First Post (Put Your Seatbelts On)...

How we got here

Louis started rubbing his eye a bit and complaining it hurt. He’s always loved a bit of drama so we assumed it was a hair or some other minor irritation. Isabelle was adamant he had a bit of potato in his eye – very plausible given his potato fetish. Louis continued to run and bounce around the house as kids his age do.

That was 4 weeks ago. Now we sit in Southampton General Hospital. Louis has cancer. He is 2 years old.

Why are we writing this?

Not sure really – felt the urge one day to put pen to paper – or finger to keyboard. Think it’s for a few reasons.

Firstly, we wanted to provide a channel to provide updates. There has been an overwhelming amount of support and best wishes for Louis and ourselves. Whilst we are in touch daily with some people, there will be some that don’t want to check in daily – nor would we have the capacity to deal with this. There are no doubt people who aren’t really sure how to talk to us as it’s a surreal situation – and that’s ok.

Secondly, education. We are having to face into things we never thought we’d have to. There’s plenty of materials that explain the various types of illness, the treatment, survival statistics – but less so on the day-to-day experience, the process, the drip pre-alarm that keeps you awake and out of bed, the alarm to indicate the drip’s finished, the second alarm, the third, oh for f**k’s sake. Maybe this will help people in similar situations – if not hints and tips, maybe lessons learned and things to avoid.

Thirdly, therapy. Maybe writing this down will help ease the burden.

Fourth, some weird memory board that we can keep to remind ourselves and the kids of this experience. Hopefully it will be a memory of over-coming adversity and nothing sinister – the phrase we use is ‘cautiously optimistic’.

Finally, we need your support. I imagine at some point, we’ll want to try and give something back to the army of people that dedicate their lives to helping people like us. If people can see what we do on this journey, maybe they will be more inclined to support the charities that are key to this whole process.

What can you expect

Dunno – making it up as we go along…winging it. Not sure it will be 1,000 words that you apparently need to top google searches – more like a few pictures and some ‘delicately’ crafted words that try and show the good as well as the bad and ugly.

There may be some pictures that will disturb people and tug heart strings and apologies if this upsets you - feel free to look away.

Thoughts? Join in the conversation.

First blog ever. Never created website either. How's it looking? Anything you'd like to see?

Add a comment below or drop and email to fixinglouis@gmail.com.

#cancer #cancerblog #childcancer #bestblogexample(not)