Happy Stem Cells Birthday to Me

This day six year's ago I was spending the first of two days in Saint James's Hospital in Dublin having my stem cells harvested as part of my treatment for Multiple Myeloma - a cancer of the blood/bone marrow. 

It was cutting edge to watch all the machines and the stem cells literally being sucked out of my blood as it was taken out and put back into my body through my central line. The care I received was fantastic and we had great fun despite me being sick with nerves and still a little sick from the chemo I had received the previous week. 

I was one of the lucky ones whose stem cells mobilised and were harvested. After two days on the machine they had harvested enough for not just one, but two stem cell transplants. 

The first of the stem cells in their little bag of life 

It was an extraordinary challenging and yet miraculous time for me and for my family. Each part of the treatment had its own side effects and problems but it was all well and truly worth it. 

I spend two weeks in hospital for the process of harvesting my stem cells and the second day of harvesting was on the Friday of the June bank holiday weekend. Even though I had been on the machines and had a very intensive day I persuaded them to send me home on the Friday evening - day two of the harvest - so as I could be around family for the long weekend.

On the trip from Saint James's Hospital back to Tallaght I was very woozy from the drugs and the effects of having my blood taken out and put back in so I said to the ambulance driver 'I would be a cheap date tonight - one drink and I would be singing' and he very quickly retorted 'what time will I pick you up at?'. It's funny what you remember from a day like that. 

Me and My Collected Stem Cells May 2007 

Here's to my wonderful stem cells which worked and which kicked cancer in the butt and here's to my stem cells waiting patiently for me in Saint James's should I need another transplant.

Onwards and upwards [well once I have today's hospital visit over]. LOL

Happy Bank Holiday Weekend and here's to health, the only wealth you ever need. 

Cherishing Childhood

Our childhood is what makes us who we are, and it’s also what sustains us when we enter into the sometimes crushing reality of adulthood. This world isn’t easy to live in. The monsters you once thought hid under the bed don’t hide anymore, they walk the streets, and they are every bit as frightening as when you lay huddled beneath the bedcovers at night after a bad dream.

When you grow up, you enter into a world of jobs and mortgages, a world of endless responsibility; a world that can gobble you right up if you let it. You learn that bad things do happen and that they happen every second of every day. As you grow up you begin to learn about the past, and the depravity of your own species through the ages. The boogie man comes knocking at your front door with a gun and a smile, and life stops being fair and becomes ugly.

It’s easy to get lost in the big bad world, which is why your childhood is so important. It lets you exist in a time where things are simpler, where you see the world through a keyhole and the grass is green right where you stand. You get to exist in a place where all the fairy tales are real, when you might still get your Hogwarts letter, where life is made of wonder and you don’t scare so easily.
But once you grow up the simple truth is that life can be hard, brutally hard, and you need somewhere to go, memories to sustain you when it feels like you’re being suffocated under the life you’ve made for yourself. You need to get be able to remember back to the days when you felt you could be anything in the world, from a princess to Pokémon Master. You have to be able to remember when the world was an idea, when the doors were opening instead of closing and when every crack and crevice was full of magic.

But sadly there are many people who had their childhood taken from them, whose lives have always been complicated. These people deserve to be given a chance to salvage their own childhood, and they can’t do it on their own. Those of us who had a happy childhood have to help them, have to allow them to enter into our world. Force them to watch every single Harry Potter movie and make them read the books you read when you were a kid. Bring them to the beach and make them build a sandcastle, give them the memories they never got to make.

The gift of a childhood is the greatest gift you can give another person, because within it lies the pathway to everything else, the basic understanding of love and the simplistic goodness that we all need to fall back on. We could all use a little childish logic now and then, giving things because it’s right, not because you want to look good, doing things without expecting anything in return.

Maybe your childhood wasn’t perfect, maybe your life has never stopped being complicated. Maybe your parents taught you things you wish you didn’t know. Regardless of the lot you were dealt as a child - as an adult, as a parent you have to be the one to teach your children what you wish you had been taught, and you must always be mindful of the millions of children in the world today who have no childhood because their world is consumed by war and poverty. Their world is broken, shattered, along with every dream they ever dared to dream.

English poet John Betjeman said, "Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows."

Cherish your children and give them a childhood worth remembering, because it’s the foundation that holds them up.
Children and young people reading this – you too must cherish and do your best to enjoy your childhood – you owe it to your adult self!

Emma Tobin
2013

Being Young

Guest post by Emma Tobin

Being young today isn’t easy, because it means being massively stereotyped, it means being prejudiced against. We’re viewed with scorn because of what we do, because we spend time on Facebook and Twitter and because we don’t give our elders respect they haven’t earned. We’re seen as a bunch of atheists who live in a world where evil is glorified, where violence reigns supreme. We can’t shop in large groups, because we’re seen as a threat.

That’s the brush we’re tarred with, and that’s what’s expected of us. We have opinions, we’re smarter than people give us credit for, yet still it’s presumed that we are slaves to fashion and the constant victims of peer pressure. We’re viewed as invertebrates - bowing under social pressure, unable to stand on our own two feet, more likely than not to drink and take drugs.

That’s not who we are. We are the people who will have to search for peace, because we know that war is no longer the answer to every little problem, we know that bombing each other is not the only way to settle an argument. We’ve grown up in a world plagued with nuclear threat on all sides. Everyone is packing now, because for a long time that’s been the only way to be safe; the promise of mutual annihilation. We’re the people who will have to find a cure for cancer, who will continue to save and preserve human life.

We are not the people who will waste away in virtual worlds; we are the people who will take virtual reality further than anyone has gone before. We will make the future masterpieces in film, we will write the classics of the future; we will be the pop stars, the rock stars, the singer/songwriters of the future. We are not the dirt under your shoe, we are the ground that will hold you up when you grow old, we are the people who will actually give you your pensions. We will be the honest bankers; we will speak the words that will change the world.
We are the young, and the stupid, but we are not delinquents, and we do not deserve your condescension, your mistrust. We will learn from your mistakes and build a better world for ourselves. Right now, we’re the people you think you can look down on, but in a few years we’ll be you, and you have a choice to teach us to appreciate the young people who will take our place, or to be just like you. You are the people with the choice to make. You have the power to empower us, and to empower future generations.

Being young has never been easy, but it doesn’t have to be impossible and it doesn’t have to be so hard that we do everything in our power to escape it. You can give us the power to be noticed, to be heard, make us responsible people who don’t need to turn to alcohol to feel grown-up, who don’t need to turn to drugs to escape the world you’ve made for us. You were young once. I mean, you’re the people that The Breakfast Club is based on, so you know how we feel. We’re not criminals, we’re the start of a new age, and you have to accept that even though we seem alien, we’re going through the same things that you did.

We strike out against the world because it seems to close in on us, drowning us in rules and quashing our every attempt to express who we are, who we’re turning into. We don’t walk around shops wondering what to steal; we wonder what will look good on us. We don’t look at you and see victims; we look at you and see people who were just like us once, just as scared and confused, turning to music to make us feel alive because we don’t quite know how to live yet.

We’ve had it proven to us one hundred times over that children can’t rule the world, and we’re not asking you to hand over the reins to us. We just want the right to grow up in a world that appreciates us, that really listens to us and that isn’t so afraid of us that we have to be ruled with an iron fist. This is your world right now, but one day it will be ours, and you need to consider just what you want the future rulers of the world to be like.

Do you want them to be criminals, or do you want them to be smart, confident people who aren’t afraid of becoming like you?

Ends

May 2013

Emma Tobin is my daughter and she is 16.

Wonder by Emma Tobin

Guest post by my almost 16 year old daughter Emma:


“If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If you’re a pretender come sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!” ~ Shel Silverstein

Our world is almost indescribable. How do you put something that encompasses the entirely of our existence in a single word, one definition that’s supposed to explain everything? Here is a planet with seven billion people attempting to live at the same time, a planet with hundreds of languages, countries and religions; a race of people full of untold stories and brimming with secrets. I try not to put the world into words, because as Oscar Wilde said, ‘to define is to limit’.

Still, every so often I like to sit back and simply…wonder at the beauty of it all and the ugliness too. We’ve realised ourselves that there cannot be beauty without some imperfection in the equation, and while we have a lot of imperfection, without it we could not know beauty. Our world can be all at once grotesque and exquisite. We have committed terrible acts as a race, as individuals, but we’re also inherently beautiful. You’d be surprised how widespread this belief is; Marilyn Monroe said that ‘imperfection is beauty’.

This is a world full of dreamers, and that is perhaps our redeeming quality. I’ve always found that of every great power on this earth, dreams outstrip all. They are restricted only by our imagination, and they’ve led us from strength to strength. Of course, dreams aren’t always pretty things and in many cases they’ve led us to death and destruction.

Dreams are what drive us to be great, to always tell ourselves that we can go further, we can do better. The fact is that dreams have changed the world, for better and for worse, and they will continue to do so until we’re just a radioactive shimmer in the air. You can’t limit imagination or willpower and so you can’t limit those who dare to dream. Our minds span farther into the universe than technology will ever be able to transport us, and reside deeper in our hearts than any scalpel can probe.

Jesus Christ dreamed of a peaceful world. In His life He demonstrated how massive a task He has given to His followers. Born in a land where those who weren’t ignoring the problems were baying for blood as a way to resolve them, He told people to love their neighbours and even though it seems like a losing battle, every day His followers work towards a peaceful world.

We sweat and we bleed and we die for our dreams, because they’re worth it, and that’s what makes them more powerful than hydrogen bombs and guns and all those superficial instruments of power.

The world is an amazing place, but I believe that we don’t make it less beautiful by living on it. Some say that the world would be better off if humans never came to exist, but I think that despite our imperfections, without us the world would only be a sad shadow of what we have made it.

However, we have a duty to ourselves and to the world, which has given us room to grow and new places to discover, to make sure that we never end up as radioactive shimmers in the air. We have a duty to pursue world peace with single-minded determination and to keep our hopes and our dreams alive. We’re a long way from peace, and there’s still a chance that world peace may be impossible, that there’s no way to keep seven billion people happy at the same time.

Instinctively, I see two problems that are making peace impossible, and those two things are the reasons for innumerable atrocities throughout the turbulent history of international relations. They are ignorance and intolerance. Simple in themselves, but the 20th Century showed us just how easily these two things can put the world minutes from total annihilation.

Ignorance leads to fear, which is the reason that the Cuban Missile Crisis got so far out of hand. Intolerance built the concentration camps and fuelled the minds of those who committed terrible acts there. There’s no clear answer to achieving peace, and it will take many more decades of baby steps to get anywhere close to it, but I don’t think I’m alone in believing that when all is said and done it will be worth it.

You don’t have to be idealistic to realise that the world is a wonderful place, and a flawed place, but it is a beautiful place, so every so often I urge you to sit back and indulge in a healthy dose of awe.

Ends

Emma Tobin
2013

Guest post: Motherhood by Emma Tobin

Mothers are the hands that hold us up until we learn to fly, and often those hands have a hard time letting go of us, the baby bird whose wings are strong enough to carry it now. They’ve held it up even when their arms shook, even when they wanted nothing more than to throw down this tremendous burden and run away.

Sooner or later, we all lose our mother, and it happens to some sooner than it happens to others. Some of have to learn to fly faster than others (and some of us never learn to fly), but a mother isn’t something that can be completely taken from us. Whether or not you believe that there is a chamber in our heart nobody talks about where those we love reside, there is a connection between a mother and her children that defies life and death and distance. Even when the umbilical cord is cut and even when we’re forced out of safety and into the infamously unfair world, we are always connected to our mother.

Even if we never get a chance to get to know this person we see reflected in our eyes and in the way we smile, our mother can never truly leave us so long as we are the person that she loves more than her own life. So long as we are the people she’s fighting Velociraptors for in her nightmares, then she is the one person who will love us even if the rest of the world knows that we’re a complete brat.
Unfortunately, we can’t control the way our mother feels, and we can’t control it if they don’t really live up to their title. Which is why we learn that the person whose uterus we inhabited isn’t always the person we call mother. People aren’t perfect, and not everyone is strong enough to be a mother. So don’t limit yourself to the belief that just because this person who gave you their genes doesn’t feel the way they should, that you don’t have someone you can call mother. Just like everyone has a soul mate, everyone has someone who is willing to give them a mother’s love. They can be hard to find, and sometimes we’re already flying before we realise who was holding us up the whole time.

Mother’s Day is a tribute to those who call themselves mothers, who have given everything again and again just to get us off the ground. They don’t get to stop holding us up, but they get to see us look down and notice that without them we’d be falling.

Don’t hold back, spare no expense, but always remember that it’s not about getting the right DVD, it’s about the expression of love that you show even in handing over the wrong DVD. A single day each year isn’t too much to ask for the lifetime of dedication that goes into having a child. This woman gave up so much so that you could be alive, and the fact that you’re here means that even if a certain accident happened prior to your birth, it became a gift the first time she looked into your eyes, or heard you laugh.

You can’t imagine the kind of love that consumes a mother when she sees her child for the first time. It trumps anything they’ve felt before; they look into your eyes and they’re scared because they know right in that moment that they’d die for you. Without hesitation, without a second thought, because nothing on this earth could hurt them more than losing you.

Mother’s Day doesn’t have to be elaborate, because you could give your mother anything under the sun and it would be worth nothing compared to what your life is worth to her.

Copyright: Emma Tobin 2013

A guest post by Emma Tobin

This is a poem written by my daughter Emma. Emma is 15 and she is the most talented writer, as yet undiscovered but something tells me that 2013 is her year. This is a poem she wrote following our failed attempts at sending Chinese lanterns skywards on New Year's Eve 2012:

Brenda’s Recipe for roast spiced Winter vegetables

Ingredients:

Carrots

Parsnips

Red Onion

[You can also add squash and red pepper but it works very well with just carrots and parsnips]

Ground cumin

Ground coriander

Orange zest

Garlic (fresh or ground]

Brown sugar

Salt and pepper

Preparation:

Cut and prepare the carrots and parsnips into uneven wedge/chunks about 1 – 2 inches

Par boil the veg so as they are soft but with a little bit of resistance – you will finish them in the oven

Cut and slice the onion into large uneven chunks – you actually break it up into layers and cut the layers

Put a shallow dish of a decent amount of olive oil into an oven and heat until it is piping hot

The spice mix: 

While that is happening you can prepare the spice mix

Add two teaspoons of ground coriander and ground cumin to a dish/mixing bowl (I use a mug at times)

Add two teaspoons of brown sugar (light or medium rather than muscovado)

Zest a large orange and add that to the mix

Add a couple of grinds of salt and pepper from a grinder

Crush and mince one garlic clove or add half a teaspoon of dried garlic

Mix all of this together and set to one side

The smell should be fantastic

Back to the veg: 

Drain the parsnips and carrots very well – there should be no moisture as it will cool down the oil

Take the tray of oil out out of the oven and if you can place it over a ring of the hob turned up high so as the veg sizzle when they hit it. Then add the onion and mix around – all the time getting a good sizzle.

Finally add the mix of spices and seasoning and give it a good mix around.

The smell at this stage should be of pungent orange and garlic and spices.

Get the mix back into a hot oven and bake until the veg are all soft and caramelised and gorgeous. I always give it about 25-30 minutes.

Serving suggestion:

Serve with your Christmas turkey for a real heart warming taste of seasonal sumptuousness. For an even better effect, bring to the table straight from the oven and let people help themselves to large dollops. 

For larger gatherings you will have to increase the amount of veg and also adjust the spices accordingly. This is also great with roast chicken and roast beef all year round.

Brenda 

xx