There's a Panda in my Bellybutton

Swansea Community Farm In April 2021 Ryan began volunteering at Swansea Community Farm (Welsh - Fferm Gymunedol Abertawe). For now, he attends one day a week on a Tuesday from 10 am to 4 pm but there is a possibility that he could also volunteer on Thursdays as well also 10 am to 4 pm. About the Farm Swansea Community Farm is the only city farm in Wales set in 3.5 acres of land with a variety of animals, an allotment, wildlife habitats, beehives and a café. The animals include donkeys, goats, sheep, ducks, geese and chickens. The farm aims to improve wellbeing, build skills and create a sense of community engagement by caring for the animals, producing local food and caring for the local environment. Duties Ryan has enjoyed a variety of different duties so far. He has walked the Donkeys, Sheep and Geese from their barns out to their fields and pond. Collected eggs from the Chickens, and has mucked out the donkey sheds. He has also cleaned out the chicken coops, cleaned and refilled all...

  4 Years in Remission In May 2017 Ryan finished his 6 gruelling cycles of Chemotherapy and was in remission for 3 months before his cancer returned in September 2017. I wrote about our first 3 month cancer free milestone in our blog post here . In August 2020 Ryan once again finished treatment. This time he completed 3 years of Immunotherapy treatment and in November 2020 Ryan had tests done to confirm he is once again in remission. This is, of course, outstanding news but we were muted in any celebrations as it was such early days and we had been here once before. Ryan has been having regular check-ups every 3 months and in May 2021 we were able to confirm he has reached the 9-month milestone which was phenomenal news. Massive Scare - Relapse #3, ALMOST. Tuesday 4 October 2022. Ryan mentioned to me about an Ulcer on the roof of his mouth. I took photos and monitored for a couple of weeks before we start to panic too much.😳 Thursday 27 October 2022. Sadly Ryan has had to have y...

  Worrying About the Future. Ryan said to me recently. "Childhood gave me Autism. My teens gave me cancer. What will adulthood bring?" Big worries for someone so young. So much pressure and conditioning are placed upon us about the importance of education and the set path that the majority of us will take through the system to university and/or the job market. What happens if you do not follow that path or miss so much education that the path is no longer open to you. How do you plan for the future? What options are there available to you? Ryan was excluded from his primary school in year 2 and I home schooled him for a year while we worked with the Educational Psychologist to find a placement that would suit his complex needs at the time. Due to his speech, language and communication difficulties the decision was made to withdraw him from Welsh-medium education and focus on English only which meant our choices were limited in the area of Wales that we call home. We...

Coronavirus   In December 2019, the city of Wuhan in the Hubei province of central China recorded the first known cases of a novel coronavirus in humans. By the start of 2020 cases where being recorded in Italy and it was quickly spreading across other European countries. The UK recorded its first case on 31 January 2020 and by 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak a pandemic.  15 March 2020 I am taking no risks regarding Ryan. We as a family have made the decision to actively distance ourselves socially and we are doing all we can to ensure he is safe.  The ultimate aim of herd immunity is to stop disease spread and protect the most vulnerable in society. However, this strategy only works to reduce serious disease if, when building that immunity, vulnerable individuals are protected from becoming ill, for example through social distancing. If not, the consequences could be severe. Not enough is known yet about the virus therefore we don’t yet...