Lucie Hanaghan

Hi Everyone, A week with medical stability in my sights - an improving clinical picture that is night and day compared with 2 weeks ago. Auto-immune thyroiditis-induced exhaustion eases, allowing the return of everyday activities without constant symptom flare. Getting to appointments by public transport again. Able to go food-shopping. Deep left leg pressure-pain has been reduced as the fluid-retention stabilises - a striking result of thyroid medication after 5 weeks. Summertime crutches ditched. Bite-sized, carefully managed, rationed and planned exercise possible - if balanced with more rest. If this activity-to-rest ratio is not controlled, a repeat-flare of auto-immune thyroid condition causes the same summer-long symptoms of swollen, painful small joints, intense physical fatigue and rapid weight-gain. Thyroid medication to be increased in small increments every 6 weeks. Told a further 3-6 months to safely bring it to a stable dose. Continued immuno-suppression to survey. Onward bound - despite cautious management. Holding back my will to go faster. Containing impatience. Pacing myself in this endurance race towards a constantly moving finish line. With rationed energy, a thrill-seeking water-borne antidote to last week’s travel mayhem and 9 medical appointments. Time off together - a first since Christmas, when it was shared with the aftermath of the first - biggest - dose of chemo three days before. A short trip from Rennes to where the Vilaine meets the Nantes-Brest canal at Redon. A brief backward-brake-pedal bike-ride along the canal path and a paddle-powered exploration of the Vallée du Don. Dropping into the body of a canoe off the jetty from a wild-flower filled field. Coco leaps in - she must have done this in a previous life! Push-off, finding timeless paddle-rhythm through this watery riparian-woodland path. Wildlife unphased by humans this shape. The first sunlit glade harbours flame-yellow fleabane blaze, flickering with speckled-wood papillon wings - sun-soaking. A buzzard whistles high above, then roaring self-powered silence. The strike-splash of the blade cutting, biting the water - leaving a silk-rippled trail in the river’s flesh. Iridescent blue-flash - kingfisher water-swoops under dense willow and oak, low-slung ash on the lean. Fallen-tree navigation, bloom-filled ivy-vines and hip-covered wild-rose. Striking reflections. An old château. Horses, heads low, observe gently from the fringe - their scent brings me back. Fast-passing clouds. Libellules hover-sparkle - brush-wing faery-sounds over lilypads. Legend-linked to home - water-spirits and magical energy. Of starlight and moonlight and luck. A new moon waxing crescent to gibbous, and building. The same moon, now a year from my first post-op hospital escape. Then, 6am nurse-visits with heparin injections for 35 days - into alternate, bruised thighs. The elation, after a week’s strengthening, to walk to the nearest park bench 200m away. Sitting there and feeling all the woodpeckers in Rennes had come to welcome me out, under this old oak tree as it threw its acorns around me in celebration. The newness of spontaneity on this parallel week. A night under stars and soft-edged lunar sea-mist glow, as sundown-air cools quickly. Of velvet-soft sand retraining afferent plantar nerve-fibres. Of reduced foot symptoms allowing an Atlantic dip in summer-warmed sea, without risking blood-vessel injury. Freedom re-found. Pitching myself against and diving through waves. Of Coco paddling out earnestly behind. Of surfing them in together. Of saltwater-tightened skin. Of sandy-toe squeeze into compression tights, to the chorus of piping shoreline sanderlings. This inaccessible, wildly empty beachscape fronts biotopic dunes and dense maritime forest. Hare’s tail and marram grass stroke through pepper-fresh rocket. Sandhill snail-covered stalks and fence-post moonshadows. Lush green pine and hollyoak shade. Undulating deep sand tracks. A chance nightjar encounter - its rattle-purr encouragement echoes over freshwater forest ponds - frog full, singing to this new start. Beckoning me onward. Life-hunting. Normality-chasing. Consultations this week - ongoing review of chemo-induced auto-immune thyroiditis since May - a complex medical situation. An electromyogram of hands and lower legs confirms sensory nerve injury, explaining ongoing proprioceptive challenges since the first chemo dose in December. A summer-season lost to cellular exhaustion, in an untreated auto-immune storm. A body so thrown by chemo, its immune system attacks itself. Now, despite the prospect of months on a thyroid-medication see-saw, this newfound taste of energy feels strikingly positive. This symptom reprieve recalls a distant memory of feeling able and well. Surfing waves instead of wading against a strong undercurrent. This moment, right now, is surely my first opportunity to begin post-chemo and surgical recovery. And with this recent well-feeling, an important realisation of how terrible the last 4 months have been. The daily physical struggle. The deep-digging to surmount it - to push energy-starved cells in this shell uphill. These symptoms eclipse anything experienced during chemo - where corticosteroids body-buoy, lifejacket-like. Reaching a tangible recovery trail on the approach to the autumn equinox and its harvest moon. A hard-work reward. A new beginning. A red sky at night. A song from my week - Richard Ashcroft, ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’: https://youtu.be/_8dVRByLvnQ?si=26KhjAhY3rkDuBjK Your support on the fundraiser allows me to pay for accommodation and travel expenses, as well as the medical equipment and help I need in my quest for recovery, in the aftermath of ovarian cancer and ongoing treatment. Thank you. Your messages, photos and videos have been great to receive. This week I’ve had a toe-pointing aerial snow-goose, an alert crest-up skylark, a bullet-shaped in-flight whinchat, a heron perching, a pronking deer, a badge-winning sniffer with an insistently gentle waker-upper alarm-clock sausage dog, in Gloucestershire; a candle-lit positive-vibe-filled flame-fest in Roscommon; a palm-tree framed rainbow-view of St Peter Port marina from Victoria Pier in Guernsey; new plasterwork and early morning Malvern under-tree golden retriever action, in Worcestershire; sweat, smiles, sunglasses and post-race pram-support, medals and PBs on the Richmond Run Fest in London; a bandage-sporting pill-box-rattling post-infection pampered springer in Guernsey; a Paris-Nice cycle for ovarian cancer research, sent from Dublin; cosy-fleece hammock-stacked pet rats and new senior-school starters with ‘tude, just outside London; an intrepid hiker, a scrambling chamois and a lunar lake-filled landscape on the Via Alpina followed by marina swims, clean(ish) clothes and narrow winding port-streets, in Slovenia; a tree-nestled view of a memory-filled family farmhouse deep in the Mendip foothills of Somerset; a moonlit lighthouse, a floodlit fountain-dipping alsatian, pre-swim straw hats and full-bloom jacaranda in Cadiz; an upside-down amongst-lettuce allotment-cat, a skewbald guinea-pig and a hairless feline in London; a green-wrapped fresh cloud-filled lake, a duvet-demanding autumnal whippet and a deer-stalking hare-hunting rabbit-catching sheep-scented springer, in the Cotswolds. Thinking of you all, Love from Lucie xoxo

Hi Everyone, A week of contrasts. Of crises and kindness. Of standstill and rushing. Of staring into space and intense concentration. Of observing the worst and best of human behaviour. Of short energy peaks and long evening troughs. Being ground-lagged. Of pushing against the natural order of day and night - circadian scrambling - to reach an important goal. A trip to Galway - a solution-hunting voyage for treatment-related complications threatening quality of life. Of setting up return pathways. A backdrop of air-traffic grounding. Planes in wrong places. Finding myself in the eye of the storm without the right gear - on the airport floor at Nantes - waiting for news. Energy-ebbing evening time. Of the will to live well physically - to seek answers - too strong, too invested to exit here. No appetite for abandon. The first guillotine drops and takes the head off the starter-link in a journey-chain. Flight cancelled. A stampede of non-chemobrained people. Of decisions made and actioned rapidly around me. I stand, but seem unable to start in any direction. A leaky energy-tank drops near zero - refuelling bypasses the motor. My shell losing its ability to get necessary energy. I take an earplug out to listen to announcements and dose-up on medicinal Haribo, looking at the information screens. Buses, trains sold out. No flights from Nantes to Ireland for 2 days. No accommodation left. No easy way out. Shrugs. Retracing steps in this impatient crowd. Of hearing a quiet voice despite the decibels - a calm face. A young French guy trying to reach London for work, shows me another exit corridor, avoiding the crowd. One more train to Paris - one seat left. Now on the bus, returning to Nantes train station - trying to pay online for that seat, but the internet is saturated. The leg yells at me, disturbing clear thought. Remembering codes, 2-step-authentication. Retyping. In English, in French. Refocus. Brain fog freeze. Payments finally go through and I get that last seat - a lottery win. We walk together to get the Paris train. I wish him courage, knowing that with 7 double-decker carriages and random seat allocation, it’s unlikely we’ll cross paths again. As I get settled into the seat, a stubborn Haribo doesn’t seem to submit to my teeth. I take it out and find a miraculously-still-intact earplug! Conscious of the effort needed to get through the evening-time hypothyroid energy-crash - but decide to launch myself into chaos, knowing I still might not make the appointments. Watching the Loire-Atlantique slip away as the train powers forward in half-light to the City of Light. Reflecting on this year-long battle - after the wealth of a healthy life. That perseverance is the only way forward - despite setbacks, disappointment and hardship of challenges like this. The leg issue has changed my mobility - removed options, altered my lived experience. This trip and additional scan - looking further, digging for logical explanations - hoping for specific treatment options rather than a general approach. Having no time for guess work. The train takes us late into the night to Paris Montparnasse. Two seats ahead, this now-familiar stranger stands up and waves at me. As I wave back - laughing at the odds - I wonder if he’s real. Asking myself had I actually seen him interact with anybody else! He gently melts into the crowd and is gone. The rest of the round-trip to Ireland was peppered with bus, train, plane cancellations and delays. Of endless re-booking on the move, connections, medical paperwork. Of sitting on the floor with the leg up - pressure building with gravity in standing or sitting. Of barely 5 hours’ sleep in 2 nights. Of needing a taxi in Paris to fill a 4am gap in the airport bus timetable. Of it arriving with a flat tyre! Of surmounting it together - the taxi driver and me. Of discovering, during this odyssey, that he too has cancer and is currently receiving treatment. Of a moment taken at setdown - swapping experience, outlook and hope. Later that morning, perched on the top deck of the Galway Citylink - racing past pastel blue-hue Heuston warehouses, into overriding greenness and Guinness-ness. The Liffey snakes through the grasses in Chapelizod. Later, the lungs stretch a bit - oxygen richer, soul watered, muscle fibres lengthen - as the bus crosses the Shannon, westward home. Rushes blaze in the morning light across bog - tufted humps and troughs, old cut-marks, sliced tweed cake - heavy and rich. Sunkissed grasses sway, lying wind-flattened like hares’ ears. Curves and smooth lines - the softness of nature’s edges eases tired eyes. The top deck feels close to the cloud blanket which travels fast here - wrapping low and tucking in on the horizon, just beyond the fields rising and falling in quavers and harpish green highlights - disappearing beyond heatherish-outline of mountains - their low sleeping form, rain-camouflaged as they kiss the clouds and feed the tourbières. Sponge-soaking water, sphagnum-slowing, pooling for frogs - near bog orchids and cotton, where lichen-bright hawthorn sprites call faeries to stargaze. Nowhere else hosts clouds and skies like here. Today, the anniversary of the first urgent surgery. All year, this was a date guarded from medical appointments - a day together. Just to be - to take charge. But travel delays push appointments back into this space. That small gap in the cage door, not quite wide enough for escape. Six appointments in Rennes, including kidney being cleared for vigilant self-management - ownership with a safety net; thyroid medication being increased; another haberdashery visit for a fitting - smurf blue tights replaced with black ones; a vascular consultation and a second one in a couple of weeks. Those mountain tops might be out of reach, but they’re in my sights. Radiohead’s ‘High and Dry’ - https://youtu.be/EhiJ1OU5NJc?si=G59qJTPFHNG1lZfq Thank you for your incredible support on the fundraiser which allows me to access medical care, including this trip, and gives me the space I need to get physically better. I’ve loved receiving your photos, videos and messages. This week I've had an on-the-vet’s-doorstep music festival and a Dr Seuss-style cat-in-the-hat, in Rugby; a surfer-topped Severn bore, silken sunrise and molten sunsets, a cosy sausage-dog hug and a treeline-skimming buzzard clutching a frog in Gloucestershire; home-grown bananas in full-flower in Guernsey; a spirit-hearted dad-climbing 10-month-old in Westport; spinning flowers, a paper frog, colourful braids, a double-fronted toothfairy-offering, new clicking fingers and swamp-swimming stories from Hell & Back, in a video update from Rathfarnham; Gaudi-inspired family outside La Sagrada Familia, a mosaic lizard and berry-bunch, colour-flooding stained-glass windows and an iris photo-shoot, in Barcelona; limestone formations, Lipizzaners and low clouds, mountain forest climbs and blue-sky rewards, high on the Via Alpina in Slovenia; Basque restauranting and family-phoneside surgical news-awaiting anniversary-memories from Cadiz; drain-hole mud-making, concrete-laying and a post-rain eau-de-chien-emitting golden retriever in Worcestershire; Guinea-pig fresh-grass exploration circuits, things rustling in hedges, an enthusiastic night-walk brake-failure camera-person-wipe-out springer and a reluctant post sausage-stealing pillow-hunting whippet-prince, in the Cotswolds. Thinking of you all, Love from Lucie xoxo

Hi Everyone, Leaving Ireland to return to Rennes was difficult. Solution-chasing. Multiple appointments - for the leg issue since last year’s surgery, as well as the thyroid condition that began at the end of May. Battling on with pressure and pain in the left leg and foot. The chemo-induced auto-immune thyroid issue has been causing rapid metabolic and physiological changes: heavy exhaustion, small-joint arthralgia and rapid weight gain. After 5 weeks of medication, the last few days have given a sudden, slight, but welcome improvement in energy. Bodyweight edged further upwards until the end of this week - then the first significant drop. With it, small joint-arthralgia and swelling seems to fluctuate - rather than the stagnant pain of the previous 12 weeks. A so-far successful trial of light walking without impact-support from crutches. Working towards medical stability - hoping it might not be too far away. Delight in autumness. Damp brings smell into focus. The sun, lower, moves around the building more quickly - shade easily found. Roads and cycle lanes busy - pressed with nervous back-to-school energy. Song-like babble and chatter of small children on the back of bikes - inquisitive school and crêche drop-offs. The massive student population of Rennes is returning, and residential streets are alive with moving-in activity and get-togethers - gently spilling over to late-night and early-morning top-window balcony chats. Parks and green spaces - humanly quiet but birdly busy. Trees that have held on are letting go: conkers, hazelnuts, chestnuts, acorns - strewn harvest offerings despite this year’s hardship. The wind returns as a playful, swirling artist - dry leaf-litter their material - creating constantly changing pavement art. Coco high-tail diving, pouncing and chasing. Adolescent jackdaws pitch themselves against the gusts, holding bobbing positions before a tumble-dive play-fight and repeat. Pigeons still court, wandering on foot with nesting-material-stuffed beaks. The flash of a willow-warblers’ green hue. Flitting blue and long-tailed tits - the nuclear leaders of these small mixed bands of feeders - move at speed through the park, busily working grubs from cherry trees and hazel branches. Fringe-side delinquent chaffinches. Starlings have begun their seasonal dusk-gatherings up on buildings, radio masts and cranes - diving noisily into dense trees to roost out of sight, shuffling and chattering together as though making plans. I sit in my favourite Rennais park for the first time in months - absorbing its energy. I’ve missed a whole season here to heatwaves and debilitating symptoms. The park looks well. Deep-rooted ancient trees have a good grip - able to find water. Under an avenue of huge lime trees, the wind builds in high branches, leaf-rustles gain momentum as more catch the wind like sails - their collective force moves my soul. I close my eyes and am taken well above these whispering trees. I imagine the aerial view of park activity around me - book-reading, sketching, chatting, contemplating, being. How grateful I am for this newly accessible energy! That I won’t get stuck and need help to get back to the apartment. Like a bird, I spot a possible escape route from this medical cage. Dusty frass and tannin-sloughed bark collects at the base of giant sequoias. Red squirrel acrobats jump between oaks, spiralling the trunks in pursuit. The day’s clouds clear a little, offering midday blueness. My look is drawn skywards. The hairs on my arms stand up at the chance - a raptor kettle circles tight above the park, thermal-catching for energy-saving migration. Honey buzzards (from number and silence) - powerful feathered messengers passing over Rennes from the north, heading southward through that mountain gap I love, by the forêt d’Iraty, to be counted on their journey to equatorial Africa. A cardiopulmonary exercise bike test was arranged following my trip to Lyon - to know the heart and lungs were not damaged by taxol-based chemo. Fast-building lactate - working at aerobic threshold. Breathing laboured, fighting off CO2 but feeling an adrenaline buzz now. Battling heavy legs. Digging deep - pushing through the pain. Fighting acidosis - quads hardly respond. Searching for a way to get nerve signals through. Yelling at them! Of the cardiologist choosing now to start a conversation about the west of Ireland - I desperately want to join, but can’t without stopping! This, an added test of willpower and concentration at peak exhaustion! Of loving the challenge. Of going til I can’t. Results really good given the circumstances, at 149-200% of the healthy age-average. As my grandfather would say - get me! More biological tests under my belt before a urology consultation for the kidney next week. An appointment in that medical haberdashery brought me straight back to February’s smurf-blue compression tights - they remembered me! Several GP and blood test appointments - monitoring. A small surgical procedure to sort out an embedding toenail - a common issue after chemo, but which can exacerbate lymphoedema. For me, autumn is about embracing change. Running fast through early mists suspended over fields or diving into cool, uncrowded swell. Harnessing energy to the purr of far-away chainsaws and oaky bonfire drift. Watching the lowering still-warm sun, as it sinks quickly now. Change is so welcome. A song that found me this week - Birdy, ‘Wings’: https://youtu.be/eBKfy0FwUC8?si=Gl9v3hdPMRfl2ybJ Thank you each of you, for your ongoing incredible help and generosity - and to Orla for coming up with and creating the fundraiser. Thanks to you all, I can get medical support I need. I’m blown away by it - and you - every single day of my recovery. Your messages, videos and photos have been brilliant. This week I’ve had crashing waves and craggy cliffs on Aberfelin Bay, Green Bridge of Wales and Elegug Stacks, light-filled St Govan’s Chapel, joyful sausage-dog beach ball-games, wild-wind ears throwing shapes and double dog-prints in the sand, in Pembrokeshire; sunshine, long evening shadows and great friends at one of the last Bohs’ matches at Dalyer, in Dublin; Belle Époque Jersey lilies in full pink-trumpet bloom, heralding autumn, in Guernsey; high silver skies and cobblestone-perched pigeons, on the Thames in Brentford; an exhilerating family-reunited up-to-the-shorts stream-paddle, and delicious looking left-overs, in Devon; a house uptuttle in progress, a dawn leaf-litter walk, a home-made hotel-room meal and a relatively-uncomfortable-but-better-than-nothing open-air couch and a sporting garden-sitting golden retriever, in Worcestershire; family smiles and send-offs in Gatwick; a green and red Mayo hat, flag and blue-sky love, The Banshees of Inisherin and Keem Bay birthday celebrations, in Achill; a 3D rainbow-coloured flower-power knitted snail-scene, warming hearts - and a postbox - in sunny Belfast; a new wrist cast primed for signing, and a list of exercises from MUH in Castlebar; a 21st wedding-anniversary celebration and a jetsetting storm-chasing canine classic, back on the boardwalk in Porto; a track-practice precision showjumping session, a striped and spotty multi-species coworking team, show-stoppingly juicy bramble-berries, a side-winding cat-bed pose, a perfectly square-halting whippet-springer lakeside team and a focussed field-tidying springer, in the Cotswolds. Thinking of you all, Love from Lucie xoxo

Hi Everyone, The simplicity of home. Of being together. Of friends and family. Unpacking. Of security. Close to souls that count - who make me feel like I do. Under familiar skies. Hand on lime-tree bark - strong and calmly sure. Feeling its pulse - tumbling generational echoes fall from outstretched boughs. Now I walk down there, amongst worm-casts and lug-holes, to the dawn low-tide line. Razor clams and rock pools, sailing-boat mast-chiming comes and goes on the wind. Kelp-fingers stretch lazily in the sand-ripple signature of the tide, pointing towards the horizon - to Howth and beyond. The dark angel-like silhouette of a cormorant - rock-topped in shallow water, air-drying. Dangle-legged herons low-fly over sea-shimmer - prehistoric remnants - screeching landing-signals to a calp island just beyond. The wonder of seeing the same actors play out daily roles and journeys. The comfort of sameness. A wave, smile, hug. A welcome. Of happiness tears. Of reaching home-home. Shadow-memories glance off this joy. First anniversary pain pushes in, nudging me. Each day’s date, significant again. Of handwritten witnesses to that time - contact lists: surgeons, doctors, politicians. Of begging for help. Of a scan showing an ovary in torsion, embedded in a solid O-RADS-4 necrosing 8cm mass. Of un-eating weakness. Energy slipping away. Being told to go to the emergency department to be admitted for surgery - if I couldn’t wait out the weeks. Knowing this would not allow the careful planning needed to secure a fighting chance. A feeling of danger. The backdrop of a changing season, the wind stepping up a pace. Rowan berries bob like stars in a lush green-leaf sky. Laden autumn cumulus-kingdoms replace high-summer mackerel-clouds. Watching through the window again. Conscious of the storm still raging after more than a year. Of the behind-breakwater calm of Rennes. Anchor cast to battle the tail-end out. Surf conditions continuously change and can be unpredictable. Staying alert to evolving currents, tides, shifting seabeds, peeling waves to gain that water-wall thrill. That speed-rush reward. Sports that require planning have always drawn me - especially those involving maps, pathways, journeys. Goal-focussed. The next finish line - a daily target or a 24-hour fast-pack. Setbacks inevitable. Musculoskeletal injury presents mechanical logic, timeframes, tissue-healing. Until now, lucky to have only met physical injury through sport. Understanding the falls as a means to learn, grow, overcome - to get back on the horse. In Rennes a year ago, after pain-haze journey. Saturday. Bed-bound in Aparthotel room. Unable to eat or sleep. A visceral throb. Deep, paralysing nausea. Holding out for the one-more-outing left in me - to meet the surgeon. Monday - falling into hospital early, pre-consultation. Looking for help, relief. Blood pressure high. Vision blurred. A simple but powerful drug blunts pain’s sharp edge for two more days of tests, surgical planning. This medication felt like kindness. Medical security. I told them I was grateful. Their response, beautifully simple: “C’est normale!” Wednesday, late evening - surgical eve. Aoife - and Ruby, our elderly dog - due to arrive. The day had been calm, dull in Rennes. Window open. Gently swaying net curtains begin to jump playfully - new evening sunlight makes them shimmer and dance. Thursday morning - the day of surgery. Re-contacting the HSE, the Irish Embassy in Paris, the Health Minister, MEPs - anyone in a position to help. My bones told me the gravity of the situation - how sick I was. Seeking a guarantee of support before surgery. It didn’t arrive. Shiver-smiling in cold, expansive operating theatre: drip-lines in arms, connected up. Spinal anaesthesia. Readied on the hard table. Dazzling white lights. Theatre staff explain each step with respect and gentle humour. The band and roadies set the stage, preparing for the surgeon’s arrival - their lead singer. A warm air-blanket gets draped over me - I lean in. Muscle-relax. Then, soon after, a gentle slip into the unknown, confident in my inner-strength. Trusting the surgeon and her instinct. Knowing she would help me - with skill, precision, determination and humanity. Telling myself we could work the rest out. Research shows that thorough and timely surgery is key in obtaining optimal survival outcomes for ovarian cancer. From her planning, I knew the surgeon was meticulous and the 6-day turn-around from referral was as timely as medically possible. Later, when we met for results, I remember the surgeon saying in response to my gratitude, that she could never have allowed me to go to the emergency department for such complex surgery. That it could not provide the best outcome. This week I crept in and out of Rennes like a thief, while the city slumbered. A 24-hour trip. Electric lightning scattered unfamiliar shadows in familiar places. Fixed nitrogen. A warm, waiting humidity weighed the over-river night air. A kidney scan. The relief of a pass. A meeting soon with the urologist. Next fortnight, a cardiopulmonary exercise-test, bone density scan, blood tests and medication review for the post-chemo auto-immune thyroid reaction, and small joint arthralgia. Further consultations and hospital-based hydro-rehab, mapped out for the left leg. Of preparation needed now for a reluctant re-depart to Rennes. Focussing on a bright point on the horizon. A tune from my week - Sinead O’Connor, ‘Mandinka’: https://youtu.be/JZezqLdWG5w?si=vETTDThMyfNYiWb4 I continue to read each of your names on the fundraiser - I’m blown away by your incredible support. Each day, your help allows me to pay for the ongoing medical care and equipment I need. Your support gave me this chance to come home, to reconnect with the essential. To gather strength. To eye the next goal. To get back on the horse. Thank you. And for your messages, photos and videos. This week I’ve had a rogue joy-riding rodent, before and after mouse-trappedness in the car, in Ballyvary; North Show tractor-decorating paper-flower making and an asleep-smiling sausage dog in Guernsey; a newly-teenage fluff-tastic terrier and soon-to-be-finished birthday ice-cream, in Castlebar; a honeybee and peacock butterfly - snapped by a nearly-seven-year-old budding wildlife-photographer, a talking tree-stump statue, and river-toe-dipping, Pooh-stick collecting, stripes and spiderman barefoot beach rock-pooling summer-holiday fun, in Limavady; a summer-haze horizon and sparkling waves out to France, from Hive Beach in Dorset; a congregation of swallows and a gourmande hazelnut-sorting autumn nut-hound springer, in Guernsey; a freezing-rain mountain-fog night-climbing sprint-finisher from the TDS 145km at the UTMB festival, in Chamonix; sage dog-sitting home-holiday smiles and upside-down couch-cuddles in Knocklyon; a bolstering bircher porridge and freebie ice-cream twister in Dublin; a dino-chewing mini-me nose-touching golden retriever in London; an energy-giving strength-transferring candlelight-army in Roscommon; a maturing peacock romance, red sundown barn-shadows, a car-bonnet-riding peahen, a reed-firkling water-standing duvet-crowned whippet-prince and a water-going stick-chewing ear-trimmed burr-trapper tightly-curled springer, in the Cotswolds. Thinking of you all, Love from Lucie xoxo

Hi Everyone, Three-quarters of the way through my first decade, our new family home came with a flock of aged, barely-laying hens, a Golden Guernsey goat called Amber, and a long-in-the-tooth, U-backed pony called Starlight. Days spent amongst these accidental family members, dressed in outsized clothes - neighbours’ hand-me-downs. Refusing to remove the stand-out-white jockey helmet from dawn ‘til dusk - so taken was I with this new world. Occasionally insisting on wearing the helmet to bed! Out in all weather, all seasons. Studying the animals up close: Amber’s tiny dew-drop covered muzzle, climbing through undergrowth with surprising agility - hoovering up leaves, bark, woody twigs. Her long, rectangular pupils set in pale-gold eyes reflected my silhouette from all angles. Her wide-curled horns, their smooth sharpened ends - I imagined she polished them - demanding unquestioning respect. Starlight’s softly whiskered jaw, silky coat that engulfed my hands as she leant into me - her heartbeat taking over mine. The repetitive dance of the hens, kicking dusty topsoil, finding something in the seeming-nothingness beneath with their rhythm. Their curiosity. Their soon-familiar sounds. Their willingness to be close. Their smoothly silken reptilian legs. Finger-clinging toes. It wasn’t long before they each had a name, and a small selection rode on the front of my bike. Long days outside. Limpet-like riding-helmet still in-situ and a constantly-present under-arm hen. Sloshing through running douit water with friends, bikes, ponies - over slippery cobblestones in skinny, sunken, leaf-dappled lanes. Semi-feral summers. Time seemed endless. Racing up the daffodil hill to watch the sun sink red over Rocquaine. Reluctantly rejoining civilisation - to eat, wash, sleep. A memorably itchy interview with the headmaster for a new school place, a rash from the chinstrap of the over-worn helmet - chuckled over for many years. A lifetime passionate about the welfare of humans, animals and nature. Animals - primary witnesses of their own injury or illness - reliably indicate when something isn’t right. To help them, we need to want to hear and understand. Once social constructs and bias are peeled back, humans talking to humans in a medical or paramedical context should have the additional advantage of speech - enabling reciprocal precision and an opportunity for enhanced communication. The tragedy of lateness. Of missed diagnostic opportunities. Early intervention in the rear-view mirror. Of physical suffering. This week brought me into the embrace of home. Last-minute availability. Fleeing impossible temperatures. Packing from a budget air-conditioned hotel room. Transported by boat, finding heavy sleep. A windowless cabin - detached from time. Comfortable disorientation. Rumbling engines. Cocooned in a bunk-bed cradle - rocked by the ocean’s breaths. Waking to the morning scents and sounds of Ireland - of home. Arriving at her shore, uplifted. Rebel County greenness. Birdsong carving a path that turns and spins through my soul. Lush, life-filled hedgerows. Forest-cool and under-canopy air. The homeliness of damp. Snail-novelty - Coco sniffs their life-map shells, breathing them in noisily. Trees cloaked in mossy overcoats down to their roots - firm rhizoid-grip on oaky skin. A familiar pulse runs through this place. The beat of promise. Contrasting with the hopelessness of current forest-suffering in France. Cracked bark. Tree-stress. Leafy breath-holding. The speed and ease of catastrophe. Of fires. Of layers of unseen fauna unable to flee - invisible devastation left beyond tall, charred, arbory tombstones. The sadness in seeing, feeling this suffering. Symptoms chased by firefighters. Humans quickly reaching resource-limits. Another tragic lateness. The tragedy of mine being a shared story. Of ovarian being the deadliest gynecological cancer. A chillingly low five-year survival rate. Of realising I’d likely be operated on in a matter of hours or days to relieve this suffering - if I was a dog with the same scan and symptoms. The statistics show that my story is not unique. It is shared with women diagnosed - most commonly - late with ovarian cancer. Fire-fighting instead of predicting, checking, screening and intervening before the first flames take hold. Until there is no going back. Having to wait until symptoms can no longer be ignored, when scope should exist to isolate a small, controllable fire early. The collateral damage of complex cancer surgery and heavy chemo. Life-changing and life-ending consequences landing directly on the patient’s lap. Two medications started over the past fortnight - already bringing mild relief to symptoms of a chemo-triggered auto-immune thyroid issue, and allergic-type reaction to lingering taxol. A kidney scan in Rennes next week. Further nerve tests in the pipeline for the left leg. A heart and lung exercise stress-test in early September, to identify any changes following chemo. If given the all-clear from cardiologists, the opportunity to begin six weeks of structured rehab for the left leg. Of words not capable of defining the joy of being home. Almost a year to the day I had no choice but to close the nest-door behind me, to put an exciting new job on hold and throw myself into the unknown. A seat on the last direct-flight to Rennes. Now seeing National Heritage Week banners up again. The same light in the sky. The same shadow-lengths. The flux of time. Of feeling that everything, and somehow nothing, has happened in 12 months. Of the losses and gains of one year. Of changing seasons felt more clearly at home. The energy of Autumn. The end of this first ‘after-year’ approaching. Of restless leaves. A song from my week - Florence Road, ‘Heavy’: https://youtu.be/z_oaGG6a5QQ?si=Z4L6cMCSQ6svyzgA Your ongoing support on the fundraiser allows me to pay for medical help I need to beat this cancer while unable to return to work. To path-find to recovery. To see the footholds and climb beyond the tragedy of the lateness. To get out of this post-chemo ‘holding area’. To make it count for something bigger. Thank you so much. Your messages, videos and photos have been fun to receive. This week I’ve had flowing freestyle tests from the Aachen World Equestrian Games and scent-work-sniffing couch-surfing forest-exploring football-crazy 360-degree sausage dogs, in Gloucestershire; the view from an expedition-boat gingerly passing through a lava-narrowed port entrance to ‘Pompeii of the North’ Heimaey Island, a bunting-clad Ecuadorian tall-ship in Reykjavik harbour, and analgesic champagne in the Icelandair lounge - in Iceland; proud Mayo shirts, smiles all round and a sparkling Sam held high, at a BBQ in Castlebar; a foot-stomping fiddle-band lighting up the stage in Edinburgh; eiders and auks, a baby blue whale, wildflowers and power-sound waterfalls in-series, in Seydisfjordur Denmark; Pompon’s Polar Bear sent from Seaford; a Cotinus ‘candy-floss’ bush, crabapple archway tunnel and lion’s head fountain in Marlay Park; a late-brood swallow-nest overflowing with wings and tails, and a rainbow-framed evening Clew Bay sailboat-panorama, in Mayo; a beautifully tidied-tail, a little-owl barn-silhouette, a car-perching corrugated-roof dust-bathing consequence-leaving peahen, and a prickly-eared bush-traversing car-driving springer, with co-pilot whippet, in the Cotswolds. Thinking of you all, Love from Lucie xoxo