Preparations.

Been back in touch with my older brother - well my only brother, never mind 'older'! He went up to see mam for a couple of days last week and took her for her first cancer clinic appointment, and it sounded afterwards like she took a huge amount of comfort from having him there.

He only lives an hour or so away from me, but we just don't seem to be in touch very often. It's not that we're "not talking" or anything, we just 'exist in different worlds'. He doesn't really go up to see mam and dad very often in general, but to his eternal credit he's already been up twice, since mam's diagnosis.

He's going this weekend with his wife, my sister-in-law. She had a hysterectomy during the summer, so they're going to help mam understand what she's going to go through when she has her op in a fortnight, and what it'll be like afterwards. It made me think that as me and hubs will be looking after mam for her first week out of hospital, maybe WE need to understand what it'll be like too - so me and sister in law have set a date for the four of us to meet up before mam's op, have a gigantic catch-up session and chew the fat.