I read in the paper today that many parts of India have run out of water. Europe is going to bask in the mid-30s by the weekend. Here in Midsomer Norton we have no wind and 22°C. There is no question, life is just that little bit more bearable when the sun is shining but 45 or 47 degrees is a bit too much like an oven..

We must blame Putin for all mishaps that happen however caused. Perhaps Putin has now stopped controlling the weather and it is now going back to where it should be. In fact we are now approaching the grand maunder minimum to be at its nadir about 2030. The ridiculous Extension Rebellion people are telling us with no justification at all that we have 12 years left. I wonder which PR agency made that up.

Yesterday I had two clients for psychic readings. I do not normally see people on a Sunday but one of them, a Californian, was on a special visit to this country and I felt it was important to see him. It is amazing how the right information comes when the person is in need and open and honest. You do need those three things. No matter how horrendous the information that is given by the client in terms of reporting their life condition, something within me enables me to take it with equanimity and objectivity.

*****

At about 3:30 PM this afternoon I received an e-mail from a very good friend of mine that I’ve known for the best part of 20 years. I wondered why I had  not heard from her and now I know. I have anonymized it.

In December last year I had a dream that was so profound that I remembered it verbatim the next morning. I dreamt that I was having a mammogram followed by an ultrasound which is normal for my age – next part of the dream were lots and lots of my friends, not exactly sad but not happy either and then the third part was me standing in front of my chest of drawers with Meisie saying to her “ please come and help with this headscarf, us white people are stupid with such things”.

Remembering it the next morning and especially the part about the headscarf ( no hair???) sent shock waves through me and I immediately went to my filing cabinet and found that my last mammo and ultrasound was in 2010! I immediately made an appointment and two weeks before Xmas I was diagnosed with breast cancer. An emergency biopsy was done and being that time of the year, I did get to see a cancer surgeon as well as a plastic surgeon but treatment could only commence in the new year. I had major surgery mid- January, a mastectomy and immediate re-construction using my own tissue, fat and blood vessels harvested from my tummy which involved a cut from hip to hip and was a 9.5hour long op. During surgery they discovered that the cancer was worse than what the biopsy had shown a month earlier and was in fact aggressive so much so that where the tumour was reported to be “contained” on the biopsy results, it spread throughout the breast and into the lymph nodes under the arm; resultant diagnosis being stage 3 aggressive cancer.

Two weeks after the initial op I contracted septicemia in the tummy wound and landed up in hospital for another week and further surgery. I started the horrific “red devil” chemo in the middle of March every 3 weeks and am now on another cycle of chemo every week of which I still have 5 weeks to go. Thereafter it is 25 sessions of radiation every weekday for 5 weeks.

I have been to hell and back with illness and look worse than an alien. Have had no hair for almost 3 months and now no eyebrows or eyelashes and I have lost 13 Kgs! None of my clothes fit me.

I however have to be extremely  grateful for the dream as the last thing on my mind with the horrific business year I had last year would have been to go for a mammogram! And the fact that the cancer has turned out to be so aggressive I would have been in big trouble by the end of this year as the tumor was close to the breastbone and would have by now be in either the bone or liver or both , and I would have been none the wiser until it was too late.

Needless to say this came as a big shock to both of us; we had to give up the McGregor cottage and I had to close my business as my oncologist said my treatment was going to be too debilitating to continue doing the work that I do. I was fortunate to have some dread disease cover but that will only keep us going for so long. Before I got ill the plan was to sell the house sometime this year and move to the country, which whist I am having treatment plus further surgery early next year I cannot do. And the property market is absolutely diabolical at the moment – I would not get the price I would have 2 years ago, nor can I afford to let it go at a reduced value as I need every cent to invest to keep me going until I pop my clogs one day.

The chemo with its horrific side effects and other complications has left me extremely weak, so I have not paid attention to the garden or any other such activities. I am trying to live my life as normally as possible including socializing with friends when I am well enough, but chemo and wine are not friends. I have never, ever known nausea as bad I have had, but luckily have found a dry white wine which has been de-alcoholised and tastes as good as normal wine. Even this wine I cannot tolerate at times. But, I have to keep positive and keep fighting the fight but it has been an extremely hard journey thus far.

In closing, I was told by the doctors in December that this cancer had been brewing for just over three years – which takes us back to 2015, the year XXX (husband left for another woman)  left!!! Not blaming anyone but it makes one think!!

It was a bolt from the blue because this was a healthy positive friend  who I would think was not the type to get cancer but the trouble is that when her husband left her for someone else the shock must have reverberated deeply through her. To this day, I don’t know if the husband is aware of the effect of what he did.

We did a gardening job today and the woman said that we had ‘given her a new lease of life’. She was struggling so much because the garden was in a mess and her husband was unable to perform garden duties because of a bad hip which is now getting better thanks to a french Osteopath in Frome.

I will have a quiet evening this evening