I am enjoying the spring. I can breathe. Finally getting rid of this respiratory infection. Me and Ronnie are out walking again. Spring is in abundance. The hedgerows are full of white blossom of blackthorn, the acid green leaves of hawthorn just staring to open. New growth is everywhere.
The day before I’d been to Birmingham on the train. Outside the window the hedgerows whizz by, the white blossom is everywhere, like snow. I always forget how much of England looks like this. Horses, sheep, lambs. Fields and tractors. Trees coming into green everywhere.
I am a speaker at the annual conference of the Patient Information Forum in Birmingham. As a patient. I have been asked to talk about what happened at the stages post-diagnosis when I needed information to make decisions, and where I did, or didn’t, get the information. Around 200 delegates from various UK health organisations and charities are assembled here.
People talk to me after my presentation; they say I was ‘emotional’ and ‘real’… that I was ‘powerful’….. many people say they ‘enjoyed’ my story, they were moved. One woman says she cried. I always say now that I am only interested in authentic narratives about illness and there doesn’t seem like there’s that many around. Continue reading
