* BIZ LOUNGE LOVE FOR THE FELLOWSHIP

Dear Fellowship,

O.M.G!!! Happiness is finding out that your friends and family have clubbed together and upgraded you from Economy to Business Class...waaaaaaaah!!!

I am completely blown away. Individual shout outs to Lyn Connerty, Liz Connerty, Magz Connerty, Jon Connerty, Charlotte Hickson, Diane Barnes, Miriam Haddu, Zena Birch, Louise Shaw, Philippa Collier, Pipa Unsworth, Athena Mandis and Liz Saunders - you are all bleedin' legends and I love you all for your ridiculous but beautiful generosity...amazing.

Regardless of the flat bed, extensive movie collection and free cheese that now awaits me, I cannot explain how grateful I am to not have to hang old Wiggy off the tray table in front of me or have the predictable awkward convo with the bloke sat next to me asking where the blonde flicky-haired glamazonian went...

Currently at the airport waiting to board a 24hr flight home. It's been the busiest week on earth so I've barely had time to contemplate this trip or even really celebrate the end of treatment! Thank you to Cathy Walters, Jez Clark and Matt Furlong for helping me turn my messy flat into an Airbnb 5* review-level show home. You have each helped prevent me from curling up into a wailing ball this week when faced with emptying out yet another cupboard...love you all to the moon.

Champagne is kicking in clearly - lots of love for everyone right now. Am getting all teary-eyed about reaching London and finally seeing my amazing friends and family after 9 long months - avoid Heathrow Airport at 7am Thursday - it will be flooded...

But before I settle back into my flatbed (swoon), I just want to say thank you to everyone in Oz who has looked after and out for me this year. Having no family around to help out and support me could have been a tough call in January but I honestly wouldn't change the decision to have my treatment here for a second. They say friends are the family you choose and this year, that has never been truer.

Thank you for every call, card, present, dinner, text, Gold Class movie and walk on the beach. Thank you for always laughing at my inappropriate cancer jokes and for not freaking out when I whipped the wig off at random intervals. Thank you for showing me how lucky I am to have found such good and generous people on both sides of the world. I couldn't have got through the last 8 months without your rallying cries so thank you for always having my back and making me excellent cups of tea. You are all sensational.

My flight is being called so you are all saved from further champagne-induced ramblings!

Australia, I will see your beautiful face in 10 weeks. UK, I'm coming to get you. Stick the kettle on...

Love,
VC x

P.S Please note awkward selfie taken in Business Lounge, 30 seconds before I spilt entire glass of champagne over myself. I now have a 24hr flight to board, stinking of booze. So rockstar right now. :)

* LUMPY & LYMPHY - SOLO TRAVELLERS?

Dear Fellowship, 

So after 4 surreal days of post-cancer diagnosis madness, I found myself sitting in St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney with a cannula in my arm, drinking luminous drinks so that my insides lit up like a Christmas tree ahead of the CT and bone scans that will reveal whether Lumpy and Lymphy have any little pals roaming around the Connerty ecosystem*.

I was also radioactive for 12 hours which meant my pregnant wingwoman Soph was forced to make a swift exit as they said 'no VC, you probably shouldn't be around kids what with being radioactive’ - thanks to Soph for not going ‘waaaaaah’ too obviously and to Clare Robinson for ably stepping into the breach at short notice and pandering to my every whim. "I think I'd like chicken. Roast chicken. And gravy. And some veg. And hummus. And bread. And some milk for my tea". Poor Robbo. This is why I need the biggest support network ever. Largely so you can all support each other through this testing time as my demands and levels of emotional blackmail grow ever more outrageous.

I've been pushing for these scans since Saturday when I suddenly realised that I actually had very little info from my amazing GP Jacqui. Not her fault but 24 hours post-diagnosis, the control freak in me kicked in alongside my ever-over active imagination. Not a fabulous combination. By Sat evening, halfway through The Imitation Game (Cumberbatch on fine form as ever), I became convinced I was positively RIDDLED with Lymphy, Lumpy and their merry band of cancery thieves.

Thankyou to my old boss, mentor, legend of calm and fellow cancer-kicker Fishy for talking me down off the ceiling late on Saturday night. Fish has been kicking Hodgkins Lymphoma to the kerb over the last 6 months and has so impressed me with his resilience and approach to tackling it that I would be a fool if I didn't at least try to follow his lead to some degree. That said, he built a shed and a drone and started aeronautics training during his treatment period. I can confirm I will be doing none of the above. Clearly, he is also mad.

The last 4 days have been fairly full-on to say the least. You know when you've said the word 'breast' with a straight face to your CEO more than 5 times in one conversation that shit just got very real but stuff is starting to move along finally.

The Fellowship of the Ringlets i.e you lot, have been nothing short of sensational and I continue to be amazed by and grateful for the tremendous folk I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by at this very strange time. Please remind yourselves of this gratitude when I'm grumpy as all hell over the coming months, am failing to respond to texts, making spurious demands and you are wondering what you signed up for. Also loving that my UK friends and fam are connecting with my Aussie friends and fam, although my raging FOMO (fear of missing out, for the old people reading this) makes me want to be cc'd on ALL correspondence! Final thanks of the day goes to my brothers from other mothers Jezza and Matt who continue to astound me with their generosity, love and ability to smash out the best home cooked meals ever.

I'm not sure how these updates / musings will progress (they could well just peter out into just random swear words) but for now, I just want somewhere to write some stuff down and give you somewhere to go to know that I'm alright, still scaring people, probably being wholly inappropriate about cancer and importantly not drowning in a bucket of tears.

Meeting with Dave the boob surgeon on Friday to discuss strategic plan of attack on Lumpy and Lymphy - he is by all accounts a total legend so I am hopeful he will be my man with a damn good plan.

Love,
VC x

*Update 7 Jan 3pm: GP Jacqui the amazing cancer-detector just called. Results of the scans are in and CT and bone scans are both clear, so it looks like Lumpy and Lymphy are flying solo. I don’t want to lower the tone of these updates but thank FUCK! (sorry, Mum).