My beautiful, darling Gilly was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in March 2004, only 10 weeks after first showing what we now know to be the classic symptoms - we didn't then of course. She had chemotherapy at the Christie in 2004, 7, 8, and 9 but she kept working except when she couldn't, and her attitude was to ignore it as much as possible 'I just want live a normal life'. So she would put on her pink lippy and her even pinker nail polish and get out there, always looking good whatever she was feeling inside. And she was so good at putting on a brave face that there were many people who knew her well who did not realise at that time just how ill she was.
We had many happy times in those six years, but in 2010 it returned even more aggressively than before and she could fight it no longer.
She was a lovely warm smiling woman who touched more lives then she ever realised, and who was not only a best friend to many but was the glue which held lots of friends together.
No one could have endured the last six years with more courage and style, and as I told her often during the last few days, no one could have made those years better for me than she did.
My beautiful, darling Gilly passed away, very peacefully, on Friday 9th July 2010 at the Bolton Hospice. Helen and Ian and I miss her so much.