PRECIOUS TIME R EAL LIFE
Gill Duffus-Simpson, 44, from Elgin, Moray, was horrified to find out that her dad had cancer, but little did she know there was worse to come…
Popping into my parents’ house, I pictured the sparkling turquoise seas waiting for us. ‘Not long now,’ I beamed in excitement. It was late 2010 and we were soon jetting off to Vietnam. Only, they both didn’t look in the holiday mood.
‘We can’t go anymore, love,’ my mum Elizabeth, then 66, said. ‘It’s your Dad. He has bowel cancer.’
Thoughts of sandy beaches faded as I rushed over to my fun-loving dad Eric, then 66. ‘We’ll get through this,’ he promised, taking my hand.
At 32, I loved my social work job and had a flat just 30 minutes from the family home I grew up in.
We’d always been close – Mum, Dad, me and my two brothers.
We spent childhood days in the garden, stripping leaves off sweetcorn cobs from our veg patch.
We’d giggle together as bugs fell on to our laps.
‘Just a wee horny-gollach!’ Dad would exclaim, the Scottish name for an earwig.
Mum and Dad taught us to be adventurous and brave.
Cancer wasn’t a creepycrawly, but we coped with Dad’s diagnosis just the same way. By not giving into fear. Three months on, my friends took me to the bingo to cheer me up. ‘Oh my gosh!’ I laughed when one got a full house and my hand went flying to my chest.
I froze. There was a lump in my right breast.
In March 2011, Mum was with me when I received my test results.
‘You have an aggressive form of breast cancer,’ the consultant said.
I just wanted to stay alive
Beside me, Mum howled, but I was stunned silent.
I would need surgery, chemo and radiotherapy, too.
Outside, Mum rang Dad.
‘Gill has cancer, too,’ she wept down the phone.
‘Right, I’m going out to buy her favourite wine,’ Dad gulped. ‘Then we’ll talk it through.’ So that’s what we did. I sat in a shocked bubble, drinking rosé as Dad reassured me. ‘Everything will be fine,’ he promised once again. As life turned into a round of hospital visits, I hoped he was right. 20 days later, Mum climbed aboard the NHS mammogram bus for a routine screening.
When she was called into hospital, I went along with her.
‘What?’ I blurted, when she was told she had breast cancer, too.
A third cancer diagnosis for us in six months.
Our family was cursed by this cruel disease – it was trying to kill us all off.
‘I’ll go get a bloody bottle of wine,’ Dad said when I broke the news.
Back at theirs we struggled to take it in.
‘I’ll move back,’ I said. ‘We need to get through this together.’
So I carried my stuff into my old
