Dreams really do come true!

I was fourteen years of age when my careers teacher asked me what job did I want to do when I grew up, my reply was quick and to the point ‘I want to be a dancer in pans people or go to Paris and show my knickers to the boys whilst kicking my legs out’ she was horrified and couldn’t answer me, so she sent me out of the room so she could get some fresh air. This set the tone in my years at secondary school when I was in my last year the head teacher yelled at me ‘You’ll never amount to anything Carol’ after I’d been caned three times in a week for truancy and talking in class.

It seemed they were right because I spent the next thirty five years searching for the perfect job for me. That was until the Christmas of 2008 when I got stuck in the loft after kicking away the ladder as I heaved myself up to find the decorations. As I wondered around the loft I came across my diaries dating back to 1970 the year my mum died, I was ten years of age at the time and as I read the diaries to myself all the memories of loss came flooding back to me and I remembered the hardship me and my sister endured at that time.

It was the summer of 2009 when I decided to extract entries from the diaries and put them in a word document, so I could write them up at a later date and that is where my love of writing began.

At the age of forty seven I went on my first writing course and I really enjoyed it. Not only was I meeting likeminded people I was doing something I loved. I was also getting ideas for books and scripts and the more I wrote the better I got.

It was in 2014 I was feeling lethargic and generally unwell, on the fourth visit to the doctor I was rushed to hospital with breathing problems. After a lot of tests I was told I was in heart failure and the doctors didn’t expect me to live the night and although I felt sorry for my husband and daughter who were clearly heartbroken, I was too ill to care what happened to me. After a few days I was diagnosed as having bronchial pneumonia. All I did was sleep whilst I was wired up to drips and I was so weak I couldn’t walk to the bathroom or carry out a full conversation with anyone. I couldn’t lie down because I had so much fluid around my heart and lungs, so I was put on strong water tablets to get rid of the fluid and heart tablets to stabilise my heart.

After eight days I was told there was a blockage at the back of my stomach and after more tests and scans they diagnosed me as having pancreatic cancer and I was immediately moved to a cancer hospital. My husband and daughter were devastated and I asked visitors to keep away while I got my head around it all. One morning the consultant came to my bed and simply said. ‘You’re aware we think it’s pancreatic cancer and you know what that means don’t you?’ I shook my head and even though I knew what he meant, I wanted him to say it. He stood up and simply said. ‘The pancreas is hard to get to so there’s nothing we can do’ I sat in shock for the rest of the day.

A few days later I was discharged from hospital and I had outpatient visits to the hospital to speak with a specialist doctor. The visit was not good news and as I sat and listened to the doctor something deep inside me knew I wasn’t going to die. When I voiced my opinion to the doctor he became quite cross with me and suggested I have counselling to help me come to terms with the diagnoses. We were sent home to get our heads around the diagnoses and I had a follow up appointment for two weeks later.

I was only home nine days when I got a secondary infection of pneumonia. Once again I was rushed into hospital via ambulance. It was two weeks before I started to feel even slightly better and three weeks when I started to chant in my head. I would say the words over and over again ‘I am not ready to leave my family and friends, I am not ready to die, this isn’t my time’ I also had a plan in my head that I WOULD write a book when I got out of hospital.

Thank goodness the diagnosis wasn’t pancreatic cancer but I still had a blockage of some sort in my body and the doctors needed to find out where it was.

I was admitted into the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield to a specialist department for heart and lung disease and after only days I was diagnosed as having a condition call pulmonary hypertension, which for now is incurable. I’m on oxygen at least fifteen hours a day and because of my condition I can’t walk very far. At times my legs and arms spasm and I believe this is because of the heart tablets and other medication I am on.

Over the past 2 ½ years I have had some very dark times and on my lowest moments I have wished I would go to sleep and not wake up. I’ve had to make myself go out and the discrimination I have found in shops and supermarkets from the general public is unbelievable and at times I’ve gone home in floods of tears. One man actually patted me on the head and said ‘aww bless you’ one lady came over and asked me outright what was wrong with me and I was so shocked I told her. Another lady moved me when I was looking at cardigans and that was fine, but her parking me in front of a blank wall was inconsiderate.

I tried to stay positive and carried on writing, it wasn’t always easy but I knew deep in my heart I had to keep writing. It took me four months to write my first book ‘Snap cackle & pop’ a story of Cathy a 54yr old woman who loses everything in eight minutes and is forced to go back home and live with her elderly parents. Cathy’s Mothers advice is not always what Cathy wants to hear like ‘Cheer up Cathy the worst is yet to come’

I sent out the book to agents and publisher and got a lot of rejections, but that didn’t stop me and one day I put a tweet on twitter asking if anyone agent or publisher would like to read my northern, gritty and raw book. Within minutes a publisher sent me a message saying she would read it. She promised to get back to me in three days, so when after a week I didn’t hear from her I thought it would be another rejection, however eight days later I was offered a publishing contract.

Many people have asked me how I could write a comedy book after nearly dying and ending up with a serious illness, my answer is always the same. ‘I’m lucky to be alive and my positive thoughts have got me through the difficult time I had’

They say there’s a book in everyone and I agree. If this can happen to me it can happen to anyone. So don’t sit on your dreams and put the things you want to do on hold, get out there and do it, if there’s an area in your life you’re not happy with change it. Grab life with both hands because you never know when it could all change and remember it’s never too late to follow your dream.

Snap Cackle & Pop was released on 26^th April and is available on Amazon and through Wallace publishing in either eBook or paper back.