What the hell happened in London?....

That was the question that many of you who emailed me asked.....What the hell is going on in London....what's the cause.....how did this happen.....etc.

For those of you outside the UK the background was as follows....Thursday, 4th August the Police shot a guy in North London. He died at the scene...

They were working with 'Operation Trident' which is a specialist group which was set up by the Met Police in London to deal solely with 'black on black crime'...in other words, they deal with black people (mainly young men) who either kill or want to kill other black (mainly young men) people.

After the shooting it was handed over for investigation to the IPCC (these are the people who independently investigate ANY shooting by the Police - not only by Operation Trident)...

Once it has been referred to the IPCC the Police are no longer able to comment for legal reasons.

The IPCC released a statement saying that the Police had shot this man after they had been fired upon and that they were investigating the incident and would report answers once their investigation had taken place.

The family of the man who was shot by police marched (with 100 of their family/friends) on the Saturday following the shooting to the Police station to demand 'answers'...

The police did not come out to give them those answers - so the friends and family staged a noisy but peaceful protest outside for a number of hours.

This protest was then hi-jacked by other young people who arrived after dark and then they took the protest to another level.

A bus was set on fire, buildings were set alight, shops were damaged and then looted. It took until the early hours to bring things under control.

Over the course of the following few evenings other areas in London then experienced large groups of several hundreds (mainly) youths rioting on the streets, burning and looting, various different areas at the same time.... Most of them who were asked by the media did not mention the death of the man during the shooting as a reason, most commented that they wanted 'stuff' from the shops 'free stuff' and they were there intending on taking it.

Others wanted to hurl abuse and items at Police officers citing their reasons as 'Police harassment' 'been stopped and searched too many times' - others wanted to 'teach the rich a lesson' - so they burnt down people's homes and small businesses that had taken years to build up and NONE of these people were 'rich'.

They were ordinary people who lost stuff whilst others just helped themselves to 'free stuff'. Of course, bigger businesses also lost stuff, large department stores had their windows smashed in and people helped themselves, large electrical chains also lost many many thousands of pounds worth of goods, a large SONY distribution centre was burnt to ashes after the looters helped themselves to what they wanted, a furniture business that had been there for almost 150 years was burnt to the ground. Sports shops and mobile phone shops were completely cleaned out of goods....

The police received 43,000 calls on Monday night and had 6,000 officers on duty. People have said 'Where were the Police?' but it doesn't take the brain of Britain to work out that they can't possibly be all over the place at the same time!

Looting attacks were organised by Blackberry messenger and twitter making it impossible for the Police to stay on top of a constantly changing situation....

So, put as simply as I can - that's what happened in London.

During this period, people lost their businesses, homes and possessions. Five people lost their lives during the unrest...one person was shot in a car in the Croydon area, three young men were killed in a hit and run incident whilst they were protecting their local community, one elderly man of 68 yrs was attacked and left with severe head injuries after attempting to put out a fire that rioters had started...he died yesterday after being on a life support machine for the past few days.

Police in London have spent the last few days knocking in people's doors and carting off those who thought they may have got away with it on the night....cctv has provided the Police with hours of useful footage and they have been busy publishing photo's and asking for the help of the public in identifying the people who took part. Some parents recognised their own children on the TV and duly handed them over to the Police....

The recent scenes of devastation were shocking to all decent people, very upsetting and disturbing.

Photo's of events in London during the riots....

After two nights of rioting in London, other areas in the UK also kicked off - namely Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Wolverhampton to name just a few. These are all large cities in England and all had one thing in common, the youth wanted and the youth helped themselves....

However, I have to point out that they weren't ALL teenagers/youths, some were older and had jobs (responsible jobs too)

So when people say it's because the young have been left with no jobs, no future and no hope in some cases that could well be true - we do have young people who feel forgotten about, young people who have seen the bankers rewarding themselves after bringing our country and other countries to their knees recently, MP's who have robbed us and simply apologised for their 'mistakes in accounting', young people who have heard the MP's say they can no longer get their EMA - which has meant they fall out of the education system...(EMA is a small grant paid to young people from low income families to assist with the financial side of attending college) but during the looting other types of people also took part for example a 31 yr old teaching assistant, a trainee nurse, an athlete who was supposed to be a role model for young people for the 2012 Olympics, a model....these are not 'people who have no hope' they are people who simply took advantage of the opportunity to get something for free.

I believe the main reason for the riots and looting was, put simply...... 'because we could'..........

The MP's have said all the looters are simply criminals who took part in mindless violence and will 'face the full force of the law'......I seriously doubt that we have enough prison places for them all to 'face the full force of the law' and if we also locked up the corrupt MP's and Bankers as well then there definitely wouldn't be enough space in prisons.......

Meanwhile the Police had to deal with all this mess...111 officers sustained injuries, some serious. 5 police dogs were injured during the riots too.

The MP's who robbed us during the 'expenses scandals' a while back are now planning serious financial cut-backs to the Police service. They have agreed changes to salaries, pensions and overtime for Police officers meanwhile making sure they (the MP's) will still be well looked after and receive their huge pensions/salaries and no doubt expenses for whatever they can (legally?) claim for...

So the long and short of this is, some of our inner city youth are seriously pissed off because some of them feel forgotten about - they see corruption being rewarded at high levels and even they know this is wrong...

Our Police are (patronisingly) told they are 'brilliant, brave and effective' by the same MP's who have agreed severe cuts to their salaries/pensions and overtime.

They don't have the right to strike (it's illegal for a Police officer to take strike action) so they have to just accept their lot and continue to willingly face up to the angry youth who are pissed off with everyone and everything.

Meanwhile MP's sit and talk crap, listen to no-one, and go back to their huge family homes and eat caviar and drink champagne and will no doubt give themselves a round of applause for coming home early from their (way too long) summer break and 'sorting out the mess'.....

Just as long as they realise it's not over - nothing is solved - and they better hope the Police DO continue to willingly deal with this crap - or what then?

Lack of updates, murder in my garden, holidays and whatever...

I've not updated for ages now (as so many people have contacted me and pointed out)...

I've not updated because, well because ....ummm because....... I just didn't feel like it.

I ran out of things to say for a while, I wanted a holiday from cancer and all the things associated with it - just for a while I wanted to forget that it matters and I wanted to concentrate on other things...
So, that was what I did.

However, am back now and doing an update...

Firstly my garden - my lovely tomato plants and courgette plant were murdered! Yes, poisoned by someone.

At first Rab thought that it was maybe just co-incidental, maybe the feed I'd used, maybe the weather but I knew it wasn't. Once we dug the roots up he then agreed with me - they had been poisoned...(bleach has been the strongest suspect because of the condition of the central roots)
My plants went from healthy to dead literally overnight...
Healthy tomato plant....


The following day.......


Healthy courgette plant...


Then the following day......


I was SO upset about it at the time. Really disappointed.....I launched a murder inquiry and narrowed it down to one particular suspect - but then remembered something else too, so my suspect list is two people, both neighbours.

I considered kidnap and torture to get them to confess (I AM joking of course!) but then decided to just ignore it and grow some more next year..so that's the plan at the moment.

The rest of my beds are still doing well. My rose bush is thriving, I have a few little Pepper tree's growing happily, three of which have Pepper's growing on them now, all my mint and other herbs are doing well and the flowering plants are now due to flower in the next week or so.

I'll do better next year with the tomatoes and courgettes and might even do some strawberries too :)

I'm keeping on top of the weeding, no small task - and have today started on the front gardens - which are a mass of weeds, stinging nettles and blackberry bushes all overgrown to a silly level. I started today and it'll take probably at least a week to get it all under some type of control. I say a week because I do only what I can, when I can. That's my current project anyway.

I'm on holiday from work until the 1st September and we've been having lazy 'wake up when you like mornings' and late nights.

Dj has been awake most nights really late reading and then not getting up until at least 11am.
I can remember a few years ago when he was up EVERY day by 6am, full of beans and raring to go...how things change as they grow :)
However, no complaints from me as I've always preferred to have lazy laid back mornings once we're off school.

Last week Rab took a week off work and we took my Mum and Dad plus Dj's friend Dan to London Zoo.

We decided to go on the Thursday...bloody hell, what a mistake that was really...the weather on Wednesday was so nice and had been for the previous week or so then Thursday morning turned into torrential downpour time...

It was absolutely POURING down with rain when we got up (tickets already purchased online, non refundable, non transferable - must remember not to do that again)...We delayed for an hour then decided to just go and get on with it.

It did stop raining around 1.30pm whilst we were having lunch so the afternoon was fine walking around but quite a few of the animals had gone into hiding after the excessive rain during the morning. However the boys seemed to really enjoy themselves and Mum and Dad said they did too - so in the end it turned out alright.

Dj took these great pictures below whilst we were there..
They have the 'butterfly house' which is a tent that they keep at tropical temperatures inside and the butterflies fly freely around you - that was really nice.
The zoo lady inside seemed really impressed with the boys who bombarded her with (sensible and intelligent) questions about the lives of butterflies and moths.




These are some of Dj's favourite pictures...worker ants...click on the picture to see the larger version. He found them fascinating and spent ages watching them and taking pictures :)

One of my favourite cats, the Serval below


Like most typical 11/12 year old boys, they found this highly amusing when the Meercat's decided to mate right in front of them....


and to finish up I'll show you this one - just because I think the colours are great



So, apart from all that.... zoo's, gardening etc....I'm still full of aches particularly in the left shoulder and right rib area - which has also spread to more of my central back/spine now as well.
Getting out of bed in the morning and getting mobile is taking longer and longer, it seems that my bones stiffen up during the night and it's really hard to move around for the first half hour or so......

During the night I'm woken every time I move position but the only option is strong painkillers which I really don't want to get into taking regularly until I'm sure of what's going on.
The hospital still haven't written to my GP about the bone referral and my GP won't/can't refer me without that letter.
All they can offer me in the meantime is physiotherapy which I'd rather not do until I've had the scan/x-ray on bones and had a chat to specialist bone man.

I still have the pressure pain when sitting in one position for too long - this is in the original tumour site....

The rectal surgery wound still hasn't healed any further and may or may not now. It's not a problem really I suppose because it's dry and not likely to get infected - just would have been better if it had healed up the way it was supposed to.... But what the hell eh...just have to put up with it for now :)

So just battling on, ignoring things and just trying to enjoy being at home with Dj doing 'stuff' that doesn't relate to bloody cancer....

I'll tell you all about the London riots in another post! :-)

Much luv xxxx

Carole Arab is fundraising for Trinity Hospice

Carole Arab is fundraising for Trinity Hospice

Many thanks for the donations everyone - I'm up to 108% of my target now....if anyone was thinking of donating at any point in the future I'm perfectly happy to keep beating what I'd hoped to raise.
In other words, it ain't over :-)

Djamel is going to organise his sponsored walk for when he returns to school in September, I'm currently selling raffle tickets...Now I'm going to see if I can turn that 108% into 200%

Big thanks to everyone who donated so far...I know that Trinity Hospice are very grateful and I am too :-)

My address is 'Limbo land' .............:-)

Thanks to everyone that has either phoned me, text me, emailed me, messaged me on here or other places or simply been thinking about me...all that positive stuff flying around must do some good eh :-)

I had my MRI on Saturday and then my meeting with my Consultant/surgeon on Monday. The outcome from the CT scan was that there is a question mark around an area on the left lung BUT it's 'too small to call' at this time. There are changes there - however it may be something or it may be nothing.
Plan is to re-scan in 3 months to see if there's any growth...so my lung area has now moved to 3 monthly CT scan monitoring and we are going to take a 'wait and see' approach. I've already received my appointment for this on September 19th....

My MRI results were then reported the following day, Tuesday.....there is an area of soft tissue around the original tumour site that has raised concern/interest BUT it's too early to tell if it's inflammation from the Radiotherapy burns OR if it's new tumour activity.
Plan here is to rescan with MRI in 6 months to check and see what's happening and again 'wait and see' approach.

'My name is Carole and I live at number 3/6 WaitandSee, Limbo-land'.........:-))

I had a bit of a moan (ok, quite a BIG moan actually!) at work on Tuesday afternoon (thanks Hazel for listening and for the good sensible advice), came home & kicked a few boxes around, felt sorry for myself for a few hours - then decided to say 'F*ck it..what will be, will be'...
I've done what I needed to do to get rid of this damn thing and if it insists on coming back then I'll deal with that when I need to.

Right now I'm going to just get on with things and try to forget about what 'could' be happening until my next scan/s.

Consultant feels that my shoulder & rib pain is not caused by anything tumour related so quite probably bone damage caused by Radiotherapy - possibly a type of osteo-arthritis from RT treatment.
He's writing to my GP to inform them that I need to see a bone specialist now to see what we can do...he has said however that RT damage cannot be reversed so it may be a case of learning to manage the pain.

Okay that's it - back to my gardening now :-)

Much luv to all
xxxx

Rain, rain and more rain........

That's what we've had today, tons and tons of rain...but I'm not actually complaining because it saved me from continually going up and down stairs filling my watering can to stop my plants all drying out.

Where we live there is a communal garden at the back which no-one uses - this is because over the years it's been left to grow into a complete overgrown mess. Once it started getting out of control no-one then wanted the responsibility of sorting it out...so this year I decided it would become 'my' garden and I would tidy it and grow stuff out there.

When I started a few months ago, this was just a small part of what initially faced me.....

Completely overgrown, full of weeds and tons of work.

It took me ages but bit by bit I cleared each of the raised flower beds out - pulling and cutting out the weeds one by one, chopping back the blackberry bushes that had completely overtaken the whole area.

Rab then helped me by digging over the earth before we started to put out herbs etc in pots..it has been a long job, it's not over yet and I can only do work out there when I feel up to it - which isn't always - but now this is what the raised beds are looking like - I have coriander, mint, beetroot, rosemary, thyme, sage and some flowers growing in here now....slightly tidier compared to the first photograph :)

My tomato plants, (in grow bags) that are doing so well on the frame that Rab built for them ....

Every one of my five tomato plants has suddenly developed tiny tomatoes or has the flowers coming out daily in new spots, which will then become tomatoes...

I'm well pleased so far (and you're probably thinking 'So what, it's just tomatoes...lol') but I'm happy because what was wasted space is now being used and best of all, other people have noticed, commented and are starting to show an interest.

My aim is to get more people involved for next year.

This is my courgette plant which Jacqui got for me a few weeks ago. It seems to really love the spot I placed it in and has really taken off over these last few weeks...


I've also got spuds growing in a bag, radish, lavender in pots and a couple of sunflowers...It's not yet perfect - and probably never will be perfect - but I'm happy that it's making progress.

Dizzie's a lot happier out there too now - he rarely comes inside during the day now, unless he's hungry :)


So, that's why I don't mind a day of rain, rain and more rain

Results ....still partial so far....

I got my email this afternoon as promised by my colorectal nurse.

Not got too much to say this evening apart from:

• The multi disciplinary team have decided that they now need to do an MRI of the pelvic region of my body.
• The colorectal nurse has today started the ball rolling with this and I should get an appointment within the next few days.
• She will then be organising an appointment for me to go back into clinic to meet with my surgeon once they have collected all results together.

Watch this space :-)

* * Added Tues, 5th July......

* *

Just had a call from the hospital - I'm booked in for an MRI this Saturday afternoon (9th July)

** Added Wednesday, 6th July....

* * Hospital confirmed I have an appointment with my original surgeon on Monday, 11th July to 'review scan and discuss progress'

Results.....partially anyway......

I was going to do an update tomorrow but seeing as how so many of you have now emailed me over the past few days and asked questions, I'll tell you what I know so far....

I eventually emailed the nurse on Wednesday and asked if she could let me know the results for both the bloods taken on the 13th and the CT scan done on the 20th.

I told her this was because my shoulder is driving me insane and if the scan is clear then I need to organise physio or whatever to try to relieve it (plus the overall joint pain and this ongoing naggy ache/pain under my ribs on the right hand side is increasing daily now).....

She then got back to me on Friday and said 'Bloods are fine but CT needs to go to MDT (big team meeting) on Monday morning and I can't report the result to you until after we've had the meeting'

So - bloods are fine and the scan I'll let you know about once I know - which should be sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Fingers crossed! :-)