Spring at last!

I'm feeling pleased with myself today. Firstly it's been a truly beautiful and warm spring day which has been long overdue and secondly because I'd expected to be exhausted today after my 4 very busy but enriching days in London. Instead I practically bounced out of bed before 9 (very rare indeed!)and went to be beautified or at least tidied up at the hairdressers followed by a relaxing half hour in my favourite local cafe. I then took Bass (my wonderful lab)out in the sunshine and while he ran and pranced around madly I was sitting on the grass mugging up on my Italian and feeling full of the joys of spring - literally! I also managed to fit in around 3 hours of practice,another dog walk,2 wash cycles and an hour and half of teaching which is a lot for me especially after a busy time. I'm also feeling a lot lighter and brighter in myself. Of course I could well wake up tomorrow and the tiredness really hit me as I often seem to get a delayed reaction but I'll just take what comes!

I also feel proud that I managed to not only survive but really enjoy the 3 day piano course even though I forget how exhausting London is!It took me an hour and quarter each way from my wonderful friends' house to the course each day and the course itself ran from 10-5 for 3 days which was a challenge for me. I managed to make sure I played in the mornings as after lunch I tended to aim to sit on the sofa at the back so I could drift off to sleep mainly unnoticed when I needed to!
There were 9 of us of varied but generally diploma level and above on the course. I knew 3 of the other students and the teacher already but the others were all lovely and it turned out that one lady was also from Grimsby originally like me and not only that but used to live literally round the corner from me whilst we were growing up and we went to the same primary school! It's a small world!
We would each take it in turns to play something and then get feedback and helpful hints on improving from the teacher and the other students. It was a very supportive class and we began each day with relaxation exercises in the garden of our teacher's lovely home. We had a lot of laughter and sharing and wonderful music during the 3 days and the course ended with us all playing in a concert attended by friends. I felt very honoured that I had 3 friends there and felt very supported and I enjoyed playing the Stephen Hough arrangement of My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music even if the purists perhaps might not have approved!
The best thing about all my stays in London are that I stay with the most wonderful family whom I've now known for almost 20 years since teaching their eldest daughter in my very first batch of pupils and going on to teach their younger daughter. I feel like family in their home and even their gorgeous dog helps me to miss mine a little less! I'm so blessed with my friends and it really does me so much good to be with people with whom I feel really able to be exactly myself.
I'm going to go to sleep contented now and hope tomorrow brings even more productivity but I'll take whatever comes my way!

Quick Update!

It is with horror that I realise tomorrow is the last day of April and I have 2 more (including this as one)blog posts to do before May arrives and I mustn't break any of my challenge pledges!
Therefore this will be a short post as I am exhausted but happy after 4 days in London on a piano course and my bed beckons plus cuddles with my lovely labrador who is ecstatic to be home from the kennels.

I am pleased to report that I've finished the first of the books I've pledged to read. It was Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which tells the story of two sisters and their families in Nigeria during the Biafran/Nigerian civil war of 1967-70. It's a wonderfully written and moving and gripping read and I was sad to come to the end of it. You really end up caring for the characters so much and I had no idea about this war and what happened during that time in Nigeria.

I've now started reading Lume Lume, the Italian novel (in Italian)I pledged to read for my language challenge and am really enjoying it and although I haven't looked at my Italian for almost a year I'm finding I can understand it very well and don't need to look up as much as I had expected. It's a gentle whimsical story about a chap living in a very multicultural neighbourhood in Italy and trying to find the words to an old Romanian song called "Lume Lume" which means people and the world and he's searching for it's true meaning and encountering many different cultures on his doorstep and describing his neighbours' different ways of life of mixing their ethnic cultures with the Italian way of life.

Whilst in London I bought an intermediate level Italian book intended to push you to the next level and I'm enjoying revising and trying to improve my language skills. I really enjoy learning languages and trying to get more proficient and Italian is such a musical and lyrical language. It'll only be 24 days until I fly to Sardinia so I'd like to be able to express myself in a more naturally Italian way to try and blend in!!

I had a very enriching time in London on the Advanced piano course with old and new friends.
I will write about it in my next post tomorrow for the last one in April as now I really must get some sleep!

Getting stuck in amongst life's challenges!

I can't believe it's already 10 days since I last posted and pledged my seven challanges!
Life's had its ups and downs during that time. The small online support group for women with Stage 4 breast cancer to which I belong to has lost yet another member this week (8 since Christmas Day) and affairs of the heart have been affecting me.

I had a great long weekend of social frivolities last weekend with lovely friends and a great 70s night which was great fun. However, 4 consecutive days and nights of activity completely flawed me for most of this week and I've not been feeling very good emotionally. Tiredness plays a huge part in affecting my emotions and as the week as gone on my energy is showing signs of returning! I spent much of yesterday in bed with a migraine which has become my hallmark of my body showing it's rundown but am feeling a lot better today.

A friend mentioned after seeing my challenges that she thought they were rather ambitious and I must say seeing them in print I know what she means but her comment made me realise that actually anything other than the disease and treatment is easy really. The real challenge of coping every day with a terminal illness that can and will deteriorate any day is having the will power to make the most of every moment and to somehow try to handle the ever-present fear of dying. We all know we're going to die but most of us don't give it a second thought but being told you have Stage 4 cancer which will never be cured means it's like having a volcano inside you and never knowing when or what exactly will set it off. The drugs will help for a while and thankfully mine have worked amazingly well  for 4 and half years but no-one will be able to tell when and how they will stop working. No-one can take hope away and no-one can take away the determination I have to have an enriched purposeful life for as long as I have breath in my body!

Although a little daunted my all my challenges I also am enjoying embracing them as it helps so much to have goals and challenges. I have a lot of piano pieces to prepare for the Advanced piano course I'm going to in London next weekend and for the Cheltenham Festival but am thoroughly enjoying getting my teeth stuck in. I rather rashly decided only about 3 weeks ago to learn a new (to me - although I did learn it over 20 years ago!)Beethoven Sonata op.110 movement and 3 Poulenc Novelettes which are new to me in addition to preparing a complete Bach Partita (no1),Bach Prelude and Fugue XV bk2(for the musos!),Reflets dans l'Eau by Debussy (so beautiful but very tricky),Widmung by Schumann/Liszt,The Lark by Glinka/Balakirev,Night-piece by Britten and the fantastic arrangement of My Favourite Things from the Sound of Music by the amazing Stephen Hough. Preparation is going pretty well and I'm looking forward to getting further insight into the pieces at the piano course which will hopefully be fun as well as educational.

I've pretty much got the 2 poems and modern sonnet memorised but need to keep saying them aloud as I still have memory slips when concentration goes.I used to recite poetry a lot when I was younger but haven't memorised and recited poems for over 25 years! It was my dad who instilled in me a love of words and poetry particularly. I used to think every father read poems to their children. I used to love it and knew many poems by heart from about the age of 6 or 7. I used to love humourous poems best. My favourite was Jim by Hilaire Belloc - a cautionary tale about a boy who lets go of the hand of his nanny at a zoo and gets eaten by a lion!

I'm getting stuck into the reading challenge and am halfway through the book Half of a Yellow Sun about the civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s which is gripping and I'm really enjoying it. Hopefully I will cover more ground with it during my train journey to London and back at the weekend.

It's certainly keeping me busy and hopefully I will feel more buoyant this week!

I am thrilled to have already raised £220 on my Justgiving page for Tenovus.and really hoping to reach my target of £1000 by the Miss Heart of Wales final on 23rd November.

http://www.justgiving.com/Anne-Shingler2/eurl.axd/a5a61497dff68d4dbf58304d6498a4b7

My Seven Challenges to raise funds for the wonderful Welsh Cancer charity Tenovus!

I've somehow managed to gain automatic entry to the finals of the prestigious Miss Heart of Wales 2013 Beauty Pageant to be held in City Hall Cardiff on 23rd November 2013 at the grand old age of 43!It's not the usual Beauty Pageant but is more interested in finding inner as well as outer beauty and the Charity that all the finalists will be raising money for is the Welsh Cancer support charity which is very close to my heart and have helped me so much along my journey with cancer. I amazed myself by coming 2nd in the Miss Natural Beauty of Tenovus Pageant last year to find an ambassador for the charity and I loved every minute of it and made some wonderful friends!

However, November seems an awful long time away in relative terms of my life! I will have had another scan   by then and my life may have changed again.

In order to keep myself looking forward and keeping motivated I have decided to set myself 7 personal challenges using my own skills and interests for my fundraising for Tenovus leading up to the Pageant in November. I find that keeping myself busy and getting stuck into projects I enjoy doing really helps me cope with the uncertainty and challenges of living with terminal illness.

My challenges are the following: 1.Writing challenge - I promise to do at least 4 posts a month on my blog and will keep updating it with news of my challenges.

2.Musical challenge - to prepare 9 substantial piano pieces to compete in the Cheltenham Performing Arts Festival in May and to prepare for 6 classes in the Birmingham Music Festival in October.

3.Self-confidence challenge - to memorize 3 poems and 2 prepared readings to compete in Cheltenham in May

4.Language challenge - to dust up my Italian for my holiday in Sardinia at the end of May and to read an Italian novel I bought 2 years ago and never started!Also to learn some basic Greek both written and spoken for my course there in July.

5.Reading challenge - to read 6 substantial books some of which I've had unread for years! They are:The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon,A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth,The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway,So Much for all That by Lionel Shriver,Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.

6.Creative challenge - to do 2 mosaic projects I got given as a gift 3 years ago and haven't got round to doing.

7. Baking Challenge - to make and sell cupcakes during the summer holidays.

If anyone would like to sponsor me I have set up a JustGiving page at http://www.justgiving.com/Anne-Shingler2 or you can donate to me offline. Life is going to be busier than ever over the next few months! It's been a very tricky start to the year for me as I have lost 9 amazing women known to me from breast cancer since Christmas Day and I know several women extremely poorly and suffering with the disease at the moment. In February it was 5 years since I was given the news I had Stage 4 terminal breast cancer and that my life expectancy would be severely shortened.I remember that day like it was yesterday and yet at the same time it really seems a lifetime away as my life has been transformed and largely for the better. I feel truly at peace with myself and have the most amazing and ever-increasing circle of incredible friends and am experiencing life from a very different viewpoint and feel so grateful and happy to be having the experiences I am! As they said in Fiddler on the Roof "To life,to life,l'Chaim"!

My Olympic Summer 2012!

I feel I should be in Confession as it's been 7 months since my last blog!! Been busy living my life to the full at one moment and feeling too tired and poorly to do anything but sleep the next!

I had the most amazing summer of 2012. It was such an exciting time for the UK and the rest of the world with the incredibly successful Olympics in London which I'd never believed, since my secondary diagnosis,that I'd still be around to witness! Although I didn't have any tickets for events I was in London 3 times within 12 days  during the Olympics as I was lucky enough to be singing in 3 BBC Proms concerts in the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Chorus and Orchestra of Wales. In July 2011 I was thrilled and surprised to be singing in my very first concert with the BBC Chorus in Verdi's Requiem at the Proms, so to be back again to be singing 3 Proms was just wonderful!
It was a tough physical feat for me (my own Olympics in my way!). We had very intensive rehearsals of all 3 big works from mid May onwards and there were times I thought I wouldn't get through it all.
I am fortunate that I have friends I stay with in London and so didn't have quite as much travelling back and forth between each Prom but I still had to be back in Wales for rehearsals of the next one so it was an incredibly busy fortnight during the performances. The atmosphere in London was electric and so warm and friendly! Was this really the same London I'd lived and worked in for 10 years a decade ago! On arriving at Paddington station the wonderful Gamesmakers were in full view and the station looked so welcoming. I was amazed that the tube was generally much less busy than usual as so many Londoners had got out of London. It was a truly celebratory atmosphere the whole of that fortnight. I had such a happy time. I'd go off from my friends' house in Chiswick to do each Prom and return to share and catch up on the Olympic news of the day with my friends. I had different friends at each Prom which was lovely. One of my closest friends brought her husband,2 young children and the grandparents and we all had a lovely time together in Kensington Gardens before the concert. I went to see the fantastic musical Matilda, met up with a lovely Swiss friend whom I hadn't seen since first meeting at a wonderful holistic holiday in Italy in 2010.
My special friend came down for my final Prom  on the final weekend of the Olympics. It was his first time at the Albert Hall and he was blown away by it as I am every time I go in there. We got up early the next day to go to the vantage point of St Pauls to see part of the Olympic Marathon and we saw the leaders all go by 3 times and it was fantastic to be part of such a happy atmosphere amongst people from all over the world.
That evening back at my friends' house we all watched the brilliant Olympic Closing ceremony and I reflected on what had been a wonderful fortnight - I'm running out of superlatives - and that back at my darkest times in 2008 I would never have dreamt of being part of such experiences.
I was shattered and it wasn't easy to get through the amount of standing required during the concerts but I felt such a sense of achievement and fulfillment at the end of it and to have been in London during such an important time for the whole world and to feel part of it. I have always felt that the most difficult thing about living with a terminal illness is the sense of isolation from the rest of the world and to feel you don't have much to give to the world but during that fortnight I felt very much part of the world and it felt good!!

My Life truly is a Rollercoaster and would I have it any other way?

It's been a while since my last blog! It's hard this living in the moment thing in that when I'm feeling well(in relavtive terms)I'm determined to fill in every moment of living life and have no time to reflect and then when I'm not I'm too ill to get any thoughts straight!
My brain doesn't work so well these days either - many misspellings and forgetting or not pressing the space button hard enough as my fingers don't have full strength any more but my thoughts and feelings are still aplenty and it feels good to write my thoughts down whether someone reads them or not.
Feeling down today and very weak after having a very nasty reaction to antibiotics I was prescribed for my chesty cough which I feared was yet another chest infection but is probably just a virus.Whatever it was the same antibiotic that gave me a nasty reaction 9 years ago and should be on my medical records to avoid was given and I,desperate to get rid of yet another chesty,hacking cough,duly took the 3 doses only to wake up yesterday morning with the onset of an awful migraine followed by nausea,vomiting,diarrhoea which lasted a full 12 hours and was frightening,debilitating and lonely.
A good friend called in twice and was very helpful and fed and walked my dog but couldn't take the pain and fear away - I couldn't even keep down sips of water and as it was chemicals trying to get out of my body it was a very slow and agonising process.
The out of hours doctors service isn't great- it took an hour to get a call-back from NHS Direct with a very sympathetic guy - I was violently sick while on the phone and alone worried about the possiblility of dehydrating if I didn't stop vomiting which was now heading to the 12 hour mark since I'd begun!He then said I should ring the out of hours service in case it went on through the night but had to go through all my history yet again to the call handler and there and finally got a callback from a doctor another hour later when my friend had returned.As I hadn't vomited since the poor guy on the phone had had to listen to it I felt I was feeling more stable and able to sleep and the doctor said just to let it purge on through! Nice! Anyway I survived the night with no more incident although woke several times.Am feeling much better but very weak after not eating and barely drinking for over 24 hours.
It's the loneliness of illness alone that's the hardest to cope with even if you're not single and without family support like me.Even if you're surrounded by love as I am with my wonderful friends it's the helplessness of anyone to be able to take away the suffering.It is hard not to have that one special someone to be there whatever by your side unconditionally.I'm getting at better at saying mantras to myself like"it will pass", "you'll be ok again soon" but when you're too weak to even have a conversation or listen to anything as you feel too awful it just feel unending and you just feel like you'd prefer to be just put out of it somehow until your body recovers.With huge nausea and bad head it's hard even to sleep undisturbed and you just don't get any rest from it!I had a migraine only about a month ago. I get fed up and frustrated when my energy is so low as it is today and yet I know I need to rest - I have no choice at the moment!

Leaving low times I must record my incredible Olympic Torch adventure in Blaenavon,South Wales on Friday May 25th which was a glorious sunny day - hard to imagine looking out at this rain!
 This was such a joyous,uplifting proud day for me and so special and something I will always cherish. It wasn't so much the 2 completely spontaneous live interviews on BBC News 24 and BBC One news with Sophie Raworth which were thrilling and yet so hard to imagine the me from 4 years ago capable of just taking it all in her stride and enjoying it so much with no nerves at all but the best feeling for me was to have nearly 30 wonderful friends from all aspects of my life,the old and new life, all there cheering me on with so much love,enthusiasm and support! I felt like I could do anything that day and felt so priveleged and honoured and blessed to just be there at all!
I remember very well the day in 2005 when it was announced that London had won the Olympic bid for 2012 as we had a power cut in our village exactly at the moment of the announcement between us and Paris and only found out a little later that it was London! I was on the daily drug Tamoxifen at the time and supposedly "cancer-free"but living with the worry and uncertainty disabled me from enjoying what I had and worrying too much about what I might not have.
In 2009 after my life had completely turned upside down in 2008 with my secondaries being diagnosed and my beloved husband walking out and immediately beginning divorce proceedings,I was beginning to slowly put pieces of life back to get together which largely meant carving out a new life and a new me. I was chatting on the phone one beautiful summer's day that year (probably the only one we had but hey!)to D a wonderful friend I had made through my cancer journey through an internet forum. There had been about 6 of us on the same treatment for secondaries at the same time and we regularly posted to keep our spirits up or have a moan or rant when needed. I'd struggled to post at first after my husband left - feeling a failure for someone to be able to leave you when you'd been told you were going to die prematurely but gradually built up courage and people were incredibly supportive even towards my husband too realising how hard it is for the partner but as relations worsened and it was clear he wasn't coming back and was actively making things horrendously difficult D in particular was great with me and in her strong Mancunian accent told me to forget about him and move on with my life as bleak as it seemed at the time. D and I started to talk about the Olympics to be in 3 years time. She knew that summer 2009 was likely to be her last summer and spoke bluntly but not resentfully that she knew she wouldn't live to see them (which sadly turned out to be true as she sadly died in December 2009)and I truthfully didn't believe for one minute that I would be either but promised her that if I was I would be there for both of us! The memory of that chat and her personality (I only actually met her once but "knew" her online over several years)are still very much in my heart today. She was a very strong and feisty woman and said things as she saw them - very bluntly - but with a capacity to laugh,joke and smile through the most awful of sufferings. Her very descriptive,no holds barred posts just made you laugh out loud but also cry at the amazing ability to inject humour into the darkest of times.
I wasn't able to apply for tickets with the way the system was so I won't be going to any events but much better than that I held that Oympic Flame for 5 minutes and it was the most incredible day of my life just to be able to say I'm here, I'm alive and I've shared in an amazing moment of history.
I will be in London (health permitting!)3 times during the Olympics and will be able to breathe in some of the atmosphere and buzz I would have wanted to escape pre-cancer! I will be singing in 3 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC National Chorus of Wales which again is something I never imagined as I don't consider myself as a singer at all but the feeling of being a small cog in the big community wheel of a choir is truly uplifting.
I will always be indebted to Breast Cancer Care for nominating me and supporting me throughout the nearly 10 years I've lived with this disease and hope for many more to come.
I don't know how to thank my friends but they know who they are and that their part in my life however big or small they feel it is helps me truly every day.
Thanks to the generosity of special friends I am the proud owner of the very torch I carried that amazing day.

It's my own Olympic Gold!

Smoke and Mirrors!

After my New Year's resolution to regularly update my blog I find a third of the year has gone by already! I had been planning to write for ages - I find it hard to want to put down my thoughts when I don't feel so good - I quite often can't think straight at all when my batteries run down which is happening more frequently and I just don't have time when things are good and I'm rushing around fitting in years worth of living into a short space of time in case time runs out! I had come up with the title a while back as I feel that characterises how I am currently living my life and how I cope with the constant uncertainty and fragility of my health by conjuring up excitement,glamour,fun,humour,culture and spending as much time enjoying company of great old and new friends in order to distract myself and those around me from the constant drain of living with terminal cancer which I am never truly able to forget totally for one second. I have always been a cheerful soul by nature - my family nicknamed me "Laughing Anne" when I was small and I was visiting my mum last week and rummaging through old photos and childhood memories and school reports acknowledged my cheerful demeanour and chatty(too much so for some teachers!)disposition despite my disorganisation!! I like to see the best in people and life and look for the good in everything I do and see corny as that may sound. I feel I have inherited this in part from my beloved father who sadly died of prostate cancer when I was 15. He was also very positive through his illness and I'm sure that helped him to cope with the situation. However,being constantly positive can be a strain and just is not possible all the time. I do struggle to admit when I'm finding things tough. I know that I'm very fortunate to have had stable scans for over 3 years now and I look so well and happy most of the time. However,every day I face side effects due to the treatment past and present keeping me alive and keeping the cancer at bay at present. I face a lot of side effects experienced by people in the 60s plus like aching joints,short-term memory and concentration loss,menopausal symptoms and just often generally feeling much older than my years which is hard to square up to at 42 and yet all the time I am just also so grateful to be here nearly 10 years after original diagnosis when I have lost many friends during that time to this awful illness.Moaning doesn't come naturally to me but it does irritate me hearing people moan about such trivial things when I very occasionally mention my discontent of having a crap immune system - this was at a time during the winter when I was constantly ill with bugs,colds,chest infections for 6 months and someone I considered to be a friend said that I should be grateful I've been "so well" for so long referring to my "clear" scans!!I hadn't seen them for ages and I do realise that there is a lot of ignorance around cancer and I don't blame people for that but honestly I think I should be allowed a small rant from time to time! I am not "clear" and never will be - it's just that the 9 months of intensive weekly chemo and biological agent I had in 2008 whilst going through a most acrimonious unexpected divorce (nice timing!)plus the daily hormone drug and 3 monthly hormone injections, which have plunged me straight into the menopause and give countless daily side-effects and undoubtedly have cause some brain damage as my cognitive function has definitely been compromised, are keeping the disease at bay for the moment but is highly likely to relapse at any time. People sometimes comment about the amount of holidays and adventures I have had as if my life is just all fun - this is rarely real friends but people who don't realise what lies beneath my smiling face and the battle my body is constantly up against. I always think to myself "Well - my cancer unfortunately never goes on holiday - I wish it would but it comes with me everywhere I go!!". I went to Sicily alone to celebrate my birthday a year ago in February to return to the great Italian language school I'd been to a few months earlier. I'd gone with the remainder of a cold I'd had since the December and had just got over 2 chest infections and unfortunately as soon as I got there and unfortunately found myself in a very cold unheated appartment another chest infection took hold and I was racked with coughing every morning and knew I should really go to the doctor but was worried about being put into hospital and ruining the holiday so I soldiered on having antibiotics with me and made the best of it and still had an amazing time. I like to feel as "normal" as possible so like to keep as anonymous as I can about my illness. I will tell people if I feel comfortable and if appropriate but generally like to distract myself from the cancer as much as I can as it's with me always! I hadn't meant this post to be downbeat but have just been feeling a bit down as I'm having more of what I call my "crash days" between 1 and 6 days a week!!My problem is that I have limited energy but I put it all into everything I do and it gets depleted more quickly than I would like and when it depletes I have literally nothing left and just walking to the bathroom from my bed takes a major effort and I regularly get migraines and bad headaches.I tend to just have to "hibernate" when this happens and just rest up as best I can with my wonderful dog Bass as my loyal companion and then when energy returns I go out and face "my public" once more to enjoy the next adventures. I have had lots of amazing adventures and experiences already this year and am very excited to have been nominated by Breast Cancer Care to carry the Olympic torch in the relay on 25th May. This will be very challenging for me to have enough stamina for the day but will be a most memorable and wonderful experience for me and all my family of friends. Without the tremendous support and love I receive from those around me I don't know how I would cope so I'm truly grateful to you all.