19 Nov 2025 - Amy
I wish this second update was a more cheerful one, filled with exciting adventures and collaborations. Doing so, however, would not be the truth of this month. The truth of this month, and last month actually (although I wasn’t ready to write about it yet), is far more painful.
In the second week of my new fellowship, I recieved a phone call from my sister to tell me that my mum had cancer. My parents had to an appointment at the hospital that afternoon, but waited until I’d finished work to deliver the news. Well, for my sister to deliver the news - my mum didn’t want to speak about it, and my dad couldn’t speak about it.
My parents live in Southampton, a long way from where I live in Leeds. So, for the first week or so, I worried from a distance. I called every day, but everyone was pretending to be normal so we mostly chatted about Strictly Come Dancing and Albie the family dog. I assumed, at this stage, that very little was known and there was nothing I could do. I got glimmers of information: they’d cancelled their bucket-list trip to Austrialia to watch the Ashes this winter, mum was slowly telling her passengers (she’s a taxi driver) that she’d soon be winding down her work schedule. Nothing in this made me think that I should put my life on hold.
After a couple of weeks of ignorance, a few days before my mum’s biopsy, my dad called me in tears and told me I had to come home. I explained to him I’d just started a new job, that I had teaching, that I’d only be underfoot in Southampton and we didn’t know anything anyway. In that moment, the wall of silence shattered, and I got the truth: my mum didn’t just “have cancer”, she had stage 4 ovarian cancer.
It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I was working remotely in central Leeds. Panic set in - I left the cafe I had planned to work from and spent the train ride frantically reading ovarian cancer statistics. Please, if you have a loved one with a cancer diagnosis, DO NOT DO THIS. It was a dark day, and the reality of my nomadic academic lifestyle, where I was constantly moving about and unrooted, no longer felt like a great adventure but an isolating hellscape.
I travelled back to Southampton in the first week of November, drafting manuscripts in my parents kitchen and just spending time being around the people I needed most in that moment. So, naturally, research progress is slower than I’d hoped. And honestly? I’m trying very hard to accept that as okay.
My mum is lucky to be in the care of our wonderful NHS, and she lives in close proximity to the excellent Princess Anne Hospital where she is recieving world-class and hopefully life-saving treatment. The tumour is large, and the cancer has spread to her windpipe, but we have reasons to be optimistic: she began a course of chemotherapy on Monday, with surgery to follow in the new year. Late stage cancer in this day and age is no longer a death sentence, and I have every hope my mum will live for many years to come.
All that to say that this month, my research hasn’t made great strides. I have got things done, and despite it all I have had fun doing science. At the moment, though, being there for my family is my number one priority. I’m also practicing showing up for myself by accepting that this is a difficult time, and trying not to beat myself up for being a little less efficient.
I could try and make this blog carry an important message about being compassionate, but mostly I just wanted to post this because if I only posted my successesses that would be insincere. The last two months have not been about me, or my research: they have mostly been about cancer. Most importantly, the last two months have been about my mum and about how blessed we all are to have her and how desperately I want to watch her grow old.
Maybe someday soon I’ll have something interesting or important to say about science, or past climate change, or the state of the world. This month, I’d just ask you to hold your loved ones a little tighter and, if you’ve money to spare, throw some of it in the direction of the wonderful folks at Macmillan.
I’ll see you next month.