As my mother has a 'fairly significant' birthday this summer, I rather foolishly offered to scan a whole pile of photos and transfer them to a digital photo frame, along with some up to date ones of her children, grandchildren and great granchild.  I have spent my afternoon scanning away and now have around 120 photos, many of which need a bit of tweaking where the scanner tried to make them regular sizes even when they aren't.

It has been fun looking at photos of my grandparent's parents (and possibly in one case grandparents) and spotting the family resemblances.  It has also been fun looking at photos of us as children and observing how the same personality traits shone through, whatever age we were. 

Probably not fair to post pictures of my sibs without their consent, so I've settled for my great great grandparents (I think!) and me at the age of 14.

Among the regular questions I get asked by people are 'so are you cured now?' or, if they understand what remission means, 'are you (still) in the clear?' or even 'so what is your life expectancy now?'

Because people ask, and because I get tired of explaining remission and NED (No Evidence of Disease) and the strengths and weaknesses of medical stats, and the impact of lifestyle and attitude, and the constant emergence of new research etc., I have added some information to my 'about' page explaining what my stats (drawn from Cancer Research UK) are.  So, if you really want to know, look there.

At the moment I feel fit, strong and healthy and apart from occasional bouts of paranoia feel very positive about life.  Sometimes, though, it's hard to be smiley and upbeat when someone says 'so are you cured now...?'