When life throws you a curve ball...all you need is love

This week and a bit of last has been a bit of a mind f***. I've had this recurring abscess in my breast boob boobie breast and this time round it grew in record time to a size comparable to another breast. I had a boob on my boob.

Off I went to Carol Benn, where I've become a local, and again I was given a heavy dose of antibiotics to bring the swelling down, get rid of some of the infection so that I could have an 'aspiration' done. The aspiration (such an elegant word for a rather gruesome procedure) went well, bar a giant hole between my nipple and boob and an incredible amount of discomfort.

I had a follow up appointment on Tuesday anyway, but on Monday morning I got a call to tell me that I needed to come in as soon as possible because they had gotten the results back from the lab. As much as I try and tell myself (and you) that I'm a happy-go-lucky- kinda girl who always sees the glass as half full, I'm not. I'm a pessimistic old grinch who expects the absolute worst. The upside of this is that when the news is bad I've prepared myself.

So on Monday night, as I waited for Tuesday to arrive, I imagined all sorts of scenarios. Me with the 'BIG C', my family and how they would cope, would I fight it, would I quietly surrender to it? I'm not being flippant and I'm not being disrespectful to anyone who has gone through this or is going through it. This is where my mind went.

Years ago I wasn't well and again I thought I was on death's door. I remember telling Mark that he wasn't to find a wife as cute as me, as funny as me, as stylish as me or as wonderful as me. I told him he would have to get rid of all my things because if I saw her (the new wife) wearing anything of mine I would haunt him in the worst ways possible. That was a younger me, a more selfish me, a me that wasn't yet a mom.

This time round I sat worrying that I would be leaving Mark with two little children. I worried whether he would find someone JUST LIKE ME to love and take care of him, Emma and Ben in a way that only I could. I suddenly found myself wishing that he would find a perfect someone to fill my rather big shoes (literally BIG shoes). I thought about the people that I might have upset or hurt over the years with the things I had said or done and I thought about time not spent with those I hold dear to my heart.

The idea of dying or not being well has a funny way of putting things into perspective and you become aware of what's important in your life and what doesn't matter. In those few hours I didn't think about work or whether I had delivered a status report on time. I didn't think about people I dislike or that had hurt me. My thoughts immediately got all mushy and lovey dovey and I realised that love is all you need.

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.”