A brief update following the surgery

Lourika has just woken up form her anaesthetist induced sleep, and seems to be all right and in good spirit. She is somewhat sleepy still, but otherwise in good form. The surgeon was happy with the operation, and we will see him tomorrow morning first thing.

So far so good - exactly as advertised! I'll provide a more detailed update once Lourika's had a good night's rest.

EGBOK

This morning I am sitting in a little French bakery/brasserie/confectionery on Marylebone High Street, and have just ordered a random breakfast item, and am drinking coffee which should taste great but seems to be of no consequence to me. The reason for all of this is that Lourika was diagnosed with breast cancer six months and two days ago, and after eight sessions of chemotherapy, five weeks of recovery, one week in Egypt and an abundance of prayers she has just gone into the theatre for her surgery. I don't want to wait in her room (which by the way is as good as you'll find anywhere!), so I ventured one block away from the London Clinic and ended up here in a typical British High Street waiting for the four hours to go by.

It was a rainy morning in London, and when we left our house at 6 o'clock the wind was howling. Not dissimilar to my emotions, I might say. The surgeon was held up in traffic so the operation started about 90 minutes later than originally scheduled. And as Lourika entered the theatre the sun came out, and that's when I knew that Everything's Going to Be OK - whatever happens.

Now is perhaps a good time to publish a very general "thank you" to everyone that has supported our family over the last half a year - everyone that visited us and ran the household while Lourika was being treated and I had to keep on working, everyone that wrote, phoned, prayed, Skyped, Facebooked and sent gifts, everyone at work that showed more compassion that I could ever hope for, and everyone that held on to the hope that Lourika will be not a victim but a survivor of breast cancer. And a big big thank you to my brave wife who has made the journey for Hugo, Ivan and I as easy as we could ever have hoped for, and inspiring us along the way. Wow, what a woman!

That's it from me for now - I have to finish my breakfast before I start looking like some kind of writer who's sitting in his favourite corner at his regular coffee joint trying to overcome writer's block...

Au revoir!

My own D-day

Finally the evening of the big operation arrived. This event in my life has been stuck in my head and heart since 12 May, the day of my initial diagnosis. We knew this day would eventually arrive.

I have to be at The London Clinic at 6:30 am. They will do an ECG and I will be off to theatre around 8 am. Mr Carpenter, the breast surgeon, explained that it is around a four hour procedure. They will remove the left breast's tissue, sparing the skin of the breast and do reconstruction with the help of the Latisimus Dorsi muscle from my back. They cut part of the muscle loose and tunnel it to the front and reshape it in the form of a breast. If they need to enlarge the area they will do that with an implant or with tissue extracted via lipo suction from my tummy.

I had a good day today. I spent wonderful time with the family and Andries and I went to the Docklands museum and for a cappuccino afterwards. Two wonderful friends from our church, Karen and Rachel, came in the morning to chat a bit and very important, to pray for me. It was a wonderful event, if I may call it that. It is such a relieve to just give all of this to the Lord and not to worry about a thing. Joshua 1:5 promise "I will not leave you nor forsake you". I feel extremely calm and positive about tomorrow's operation. It is not about loosing a breast, it is about getting a new lease on life. Having hope. Getting healed.

To everyone, all over the world - I feel so blessed that you have traveled this journey so far with me. Thanks that you never stopped believing that I am going to beat this. Thanks for the never ending positive thoughts and encouragement. And thanks for the prayers, every day - the Lord heard all of them and knows the needs of our hearts.

We serve a great, mighty and amazing God. I am His daughter. He loves me fully, completely. I love the song "Indescribable" by Chris Tomlin. Here is a little bit:

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation's revealing Your majesty
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring
Every creature unique in the song that it sings
All exclaiming
Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untameable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God.

The Lord loves you, completely, just the way you are. He sees the depths of your heart and still loves you the same. If you should die today, are you certain of where you will spend eternity? Maybe today is your day to invite the lord, Jesus Christ into your live and give Him a change to show you how perfect His love is for you. In Chris' words: His love is indescribable, uncontainable, incomparable and unchangeable.

Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed-bugs bite! XXX

Back from Egypt

We had a terrific time in Sharm El Shaikh. The sun was blasting every day and we enjoyed the pools and sea very much. It was a lazy holiday - sleeping late, no cooking, no cleaning, other people preparing all our meals. It was a big treat! On the photo's you can see me on a camel, waiving like queen Nefertiti (after the op it will be queen Newer-titi...), the three hunks that accompanied me to Egypt, our little family, myself and Hugo and Ivan and me.

Oupa André and Ouma Ronel arrived yesterday and it is such a treat to have them here. We were spoilt rotten with the most amazing gifts from bunches of people in SA - we feel so blessed to have them in our lives! I am really looking forward to my packets of Niknaks....

One of the surprises was a file made up by a bunch of my friends. Each one took a plastic bag and filled it up with letters, articles, books and a teabag. The instructions said that I must make a cup of tea with the teabag provided and work my way through each gift pack. It is such a special thing that they did for me and really makes me feel closer to home then I really am. And off course my mom made sure I had new slippers, books, sweets and the newest 'Huisgenoot' with old Joost on the cover! Thanks for all my nice goodies!

So the big day for the operation is only two sleeps away. I feel a bit nervous, but more grateful that the cancer will be cut out. The doctor explained that it is a four hour procedure. They will do the mastectomy and reconstruction of the breast in one. He also needs to do an clearance where he is going to remove about 20 lymph nodes under my left arm to be tested afterwards. The results of these tests are important with regards to further treatment (radiotherapy) and the prediction of recurrence.

Please pray with us for a good and successful operation and a speedy recovery. I need to have drainpipes and will be going home as soon as those are removed.

Just before we left SA in June to come back to start the treatment, Miley Cirus was singing her new song, 'The Climb'. After watching "Why I wore lipstick to my mastectomy" I decided that this song will be my "war song". Slowly but surely I forgot about that and then my wonderful sister-in-law wrote me a letter and mentioned this song. This part I like best:

There's always going to be another mountain

I'm always going to want to make it move

Always going to be an uphill battle,

Sometimes you going to have to lose,

Ain't about how fast I get there,

Ain't about what's waiting on the other side

It's the climb

Keep on moving

Keep climbing

Keep the faith baby

It's all about

It's all about

The climb

Keep the faith

Keep your faith

So, lets keep the faith. Lets keep on climbing.....

Pretty darn scary!

Yes, this last week was pretty and scary. On Tuesday evening we watched a program on BBC titled 'My Breasts Could Kill Me'. Very insightful. A young woman going through the motions to see whether she has breast cancer. Her own mom died at the age of 34 of this decease, which makes her a good candidate to follow in her mom's footsteps. Some interesting facts: from the time that the first cancer cell is 'born' until the moment you can feel the lump in your breast is about five years. That means that I have been sitting with this awful stuff in my body for at least five years - scary! Luckily modern medicine is so amazing that they can detect a cancer tumor 18 months before you can feel the lump with a mammogram and three years before with an MRI scan. Unfortunately these are pricey tests.

Now to the pretty part. I had my 'Look good, feel better' afternoon this last Wednesday, together with 14 other ladies - all ages, shapes and sizes. It was a real girly, fun-filled afternoon. Upon arrival we had some drinks (that is now tea, coffee or cappuccino), were taken to the long table and handed out a nice biggish toiletry bag. Inside we found everything you need to glamour up your face - names like Chanel, Clarins, Lancome and Yves Saint Laurent. Even a very nice bottle of Sarah Jessica Parker perfume. Stephen showed everyone the 110 steps to follow to look absolutely gorgeous - no, it was only 12 steps, but feels like a 110 if you are used to mascara and lipstick for special occasions only! I was the lucky one on whom he had to demonstrate all his tricks and I am sure I can't remember half of it (it must be my chemo-brain condition!). Everyone was very chirpy and all smiles by the end of the session.

Upon arriving home, I found three happy boys. Andries was on babysitter-duty and joined Hugo and Ivan playing outside. They also completed some puzzles and managed to build a dinosaur out of Lego - very impressive! (See the photo)

We are getting ready for our vacation in Egypt. Four more sleeps before we leave for Sharm El Sheikh. It is very close to the Sinai district. The great thing about this holiday is that it is all- inclusive. So the only work we have to do is to put up our arms and snap our fingers to order the cocktails (mine non-alcoholic obviously...).

On our return it will be just a few hours before we see Oupa and Ouma Kotzee. We are looking forward to their visit so much! They will be helping our for four full weeks. They have done it plenty times before and we feel so privileged to have them here. This will be Ouma's fifth visit to us in 13 months - I hope I am making other oumas very jealous that have kids living overseas.

Anyhow, I will be reporting back on the holiday after the 10th of November sometime, hopefully with a little bit of a tan. XXX

A prize-winning speech!

A new friend sent me this via e-mail and I would like to share it with everyone:

This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of at American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.

"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of
the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.

Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".

iThemba Walk Against Breast cancer

Pictures:Bobbies and my sister Liezel; Bobbies with the t-shirt; Little James doing his bit for breast cancer at 19 months;everybody walking the 5km walk (with apparently about 9993 other people); family pic (James, Mom, Karien, James Jnr., Dad and Liezel);

Well done to my nearest and dearest whom completed the iThemba Walk Against Breast Cancer last Sunday. Five kilometers of fun in the sun! I am very proud of all of you, especially little James that did his bit at the tender age of 19 months!

There are a lot of great organisations that are doing fantastic work to raise funds for various purposes like research or helping with the cost of breast reconstruction. Here in the UK Macmillan is such an organisation. They have a big office at the Harley Street Clinic where I received my chemotherapy. One of the services is a "Look good, feel better" afternoon for woman going through chemo or radiotherapy. (They have the same thing in SA). I am attending my session next week Wednesday and is very excited! They will teach me how to (finally!) apply make-up properly!

I had an appointment with my breast specialist yesterday and everything is set for the operation for 14 November. Beforehand I need to go for some blood tests, a CT scan and x-rays. My oncologist is very impressed with the surgeon and said to me "that his work is very good - every breast is a piece of art!" - we'll see how my piece of art turns out...

But for now we are getting ready for Hugo's photo-day at school tomorrow, our holiday and the arrival of Oupa and Ouma Kotzee - All very exciting stuff!