Congratulations Carol I’m So Proud Of You

Dave, that truly is a tale of courage and success in the face of massive adversity....

Much respect and congratulations to Carol...

ATB,J.

I just write from me heart and I always have and Carol has just opened up your gift you gave her to celebrate.

Oh thats great thanks Dave ---just glad they didnt melt in the heat of Boots before the game ;D Remember stick to the soft centres Dave ;D
Good Luck Both

Congratulations

Wednesday the 6th of April 2011, was the last day Carol was able to still talk to me, two days before she passed away. It hurt me every time I had to keep saying pardon to her as I struggled to make out what she was trying to say to me.

I was holding her hand as tears filled her eyes, she was not crying because of what was happening to her or the state of her as by this day some of her organs had already shut down or were doing some very unpleasant things, no, crying about herself was not just Carol in anyway.

She was crying because she was so disappointed that after at last she was made a senior carer at Jack Sears, a post she should have been given a long time before, she was not able to go to work and carry out her duties.

By the time the new rotas were started, Carol only worked the last two weeks of the September and the first week of October as a senior carer. We always had a week of together around the 14th October for my birthday and it was the following week that Carol had the scan we were demanding.

One week later we learned the very worst news and yet as they were still offering her treatment, we once again took the news on the chin. I always wondered what they made of Carol and I, you see they have people waiting to talk to you if you needed them to. Many people after hearing such bad news break down and cry and do need some help afterwards.

Not Carol and I, we would listen to what we were being told, then I would ask most of the questions and then we would head home together in the car. Once home we would then cuddle, cry and talk about all we had learned. Once we dried each others tears, Carol always wanted me to be the one too tell the entire family etc.

I will never forget the look on the face of Doctor Bliss just two weeks later at Carol’s next appointment, now standing before him was Carol the skeleton just covered in skin. We talked about having to delay the start of her weekly chemo as it was feared her kidneys could not simply handle it. Carol just said yes as always to having yet another operation, this time to have stents put in each kidney to try and help them cope with the chemo.

This week also marked the week the last time Carol was able to eat any food. It was so hard for me and it hurt so much to hear her say that she really fancied eating sometime and then when she had it on the plate discovered that after just two spoon full’s, she was racked in pain in her stomach

She just felt if she could eat something she could put some weight back on, but I now know that would never have been the case for her. It was so very hard just getting fluids into her and she needed to do that to try and keep her organs going and to help flush her kidneys.

She no longer had an ounce of energy and spent most of her day lying on the sofa with her hot water bottle behind her back. It only ever very slightly took the edge of the terrible pain in her back. A pain so bad at times she cried and cried with it and I cried as I could do nothing to take her pain away

She flatly refused all offers of help with the housework and the hovering that once took her just an hour to do, was now an all day affair. She would somehow get off the sofa, do one room before having to go and lay down for an hour or so before she felt able to do the next room.

This really was so painful to watch and yet I knew I had to let Carol do it, it must have been so hard and frustrating for her no longer being able to do the things she always did and must have felt the cancer was now winning. But she was still not prepared to give up, still doing all in her power to try and win and as we all now know, her efforts were all in vein.

She also insisted she was cooking Christmas dinner, I did all I could to help her do that and once again it was a roast so good and special and one she was famous for. I felt so guilty sitting there with my plate full and Carol only having half one potato, a small sliver of meat and a few bits on veg on her plate. She could not even manage to eat even that, but she just smiled as she wanted to just enjoy what was to be her last Christmas day.

After Christmas things just go so much worse for her, the pain got worse and worse and now it was a rare to ever see her sitting up on the sofa. I talked to her so many times with tears in my eyes to try and get her to get the help we so badly needed to get her out of the pain she was in and failed every single time.

I did ask her when she was in hospital why she would not let me get that help and she told me she knew when the day came she could no longer cope with the pain and she had to go into hospital, she would not ever come home again.

During the months of February and March on the very few times she was able to sit up; she was working on her MVQ3. She had to ask the college to extend the deadline she had to get all her paperwork in. One week before she went into hospital her certificate came in the post; once again Carol defied that cancer and not let it stop her from getting her MVQ3.

I very proudly have that certificate framed and hanging on the wall in our home. As I said in another post, somehow just a month before she passed away, she went and worked a whole full day at Jack Sears house, doing what she did best caring for others. This is why I ask you to help me raise as much money in Carols name for breast cancer research as she really was the most bravest woman I have ever know.