If there’s a better reason to blog, I can’t think of it.

In a departure from my usual kind of post, I would like to introduce you to a friend who has only recently become a blogger, and for whom this environment is particularly important.

Caroline and I met in 1988, when we were both living in a little French village outside Paris, both pregnant, English-speaking ex-patriates, and I liked her immensely and immediately. Her sense of humour was dry and wry, tending towards black, and her pithy, pointed cracks were delivered in a Yorkshire accent that sometimes brought me to my knees.  What’s not to like about someone who makes you laugh like that?

We saw each other a lot for about two years before I moved back to Canada, but then drifted away from each other for the most banal of reasons: ‘out of sight, out of mind’. We were in only sporadic touch, and saw each other just once in 15 years. 

About a year and half ago, I picked up the phone and called her number. Her husband told me that she didn’t like to talk on the phone anymore; treatment for cancer of the mouth and tongue diagnosed several years before had meant the removal of most of her tongue.

By coincidence, they were in our area on holiday the following week. We made plans to meet, and over the few hours we spent together she described the path her life had taken after finding a small lump on her neck, and to say that her story was sobering is a gross understatement.

Without most of her tongue, her speech was indistinct and she could no longer eat. Instead, she ‘fed’ herself liquid nourishment via a tube directly to her stomach. She went from being a funny, lively, confident woman to someone who avoided the telephone, social situations and going out in public as it meant getting strange looks or unsympathetic reactions from people who could not understand her. She lost her health, her confidence, her independence and the future most of us take for granted. But she’s still Caroline, and now, by god, she’s got herself a blog.

I’d love for her to meet you.  I’d love for her world to get a little bigger.  You’ll find her at Caroline’s Cinderella Cancer Blog and If you’d like to have an idea of what she’s been through, take a look at ‘My cancer ‘till now’.

Postscript:  I’m very sorry to say that Caroline died on Sunday May 16, 2010, at home in France and surrounded by her family: husband John daughter Jerina and son Jack.