Everyone has memories, of holidays, special days, weddings etc. we are no different but where to store them so they are always at the forefront of our mind is something else. Years ago our lovely friend Michael bought my husband Colin a printers block. It used to store all letters and numbers for a newspaper. After having purchased this for us he then had a glass door made for it and so began our memory box.
Over the years we have added so many memories. It contains our leather pouches for our wedding rings, all our passes for the cruise ships we have been on, a champagne cork with a 20p stuck in the top from a successful business transaction.
Another cork brings back such sweetly sad memories of our time living in Javea. Four friends were with us on holiday. After eating a lovely meal by our pool the fiery heat had gone from the day, the evening was a beautiful one and a friend looked and saw the sun just beginning to come down behind the mountain. Very quickly we grabbed a bottle of cava and some plastic cups and quickly made our way to the top of our woods where we sat and watched the sun go down completely. Six people in tune with nature and a memory never to be forgotten. Very poignant memories as one of these friends sadly lost her battle for life against cancer. The cork now sits in our memory box.
Teeny tiny cabinets are stored in here for a dolls house with tiny scissors, mirrors, jewels, perfume bottles etc.
When I look at it I am reminded of living in America and our lovely friend Pete who took us to my first ever purpose built restaurant for fondue. I still have the tiny bottles supplied to us with balsamic vinegar and one with a very potent chilli sauce. I will never forget the amazing times we had in America.
There are the tiniest mugs ever with our names on from our honeymoon in the Grand Caymen spent with our lovely friends Pat and Gord. They bring back memories of days in the warm seas and the coral so close, the barracudas that appeared on the wrong side of the coral and seeing Colin and Gord making a hasty retreat from the seas, of huge bonfires on the private beach where we toasted marshmallows at the end of the day.
The crowns I bought for my children are in this box and a red rose, fashioned from some type of paper where we celebrated our wedding anniversary when we lived in Javea, Spain. My granddaughter is about to put in some rubbers fashioned to look like burger and chips plus coke bought from our lovey holiday in Center Parks,
Another rose fashioned from paper was to celebrate my daughters birthday a few years ago when we took her to a really lovely restaurant. This place was set nestled between the beautiful mountains and had a livery at the bottom of the drive. My daughter loves horses so this was an amazing place to take her for this celebration. Another memory in the box is a walnut. This dropped on my daughters head when again, living in Spain we were eating in another restaurant under the walnut trees and this nut obligingly dropped on her head. I will never forget the laughter we had when this occurred.
There are two almonds still in their shells. memories of walking through the woods where we lived with the smell of the fennel in our nostrils as we walked through the almond orchard and then on through the meadow filled with the aniseed scent of this plant. For certain nobody ever needed to buy fennel when there was so much of it growing wild all around us. Then on we went through the grape vines, heavy with their fruit till we reached our goal, the golf course club where they did amazing food. Here we sat outside with all these delicious smells assailing our noses as we ate and watched the huge carp in the water at our feet.
Izzy loves to stand on the ladders, small ones, and take out the memories one at a time and ask about the articles, they keep our memories alive and we shall continue to add to this box, hopefully for many years to come. She loves the tiny bottle containing whisky from our trip to Gretna Green, all these memories and many many more are contained in this box. Another tiny mug contains a tube of Colgate toothpaste, the tiniest toothbrush that comes with it nestles up to this tube. These are memories of a dear friend from the time before I married Colin.
Whilst I have these memories I have many more to add. I may have ph but I won't let it beat me. Yes I have bad days, most of us with ph do. I get very tired much more quickly than a person without this illness and I am limited to what I can achieve in a day. Lethargy is part of my everyday life too, it goes hand in hand with ph but ........... I am also alive and determined to beat this disease with the help of the researchers and my A Team at Sheffield who take care of me so well.
This ph is a war. All of us living with ph are in a war zone. As in a war there will be casualties and hard times along the way, we are fighting a battle that seems so senseless to us. Why did we get this disease, why is our body letting us down like this. So many whys and no answers YET but the answers we need, and the cure we need is every day being looked for in many many laboratories nationwide, the speed that new medicines are coming out for us is huge and in reality they have not been researching for ph for so many number of years, they have come so far so fast in researching this disease and we now have more meds to help us to push it back.
When I was first diagnosed and given the prognosis of six weeks to live without medicines there were few options available then and as I was so near to dying I was immediately put on a Hickman line with a pump tied around my waste and the pump sent medicines every two minutes via a tube that went in through my chest delivered this med close to my heart. After a year my heart was better able to cope with the high pressures in my lungs so I went onto oral medication. I am on a very high dose of sildenifil , or Viagra to the ones reading that don't know the different term. I am on 300mgs a day, a huge dose and many of my ph family will be on the same, plus 10 mgs of ambrisenten. We all need water tablets and warfarin plus other meds our body needs with this disease but these are the weapons we need to go into this battle zone with, these are the arsenal of medicines we take to keep us alive whilst waiting for the cry, " the war is over, we have won the battle" .
This gives me huge HOPE of a cure. I am a casualty of war now BUT as the Professor at Cambridge University said when he was on television with the breaking news of a cure for ph we new have a real HOPE.
We need to stay strong, to believe that we will come out on top, this war will not beat me. We need to stand together, help each other and to firmly believe, as I really do, that I will beat this disease, I will win the battle.
Meanwhile I shall continue to add memories to our very special cabinet, memories we share with so many people in our lives, family and friends, very special memories.
Hope you all have a lovely day, now i must go and get my grandaughter Izzy to school. This sentence means so much to me, who would have thought five years ago when diagnosed I would be saying this!!!!!
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