It was my birthday yesterday. I nailed it as far as birthdays go, making myself a brown butter cake with lemon curd and white chocolate cream, scoring some awesome presents, and going out for Chinese for dinner where I completely dominated a plate of honey king prawns. I did offer them around the table, but my friends and family aren’t stupid.

At the restaurant, I sat across from my 81 year old Mum. She nearly died about a month ago, but there she was, tucking in with gusto to satay chicken, beef and black bean and fried rice. As I looked over at her smiling face, I was taken back to the critical care ward, where my brother and I sat and listened while the specialist consultant spoke to Mum about her end of life wishes. She’d had a minor heart attack initially, but had a rare reaction to one of the standard drugs used to treat it, and had gone into acute kidney failure. Her body was shutting down, blood pressure getting lower and lower, breath gasping despite the oxygen mask, skin waxy white. Her eyes were closed, but she heard every word he said, and confirmed what we already knew. She did not want to be resuscitated, or kept alive by machines. If things were at an end, she would go on her own terms.

The consultant told us later, out of Mum’s earshot, that he thought she would only live another couple of days. We stayed by her bed, alternating breaks for coffee and loo, regularly joined by family and friends who had come to say goodbye.

That night, my brother asleep in our spare room, we waited for the dreaded phone call to come, like it had when Dad died. But it didn’t, and that morning when we arrived at the hospital Mum was sitting up on the side of the bed, and then moved to sit in a chair. She hadn’t eaten for days, but suddenly decided she wanted a vanilla ice-cream in a cone. I sent my brother to fetch it (pulling the little sister with a broken shoulder card because it was cold outside) and when he came back with a Cornetto, Mum proceeded to eat it in about five bites. Anyone who knows my mother knows she is not a fan of sweet things and watches her diet like a hawk, so we were both amused and bemused. Someone told us that those who are dying often seem to rally just before they pass, so we thought that perhaps this was Mum’s final hurrah.

But it wasn’t. Gradually, she got better. Her kidney function improved and rapidly returned to almost normal, her blood pressure normalised and they weaned her off the oxygen. And as she left critical care for the general ward, she gave the consultant a hot tip, and recommended he introduce Cornetto therapy to all his patients.

After dinner last night, my Mum gave me a birthday card, and I went a bit misty-eyed when I read the front:

And then I pissed myself laughing when I read what was inside:

I am regularly asked how I am able to laugh in the face of really tough stuff. And I always say, you should probably ask my Mum.

It’s been almost two and a half years since I published this post about same-sex marriage. The post went viral, shared hundreds of thousands of times both in Australia and overseas, and you know what the most remarkable thing was? Not one person, not one, commented or emailed or tweeted or messaged to say they disagreed with same sex marriage. Each time a media outlet in Australia commissions a poll about same sex marriage, the results are overwhelmingly in favour, but still, here we are, caught in a mire of filthy, stinking political bullshit.

Some really terrible things have happened to me and my family this year. Hugh broke his wrist on New Year’s Day, and it all seemed to go downhill from there with my accident and resultant periods of hospitalisation, surgery and long, slow recovery. Then my Mum recently became seriously ill, and I felt the weight of the world pressing right down on top of me. But I have been absolutely blessed by the support of dear friends, in particular Shauna and Duane. They have both been there every step of the way this year, making sure Dave and Hugh and I are OK, offering reassurance, providing a listening ear and a reassuring hug through many awful days and even more awful nights.

For those of you who don’t follow Boob in a Box on Facebook,  here’s why I’ve been quiet of late. On April 8, quite literally as we were about to head off on Easter holidays, I tripped over in the garage at home and smashed my shoulder into many pieces. I also cut my head open, but the pain of a broken humerus meant that I had no idea from where the ever-increasing pool of blood on the floor was coming. All I knew was the pain in my shoulder, which made me alternately scream and moan. I’ve had a breast cut off, chemotherapy and burns from radiation requiring daily hospital treatment, but nothing, NOTHING, comes close to the pain of a broken shoulder. When the wonderful paramedics arrived, they gave me morphine, but it seemed to do nothing. The ambulance ride to hospital was agonising and continued to scream and moan.

My left arm broken, my right arm compromised by a lack of lymph nodes,  the doctors in emergency searched my feet for a vein to give me more pain relief. They had no luck, so decided to risk going in through my right arm, and pumped me with more morphine, then something else, then something else.  I started to lose my grip on reality, but the pain was unceasing. I went for an x-ray and the pillow supporting my shoulder slipped off the side of the gurney, and I heard my own screams reverberate through the lead-lined room.

I spent three days in hospital as the orthopedic surgeon contemplated surgery and attempted to get my pain under control. The first 48 hours was spent in the clothes I’d had on when I fell, the pain too severe to risk the movement required to change me. Eventually, the pain was dampened to a dull roar, and I was sent home in a shoulder immobiliser, with five different painkillers and anti-nausea meds to counteract the painkillers.

This paragraph should be all about my slow but positive progress towards healing, interspersed with hilarious tales about sponge baths, but alas dear reader, that was not how the cookie, nor for that matter my shoulder, crumbles. Almost ten weeks on, and I have just been told that I now need surgery to put a plate into my arm to support my humerus, which has not healed properly. The surgery carries with it the risk that the nerves will be damaged and my hand paralysed, but without the surgery my entire arm is useless, so I signed the waiver this morning and will turn up to hospital again next Wednesday, with all my mustered hope clasped hard against me, and trust the surgeon to do his best.

Part of being someone who’s had cancer is when shitty things happen being grateful that they aren’t cancer. I’ve had ten weeks of awful pain, near-constant discomfort and a mindset see-sawing between sad, angry and sad about being angry, all the while with the back of mind mantra but at least it’s not cancer. That was, until today, when the orthopaedic surgeon confirmed that the break was so bad, and the healing so poor, because I have osteoporosis. At 47, my bones are brittle and fragile, thanks  to months of chemotherapy, and years of subsequent drug therapy in the form of the gift that keeps on giving, Anastrazole. The cancer’s not back, it’s not cancer, but you know what, it actually is bloody cancer because if I’d never had cancer in the first place I wouldn’t be sitting here typing this blog post with my fucking nose now, would I?

And breathe …

But at least it’s not cancer.

The builder has started work on my childhood home. The place is ancient, sagging, tumbling down. A ramshackle pile.

Dave and I spent last Saturday, in blazing heat, moving the entire contents into storage. Thankfully, my Mum had carefully wrapped and packed all her china and ornaments and keepsakes, so I wasn’t caught up in reminiscing. That is, until I found my Bunnykins mug in the kitchen cupboard. I remember sitting up at the old kitchen table, being finally old enough to use my precious china cup. I was given a weak, luke-warm tea and as I sipped I felt so special. I must have been 4 or 5.

The next day, with the packing all done and the house empty for the first time in more than 50 years, I took my Mum around to visit. She wandered the rooms, stopping and starting, touching the walls, staring along the hallway. She was full of emotion, and didn’t say much. What is there to say, really? At 81, the majority of her life was spent in this house. She and my father moved two toddlers into this house in the early 1960s, and then a newborn surprise almost a decade later. They raised us there, in the tiny old cottage, with much love, hardship and grief, and then grew old there. This house is part of the fabric of our family. There are bits of us all here, and we all bear the imprint of this house.

She’ll go back to the house when it’s all fixed up and fancy, but it will be different, and at 81, difference is not often easy. She could walk those halls blindfolded and not miss a beat, knowing every creak of the floorboards and groan of the walls shrinking and moving at night after the heat of the day. She can lay her hands on every light switch, all original giant black switches without looking. Except the morning the hospital rang to say my Dad had died. That morning she reached for the light switch and couldn’t find it; knowing what that phone call would be made her lose all sense of what she knew.

That’s not to say she’s not excited about her new, old house. She asks all the time about paint colours, and where cupboards will be and where her favourite chair might sit. She looks at furniture catalogues and picks out things that might replace the things she sent to charity. She can’t wait to be back, surrounded by her neighbours, holding court from her remodeled palace. In the meantime she’s living with us, keeping our house tidier than it’s ever been before or will be again, and ensuring that our pets all get equal amounts of time sitting on her lap.

Apart from my Bunnykins mug, I’ve only taken one souvenir from the old house. In one of those nobody really knows why kind of stories, what was originally the front door became the bathroom door sometime in the 1960s. One of my earliest memories is of the ornate door knob on the bathroom door; I remember spending hours gazing at its sparking, faceted beauty. It was such a fascinating anomaly in our bare-bones, basic house, so I asked our builder to save it for me before the demolition started. He handed it to me this morning, and its heaviness in my hand was a surprise, and a comfort. For all the stress and cost of this project, it feels very, very right.