Of sadness and Regina Spektor
24.09.08, 9:49 pm

I�m kind�ve sad at the moment. Nicole, who is one of the BMedSci students and a good friend of mine, had to go home last week as her mum had taken a turn for the worse. She had breast cancer last year, which developed into bone met also, and got so ill just before Christmas that they thought she was going to die. And then she made this miraculous recovery and was doing really well, until about three weeks ago when she suddenly started feeling unwell again, and they admitted her into hospital and discovered that she had liver cancer. So Nicole went home for the week, to ferry her mum to the hospital and back so that she could have her chemo. She messaged me on Wednesday to say that they couldn�t give her mum any more chemo, as her liver levels weren�t stable enough, and that everything looked pretty bleak. And then suddenly her mum took a massive turn for the worst and died on Friday afternoon.

It�s so incredibly sudden � to go from fine to that in the space of three weeks. We all knew that it wasn�t going to have a happy ending, as bone met is pretty much the kiss of death, but still... I was hoping that she�d last until after Christmas. With hindsight it�s probably good that it didn�t drag out for long hideous months, but it�s so sudden that Nicole is completely unprepared. She�s an only child and her dad lives in America, and is also a complete fuckwit. She has her gran and that�s about it. Everyone�s pretty sad at work... I�ve had a whole week of people telling me their personal dead relative/friend�s dead relative stories. I have not shared mine, which probably goes without saying. Anyway, Nicole�s coming back end of next week, as she has to hand her thesis in relatively soon, and I think me and Katie will feel better then � more helpful and less like useless flappers.

I just feel for her, that�s all. I�ve spent quite a few hours at work sitting in front of my computer, pretending to work and instead just listening, stupidly, to Chemo Limo by Regina Spektor, alternating between sympathetic thoughts about Nicole and selfish thoughts about myself, because you can�t help things like this sparking off memories of your own.

In other news Mini Boss is completely getting on my tits with her endless flapping around the Newbies, to the extent that I spend most of my dad plugged into my Ipod, and when that sometimes fails to block her out I have to go sit in the main lab for ten minutes and moan to whoever�s around. Indie came in for afternoon coffee as she had finished at uni early, and we then went for more coffee with her boyfriend and I ranted about work for quite a long time. Probably bored her completely rigid.

Quite ill at the moment with some bubonic plague that James has given me. He�s now properly back from London, which is lovely but taking some getting used to, as I�ve gotten quite accustomed to having the whole week to myself. He bought me all sorts of presents on Friday to say thankyou for being good about him having to go to London, which was very sweet. Argh sorry, I�m a bit too down to write this entry properly. I should probably just knob off and go do some guitar practise, seeing as I have a lesson tomorrow.

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