My name is Jane, and I live on the Cornish coast.
I used to blog at Beyond Eden Rock, but I gave that up when a was struck down by life changing health issues. I didn’t want to, but there weren’t enough hours in the day and something had to give.
I have not been explicit about those issues before, but I am going to be more straightforward now.
Early in the autumn of 2020, I was diagnosed with cancer. It was devastating, but I knew that I was lucky that my health had been good to that point – my doctor commented on the thinness of my file – and that I had a form of cancer that was treatable and had high survival rates.
I have come through that but I had serious and unusual side effects during chemotherapy, and in time I came to think that there was something else going on. There was, and when the diagnosis came it was even more devastating – I have a form of motor neurone disease.
The progression of the disease is unpredicatable. At the time of writing my mouth and tongue are very weak. The consequence of that is that I can no longer speak and that eating and drinking have become very difficult. One of my legs is weakening but my arms still work pretty well.
But this isn’t going to be an MND blog.
I don’t know what it will be, and please don’t expect anything. My plan is just to write when I feel so inclined.
The most important thing that I want to say is that I am still the same Jane inside and I am so glad that I am a reader, because I am reading or writing about books I forget that the body I live in is winding down.
Stumbling Beyond Eden Rock 