Before she passed I said my goodbyes, told how much I loved her and thanked her for a lovely journey and then I gave her a seperate kiss from as many of you as I could remember.

It is my intention to continue with the Tao updates until my Tash is finally put to rest, partly because this is helpful to me at the moment and also because you were all so important to her. It is our intention to take her home.

With Love

M+K, but sadly no longer T

The care for Tash is now entirely palliative and we found her in the morning resplendent on a new air mattress. She was awake when I got in and in an action that that I deeply did not want to do, had to get her to sign a will, we then let her sleep for the rest of the morning and just sat like silent guardians reading Esquire and Car magazine from cover to cover and back again.

Mid morning Ken and I spoke to the nursing team and put into place some arrangements to allow Tash to pass with the minimal of fuss. They explained that even though she still looks in good spirits, according to the medical data she is extremely ill. We were also told of the likely manner of her passing, something that I am not going to discuss openly with you here, but if you feel that this information will help you to deal with the situation contact me separately.

Vic and Bonney came to see her in the afternoon, an invite I spent some time deliberating over, their banter is in relationship to their massive rugby frames and subtlety is not a word in their vocabulary. The boys brought spectacular results from Tash, who put in a virtuoso performance, chatting away for twenty minutes telling them what she will do when she gets better.....

We all cried in the hallway.

I have never exclusively owned Tash, I just think of it like I have the largest slice of a time share. She belongs to the rest of you as much as she belongs to me, but for a moment after Ken and I came back to the room she felt mine again, I remember thinking that perhaps she would get well. That was too much and I had to leave.

In the evening we asked a few people to come over to the flat, after such a day we figured that the best thing to do was to gather some friends round in an attempt to cheer both Ken and I up. For you Australians, Italians, Americans and Knitters, those of you who feel distant and are struggling to cope, I would suggest that you could do the same, we talked about Tash a lot and that was nice.

M+K(-T who is comfortable)

She is asleep now for nearly all the time and for the rare moments that she does rouse there is some brief lucidity that quickly dissipates quickly back in to slumber. I sat with the Slev yesterday and he explained that Tash may slowly get better after her turn on Wednesday, but that this is probably not going to be the case. The salts issue in their opinion is being influenced by enzymes possibly being excreted by the tumours, the vagueness in this statement is verbatim from him so forgive me for saying this but I do not think Tash will be leaving the hospital.

If these are to be Natasha's final days then I want them to be as calm and dignified as possible and have decided not to allow anyone else to see her. The Tash that we all know is not with us at the moment and so it will serve no purpose. For our friends in Australian, Italy and the US and knitting, I am so awfully sorry that it has happened like this, if I though that there was any way to do this differently I would suggest it, but I think it is for the best that she is not told of her condition and I do not want her distressed by having you turn up.

Ken and I are understandably struggling, he is far from home trying to deal with this nightmare a second time and I have entered a very surreal and numb world - Marisa and Nathan took me out of the hospital to eat yesterday afternoon and we sat down right next to Carl Barratt, one half of the libertines, Tash's favourite band. We left with a video of him wishing her a speedy recovery, though I do not know if she will ever see it. On top of this I cannot sleep, cannot find anything in the flat and keep wanting to ask Tash, I also find myself simply standing there wondering what I am going to do.

I wish many things at the moment, I wish I could get her out of hospital, I wish I could get her home, I wish and I wish, but have to deal with the reality whether I like it or not.

If you want to do something for us today, then speak to a parent, partner, child or friend and tell them that you love them, as I will do to Tash, whether she hears me or not.

With Love

M+K (-T)

They put a chest drain in to her yesterday and the same cycle that has kept her in there so long has started again. She is very ill and narrowly avoided being moved to the intensive care unit this afternoon by rallying slightly around lunchtime - for those in the know her blood pressure was 50/40 last night and has been hovering around 60-70/50 today, for those in the not know, this is really not good. The problem is the salts, they help to build up the blood pressure and whilst some are sky high (potassium) the sodium is low, this imbalance causes the liquid in her blood to flow out, which is why the drains are needed, but makes her very dehydrated. She is comfortable however, I can only imagine the strength of pain medicine she is now on and yes it is very distressing to see. We did not see the doctor today so don't know what her immediate prognosis is, the nurses were pleased that Tash had shown improvement during the day, so Ken and I have taken some comfort in that.

M+K very worried about T

Actually if you want to pass on a message to Tash, use our contact form, she can view them when she is felling stonger.

Tash continues to improve, her mental alertness, though still occasionally a bit vague due to the oxygen and painkillers, is increasing. I feel the boredom of being in the same room for twelve days is really getting to her, she has started telling the nurses what to do. But as I reminded myself last night, she has not complained about the bed or the pillow stack that we use to make her comfortable for a day or so, so the pain medication is making her comfortable and allowing as good nights, which is good.

I am now stepping down as Natasha's social secretary, she is well enough to arrange her social visits, though I am still going to encourage you all to text first and not call. I would prefer it if the conversations were more of the laughter and banter variety then crying and emotion, as I am going to point out that even though you might come off the phone feeling connected, you are taking valuable energy away from Tash's recovery. Please be considerate in your intentions.

The sodium levels are still causing some concern, they bottomed to the lower 115's and have increased to the mid 120's, but are defying any normal attempt to fully stabilise them. The doctor is aiming for 125 millimoles per litre (the internet suggests a normal level is 136+, to give you some comparison), last night we were close, but then her potassium level peaked and the nurses had to run in a small Glucose drip. The internet again supplies an opinion that suggests that this is a complication due to the cancer.

We have also had a visit from the Macmillan nurse, This in it's self was quite upsetting as it represents, well to be honest, immediate demise, in the minds of most people, us included. This is not necessarily the case however; being here for so long (Tash + Hospital, not Tash + London) has triggered a whole system of help and assistance that we did not know was available and though it is difficult to adjust to, "But we don't need help" we say, the fact that Ken is sitting next to me is a strong sign that we obviously do. Some of the positives of being plugged into the benefits system will be very helpful, if Tash now qualifies for a blue disabled badge then parking becomes significant easier and we can apply to be exempt from the congestion charge, so the trips to and from the LOC will be more bearable. Had Tash been normal in her reaction to the ascites drain we would still be ignorant to all this.

It is worth saying something important here, with only one notable exception (you money obsessed bastards), the London that I know, the harsh metropolis, has revealed a far more caring side than I could have ever imagined; from friends, to strangers, the people in the restaurants who normally don't do take away, the government departments who want money from our company but are willing to wait, the Australian high commission and all in between, when I say "my wife is in hospital with a serious condition" have tried to help as much as possible (thank you all by the way).

By now you should know what is coming next, today's chemo has been delayed again and no release date in the immediate future. If you wanted to send flowers, please include a vase, I get on very well with all the house keeping and catering staff and have already discovered that there are none on the floor.

M(-T still +K)

For me on the other hand it has been a deeply stressful and upsetting experience.

For Tash it has been a career defining moment, if only she was an actor, to perform a very credible impersonation of an 80 year old boxer - frail, in need of much help to do the simplest of things and punch drunk (also continuously attached to a drip). This was in a large part to do with the sodium drop (both the punch drunk and omnipresent drip), but also the pain medication (which is enough to stun a horse) and too a small degree the oxygen feed she has to use (I have tried it and can attest, it gets you stoned). Fortunately as the week has gone on I have seen my Tash reappearing, mostly through the medium of being exceedingly grumpy with her husband. I don't mind, it is sometimes my place to do everything wrong.

Tash is still pretty sick however, her nausea is fairly unrelenting and the hospital food, though on the haute cuisine side, is still hospital food. I have spent the last two days scouring the streets of Marlybone high street for Italian eateries that will do take away. It is nice that some of her appetite is returning, even if it is only minor.

As you probably have worked out, Natasha is still in the London Clinic. My current guess is Tuesday, when it will be nice to spend more than an hour at home, something I have not managed for the last 10 days. It will be a quick visit however as she is booked into the LOC for Chemo on Wednesday.

Ken also arrived this morning and it was nice to see Tash brighten up considerably ....as we listened for several hours to a verbal update on all the wrongs to be found with the Australian mining companies, road building policies, political parties and water distribution systems. I am however very glad he is here.

M(missing T)

Tash is usually my filter; my bad spelling filter, my Yoda English filter "write sentences backwards I often do" and my depressive tendencies filter. But she is in hospital and I need to update you, so I am sorry for any untoward comment or unique spelling or word combination that might appear in the following paragraphs.

Thursday was the worst day of our lives. This last consultation at St Barts contained all the expected finality, but this was still very difficult for either of us to deal with. Fortunately due Tash's general disapproval of the NHS hospital system (Doctors and Consultants good, organisation and motivation bad) she had already booked us in to see the Slev on the Friday.

Not unsurprisingly Friday afternoon was one of the best. For all his brilliance "The Slev" cannot fix Tash and what will eventually happen cannot be stopped, but what he brings in good ideas, a positive attitude, all the resources of a fully equipped clinic and the backing of a national charity, is going to make all the difference. And that is what he bloody well did. Before we had left the consultation room he had her booked into hospital to have a drain to relieve the ascites (note: that she has had for months and no one at St Barts did anything about).

All was good and a lot of you got very buoyant texts and phone calls that evening from room 203 of the London Clinic I understand. However things went a bit a rye on Saturday morning; I think that they were draining her too quickly and Tash slipped into all sorts of sleeping and nausea mayhem. Not enough to warrant any emergency, but has been enough to keep her in there for three days longer than planned. Her blood work today has reported a low sodium and phosphate level, though the rest of her bloods are fine, so this is apparently the reason and she is on a drip. Oddly, before Tash and I became so closely aquatinted with the medical world I would have taken being on a drip as a bad thing, it isn't really, Doctors use them all the time to alleviate the effects of a hangover. In fact if you really want to know how she is, think of your worst hangover and you are about there.

This unfortunately is a bit distressing for the both of us, purely because this whole bad section has dragged on so long and a piece of really good news would be welcome about now. Tash was due to start her new chemo - sorry forgot to mention that - a combination called GemCarbo on Wednesday, but I think we are going to push that back until Friday next week and give her a bit more time to recuperate.

I am confident that I will be able to bring her home tomorrow, she almost told me off today and that can only be considered as a sign that she is improving. Tash is probally going to be in hospital for the rest of the week.

With Love

M(-T)

After a bit of a run-around between Dr Slevin and Dr Ghallaher, Tash restarted the Chemotherapy she was previously having last year. As I type, she is coming to the end of her second cycle. The Lapatinib didn't do a lot and our future now couldn't be more different to the hopeful picture we painted in January.

One of the tumours has grown considerably in the last three months and the other has remained stable. One of the bigger upheavals we have had to contend with recently is that the six months of Capciteabine and Lapatinib had only halted the growth and not regressed it, which is different to what we thought previously. The tumours according to the last scans (three weeks ago) are 40mm and 90mm, the latter being double it's size in December. The doctor suspects that Tash's pain is this tumour pressing on the membrane that surrounds the liver (called the liver capsule).

Tash is struggling with the current round of Chemo, she has always had a significant rest period between treatments but this time with only three months and considering the state she was in when we restarted, it is no surprise that it is wiping her out. I am pretty much her full time carer at present and for those of you who are single parents, you have my deepest respect, it is not easy.

Our plan is to complete the second cycle and then see what our position is. Then the aim is to hopefully switch back to the LOC under Dr Slevins care, though things seem to change on a daily basis at the moment. This trip into the National Health Service has not been a pleasant one and has managed to knock huge chunks off Tash's considerable confidence.

We have done a lot of talking over the last two months, both by ourselves and with the two Oncologists. None of it has been particularly easy and I have heard some things that I never wanted to hear. We know that we will have a problem if we stay in London as all our friends here have their own lives and careers and there will be no one to look after Tash if I have to go back to work and as Tash commented, London is a pretty crappy place to be ill. She has agreed to my request that I would like to have a life with her in Sydney before, (as I put it) things get a bit sticky. Though even going home is presenting problems; If things go well then we will aim to be in Sydney for Christmas, but if things do not look up for us in the next couple of months of treatment, then it will be sooner, apart from that I cannot give you a firm timeframe.

We both wish that things could be different, but can only try to make the best out of what we are given.

With love

M+T