the year I either stayed in bed sleeping, doing art or singing my heart out to God at Singsurpration! It was such an amazing year of illness but I never felt closer to God! It was amazing the way God took ,me under his wing and gave me courage to face the 536 creatine running around in my body. Then one day I remember sitting in the waiting room of the Reading hospital where I would visit a doctor each month to see how my health was doing. I was reading a Guide magazine I had gotten from my youth leader and drinking the protein drink I had been prescribed by the doctor. I hadn’t peed in months and the food I ate wasn’t all that much either. I remember the date like it was yesterday because it was the week before November 7. I remember it because years before I had been baptised on that date. It was a very special date that early November because I had the operation on the date of my baptism. It was special because God helped me start dialysis to help clean my blood out the next day. It was significant because God had dipped me in the waters of baptism and cleaned me there and now He was doing it physically through dialysis. It was a hard road to travel especially at Christmas that year. We had booked a cottage in the Scottish highlands and we were about a 2-3 hour drive away from Edinburgh where the holiday dialysis was where I had to dialyse three hours a day every two or three days. This Sabbath I was on dialysis was pretty rough because me being a chatting person wanted to talk to someone and so I decided to talk away not knowing I had offended the person in charge and so when I got home I had a mental break down and thought I might just die right there. It was one of the worst days I think I could remember. I am so glad I was surrounded by my family. So life went on and I was dialysing quite frequently. That season of my life was full of sleeping, testing for both my parents and myself because before you can have a transplant you must be tested to see if your body is healthy enough. I mean I was ill as but you could not believe the relief when I was had my first pee after the first session of dialysis. It was like a flood had broken and I was so happy I did a little dance. When you haven’t peed for months because there is so much junk in your system you do little things that make up all the big things!
For example Praise God I finished something! Yes I finished two courses! CACHE Level 2 in Understanding Autism and CACHE Level 2 in Understanding the Principles of Business Admin!
That’s something I have to say considering my track record! Praise God for His energy and His grace with getting me through. I could feel Him pushing me to do that little bit more but also I have to say the tutors of these courses were amazing and patient with me too! Thanks so much, you know who you are!!! =)
So back to the story…so I didn’t know if I would be on diaylsis for the rest of my days or I would get a transplant. When we had visited Australia (we were living in the UK at the time of this happening) we went to see the transplant team in Australia and at the time they told us that it would be easier to get a transplanted kidney from a cadvaric donor because there were less police on the roads. Now hear me out I am not sure that is the same here in the UK now, it was 2004 when they said it. So I was living in the UK when I was going through my “Kidney year”.
Then one day my parents sat me down and told me that my Dad would give me a kidney. Wow I couldn’t believe my ears. He’d never had an operation let alone giving one of his kidney’s!
It was like God was giving me a HUGE HUG from heaven! Thank you God for the kidney…20 years on and its still going strong! And of course Thank you Dad for your Kidney. This Feb, next month it will have been 20 years old! Amazing how God’s grace touches you from places you would never have thought possible! If God could give my Dad such a heart to give me his kidney I am sure He can see where I am hurting and He alone can heal the hurt no matter how big of small!
So…mid February we went to the hospital (John Radcliffe, Oxford) and once I settled in the doctor (Dr Anil) told me what they were going to do to my body, how they were going to take my Dad’s kidney out first and then wheel me into the surgery area, put me to sleep and transfer the kidney…..Dad was on a bed being wheeled to the surgery room while my Mum walked beside the bed and I did too. My Dad made some kind of joke and then he was gone.
An hour or two later I said good bye to my Mum and sister who had come to see me off and then in I went. I remember being so excited to be getting this amazing gift that I jumped from the trolley to the bed where they would put me to sleep.
I remember the needle going into my left arm and counting to ten…and then I was out like a light!
My family had made a ritual of going to one of the best bakeries in Oxford to get some yummy treats and this time was no exception…..Mum and my little sister went shopping and they were told and then later I was told it took them another whole half an hour to get the kidney from my Dad’s back bless his heart he didn’t want to give it…I doubt that…..my Dad is so loving that when he decides to do something he does it. And so here I sit 20 years on about to start another scary but important season of my life. Over the years I hadn’t realised until it was too late that living in the sun in Australia and NZ has its down sides……you know how people tell you the hole in the ozone layer is bigger in the Southern Hemisphere well I am living proof it is! It was only a little one at first on the right hand side of my face and the doctor’s in Picton were amazing. they took a biopsy of the little one and then when I arrive back in Australia I went to see my GP and they took that thing right off my face just like that.
It wasn’t until I went to see my family in 2023 that I noticed when I got home a lump forming on the left hand side of my face. It wasn’t big at first but then it kept growing. I thought nothing of it until the November of 2024 when I made an appointment to see a dermatologist and then took one look at it and ordered a biopsy!
The next March I had a biopsy done and was told it was cancer a few weeks later. Wow! Who would have thought that it would be that! But as always God was with me all the way! And I had my other half who was supportive too!
I first had a phone call from we’ll call him Dr B. He was very kind and he gave me plenty of information about the different types of surgery I could have. There was a standard surgery or a MOHS surgery where they take piece by piece of the cancer and put it under a microscope to test its whole thing.
I remember when the doctor gave me a mirror to see the hole in my head. I think I needed a minute to just sit and not think about it. It was huge it felt like at the time but now I think about it its better out then in huh!
I was blissfully unaware for a good 18 years and I remember my Renal Transplant doctor telling me at the end of my time with her….”your cancer free”. I never gave God the glory for being cancer free for that long huh considering I lived in a sun soaked place for that long!
I remember the first visit to the dermatologist in Christchurch and sitting there going through all my life like an open book. They told me the reason my hands were so dry and I had the skin I did was because of the medicine I was on for my transplant. I was on the lowest dose I could be the doctors kept telling me but it wasn’t until that MOHS operation when the surgeon told me that the medicine I had been on for 19 years was 200% more likely to cause skin cancer then any other drug on the market. WOW all I can say from that experience is God literally had His hand over me and still does as far as I can tell! So after about a 6 week period of time after the MOHS surgery I would start Radiotherapy the first week of September 2025. I didn’t know what to expect but between praying, talking to the MacMillan Cancer Foundation, journaling and calling the Samartians phone line I would be ready!
Unfortunately there was a passing of a very fear friend and so the week before I started the Radiotherapy I went to the funeral. It was a very sad time because she was such a dear friend and her daughter is a even dearer friend. But I believe God gave me a gift of being able to spend some quality time with Him before I would go through Radiotherapy. It was bitter sweet to be honest.
But with God by my side and my other half there and his family supporting me I went through Radiotherapy. It was something I will never forget but try to forget at the same time. It made me ill and I had to sleep quite a bit. I had quite a few times in the night where I woke up hot as if someone had put me in a sauna and locked the door. I didn’t have much of an appetite either so I mostly slept, read and watched TV.
Now in 2026 I am at the same door trying to mentally and physically getting prepared for the same journey..I find when I go through such journey’s that if I am careful about preparing Spiritually and mentally I get through it better off at the other side. But as the Princess Catharine said in an interview coming out the other side is a bit harder because you go through the treatment and there are people around you to support you but then after the treatment you have exhaustion and such you need to get through and as she said its better to have someone to talk through the after math….she never said after math she just said its a nice thing to have someone to talk through it with after treatment which I tend to agree with her.
So here I am at the door of more Radiotherapy! Ive had it before so I know what to expect but my only question is will it be easier or harder because I have gone through it before?? We will have to wait and see. I was told by a patient who was waiting in the waiting room one day back in September 2025 that after the two week mark you start to feel the affects of it more….I only had two weeks of it in the first place so here’s to hoping that I wont have too bad affects of it.
The doctor’s tell you all the worst case scenarios and of course they have to because if they don’t they may be liable but I am used to doctor’s telling me the worst case scenarios.
I mean when I was born my parents were told I wouldn’t live after three days old and look at me now! nearly 40 years on and God’s still in CONTROL! Oh yeah! Praise His name.
I had loads of operations because I was born 10 and half weeks premature, but then my parents being Godly parents asked our pastor and the elders to come into the hospital and pray over me. And they did and I am here to tell the story of God’s glory not my own but God’s glory because I am here because of Him! So CANCER met my God and God met my CANCER!
Thank you so much to all my friends and family who are and have prayed over me over the years! I truly am grateful to be alive to say THANK YOU!!!!
So Happy Sabbath dear readers and have a blessed weekend! I shall log in later! Maybe after my oncology appointment!
God bless,
Signing out,
Food 4 Thought 7 xxx
Food4Thought7Ltd 