Coke Floats & Chemo: Puppy Love

Coke Floats & Chemo: Puppy Love: A friend asked me earlier this week, in response to hearing about yet another piece of devastating family news, how I manage to keep going. ...

Puppy Love

A friend asked me earlier this week, in response to hearing about yet another piece of devastating family news, how I manage to keep going. I told her I think it's because I've gone just a little bit mad, controllably so, but a bit crazy all the same. I now see that the final straw hadn't quite been placed at the top of my pile. Today that last straw has well and truly arrived, and I'm overwhelmed with sadness, disappointment, anger, despair and what on earth are you supposed to do with all that negativity and overwhelmedness? Is there even such as word as overwhelmedness? 

Other conversations I've had recently I've found myself telling people how, on the days when I write blog posts, even when I'm feeling a bit low, that somehow sometimes the humour just creeps onto the page all by itself and even cheers me up. I'm so deeply embedded in a pit of hopelessness this evening that it feels like the boot is on the other foot, as if the universe is having a fabulously long and loud laugh at my expense. 

Some good things have happened recently, but when you're flattened under the sheer weight of too many straws it even manages to rub the shine off the nice bits of life. 

Toby is home, getting fitter and stronger by the day, and so bursting with happiness and life and laughter that he really is just a delightful joy to be with. Last week, he and I had a joint party, my birthday, his welcome home party. Debbie, a lovely friend, even made us each an absolutely delicious cake, so we were able to blow our candles out in tandem. I got some wonderful presents and so did Toby, but I think one of my presents topped anything anyone could ever buy him. It was the present I've been wanting for over 40 years, and had given up hope of ever getting it. Some of my friends are amazing, and go to all sorts of lengths to achieve the impossible. It was, you'll never believe it, it actually was, a signed "To Yvonne,Get Well Soon" framed photo of Donny Osmond with his sister Marie! Wow wow and double wow, now how cool is that? 

Forty years ago, he was the man I was going to marry and have all his babies. Yes I know that virtually the entire female population of the western hemisphere thought that too, but you see, I really knew it. One cold, dark evening in December, my mum and dad took me and a friend up to London to see the Oxford Street Christmas lights, something we did every year. It was a particular ritual that I used to make my Dad drive through Piccadilly Circus several times over whenever it was Christmas Light Night. I only discovered recently that he lied to me, and that it isn't against the law to drive through Piccadilly Circus more than three times in any one night, and if a policeman sees our car again we won't all go to prison. 

Anyhow, this particular night, we'd driven the whole length of Oxford Street, Bond Street, Regent Street, countless other streets and done Piccadilly Circus to see its enormous Coca Cola moving neon advert the regulatory three times, when we got stuck in a traffic jam. 

You need to know that in those days, my parents had a two-door car, so there weren't any passenger doors for the exclusive use of those of us on the back seat. 

The traffic seemed to have come to a complete standstill, and then we could hear singing in the distance. Mum opened her window, and clear as day we could hear what they were singing. "We love you Donny, oh yes we do.......". The penny dropped, the lightbulb "OMG" moment occurred, and before my parents could do anything to stop it happening, my friend and I wound down our windows, shimmied out of the car, and legged it the 100 yards or so to the Dorchester Hotel, where the Osmond brothers were staying. It was brilliant. One of those magic nights that will stay with me forever. I was part of a huge group of several hundred other young girls belting out undying love songs on Park Lane. The best bit was the total sense of freedom, I knew darned well my poor parents would take ages to get out of the traffic jam and find somewhere to park and then to find me in this huge crowd. 

Suddenly a couple of black limos came from nowhere. As one, my crowd of girls ran towards the cars and threw ourselves at them. My face was pushed right against the glass, and peering straight into my eyes from the other side was Donny himself. Unbelieveable. I managed to hang on to the that window all the way down the road, around the corner and halfway down the slope to the underground car park. Donny was still looking straight at me. I knew, in my thirteen year old heart, that he was totally smitten and crazily in love too. That's why I knew it was me he was going to save himself for. I'm sure he waited years and years for me before marrying the lovely Debbie (not the same lovely Debbie who bakes cakes) but unfortunately my parents had me firmly locked in a turret for the next several years lest I ever do anything so ridiculous ever again. 

Just as the barrier to the car park went up, some rather mean-spirited security guards turned the hoses on us, really powerful, freezing cold ones, and I was nearly half drowned as Donny and I were forced apart. I'm sure he was as heartbroken as I was. Don't the people at the Dorchester Hotel know anything about true love? 

My parents were not best pleased to have 2 soaking wet and shivering drowned rats in the back of the car, and they were really cross all the way home but I don't really think I even noticed, and I don't think I even cared if they threatened to ground me until I was 47. 

So, now I've finally got Donny at home with me, just where he's always belonged, taking pride of place on the mantlepiece. Although if WM turns the photo to the wall even one more time he may find himself double dumped for real. 

Actually no. I could never dump WM. Donny's a mormon so I'm sure he can share me. WM is probably the best thing that's ever happened to me, and if my friend was to ask again how I keep going, the honest answer is, it's WM who manages that one. 

And here it is, my Donny photo. Actually, "Get well soon" is his secret code for "I still love you after all those years and I'm totally yours". He can also spell "Yvonne" correctly - see, it's meant to be. 

Coke Floats & Chemo: Turning the corner & frightening his mother

Coke Floats & Chemo: Turning the corner & frightening his mother: Today, Toby turned the corner. Totally, utterly completely, he is on his way back to us. I'm almost scared to write it down in case it s...

Turning the corner & frightening his mother

Today, Toby turned the corner. Totally, utterly completely, he is on his way back to us. I'm almost scared to write it down in case it somehow tempts providence, but that young man of mine never ceases to amaze me with his fun-loving but doggedly determined and tenacious spirit. 

"Turning the corner" really doesn't begin to describe what Toby has managed to do today, He is as skinny as a rake, completely exhausted and physically weak beyond belief, but just look in his eyes today and you'll see that his sense of fun and mischief are totally back in business. Today he was the absolute reigning monarch of his bed, holding court and charming nurses, blowing kisses to whoever passed his doorway, squeaking happy noises all the time and just beaming from ear to ear all day. He's even been out of bed a few times to explore the ward and plan some fun for when he has a bit more energy. When I left this evening, not only did he blow the most flamboyant kisses from his bed, but he then got up and followed me to the lifts, where he laughed his head off waving energetically as the doors closed and I disappeared. 

The doctors are as baffled by his sudden recovery as they were about what made him so ill in the first place. There were never any diagnostic breakthroughs or sophisticated treatments. Right up until yesterday he was still such a cause of concern that a senior Consultant was ringing the hospital for updates from her holiday. 

It will still be several days before he is well enough to come home, but for the first time in nearly a fortnight I can actually believe that he will come home. Watching him so desperately ill, and slipping through our fingers further every day has been just beyond heartbreaking. 

I know in my heart why this has happened - thanks to Facebook, this blog and twitter, I've been overwhelmed and humbled by knowing that hundreds if not thousands of people have got behind my family and prayed their socks off, willed the universe to help him, sent us healing thoughts, good vibes, positive energy, whatever you want to call it, and altogether you made sure that Toby has been wrapped in a blanket of so much love and concern, the perfect condition for a miracle to take place. Thank you so much. 

Toby knows that when he gets home, he's going to have a great big party. With his very limited speech and communication, this evening he was able to make it totally clear that he wants cake and candles and presents and hide and seek and songs and games and then he just said "Toby's Birthday!" OK so it's nine months too early, but why ever not, eh? 

Here's another photo of Toby at his School Prizegiving Evening, taken just a few hours before he became so ill. You can see why I always felt that Male Modelling would be the ideal career choice for him, if only because he is so gorgeous. However if he ever had to fill out an application form for the post, I know exactly what he'd write in the box that asks for "Hobbies and Interests". He'd have to own up to his absolute favourite extra-currucular activity "Frightening the living daylights out of my mother".

And now, I'm finally off to bed, where I can sleep well and unworried for the first time in ages. 

Toby, just hours before he got so ill

Coke Floats & Chemo: Toby and all your goodwill

Coke Floats & Chemo: Toby and all your goodwill: Yesterday's blog post about Toby has gone crazy, and has already become my most read post of all time, and I cannot thank you all enough...

Toby and all your goodwill

Since I wrote about Toby yesterday, it's been like there is a tidal wave of love, goodwill, support and prayer really coming straight in Toby's direction, and I can't thank you enough. It feels like we're are being overwhelmed with  a kindness so real that I can almost touch it. If only he could somehow tune into it too, it's certainly powerful enough to wrap him in love and carry him right out of trouble. 

I wrote yesterday just before heading back up to the hospital for a long, difficult evening with Toby, and when I got home at nearly 2 in the morning, it was humbling to realise that, while I'd been cuddling and singing to him to distract them having to put yet another line in, so many people, most of them complete strangers, were caring about us so much. 

I'd love to say that Toby is better, but he isn't, he is still heading straight towards serious trouble. However, there has been one significant and positive change - his medical team have really started pulling out all the stops, and they are proactively trying to find out what's wrong, and as fast as they can. They have also listened intently to my fears and concerns, and they are doing everything and more. It's a race against time now, can they catch Toby before he really falls? 

Maybe Toby hasn't quite picked up on all the love coming his way, but it really feels as if his medical team have done so, and that they are on the same side, everyone working together to pull him back to us.

If you haven't met Toby, here's a video of him at home having a fairly mellow moment with Francesca, his big sister, and Dewayne, who is a very good friend of both Toby and the whole family. This was filmed while I was upstairs in bed following a particularly difficult chemo session last November, and Francesca and Dewayne spent the whole evening trying to distract him because all he really wanted was "Mummy". 

Sorry Dewayne! Sorry Francesca! But just think, you two, wouldn't Toby just love to see himself on the "puta"?!

Coke Floats & Chemo: The Thirty Ninth Time

Coke Floats & Chemo: The Thirty Ninth Time: Awful awful, heartbreakingly dreadful week. Toby, my 19 year old who tackles life head-on like an out-of-control speeding tornado but much m...