Welcome to a conversation that will move your spirit and inspire your heart. We are honored to have Alize Adelle, who has been the guiding light for her severely autistic niece, Hannah. Alize enlightens us about Hannah's early diagnosis journey, which was fraught with uncertainties and societal misconceptions. Hannah's remarkable adaptation to her non-verbal interaction, using Disney film catchphrases to express herself, is a testament to the extraordinary resilience embedded in her spirit.
As the world grappled with an unexpected pandemic, life presented Alize and Hannah with a unique set of challenges. Alize navigates us through this tumultuous time, describing how she managed to explain the concept of COVID-19 and the subsequent isolation to Hannah. Through it all, Alize managed to establish a sense of balance and structure, turning her home into a sanctuary of calm amidst the storm. The lockdown period, while tough, also offered opportunities for breakthroughs and fostered a symbiotic coexistence between Alize and Hannah.
Our exploration of family dynamics establishes the unique bond between Alize and Hannah, a bond that is both tender and unshakeable. Alize's recounting of taking Hannah on a Disney cruise underlines the courage and adaptability that Hannah has nurtured over the years. We also acknowledge the critical role of Alize's sister and friends in building a robust support network. Our conversation ends on a note of hope and advocacy, underscoring the importance of sharing stories that triumph over adversity. We invite you to join us and possibly share your own journey - you never know who it might inspire.
https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Welcome to a conversation that will move your spirit and inspire your heart. We are honored to have Alize Adelle, who has been the guiding light for her severely autistic niece, Hannah. Alize enlightens us about Hannah's early diagnosis journey, which was fraught with uncertainties and societal misconceptions. Hannah's remarkable adaptation to her non-verbal interaction, using Disney film catchphrases to express herself, is a testament to the extraordinary resilience embedded in her spirit.
As the world grappled with an unexpected pandemic, life presented Alize and Hannah with a unique set of challenges. Alize navigates us through this tumultuous time, describing how she managed to explain the concept of COVID-19 and the subsequent isolation to Hannah. Through it all, Alize managed to establish a sense of balance and structure, turning her home into a sanctuary of calm amidst the storm. The lockdown period, while tough, also offered opportunities for breakthroughs and fostered a symbiotic coexistence between Alize and Hannah.
Our exploration of family dynamics establishes the unique bond between Alize and Hannah, a bond that is both tender and unshakeable. Alize's recounting of taking Hannah on a Disney cruise underlines the courage and adaptability that Hannah has nurtured over the years. We also acknowledge the critical role of Alize's sister and friends in building a robust support network. Our conversation ends on a note of hope and advocacy, underscoring the importance of sharing stories that triumph over adversity. We invite you to join us and possibly share your own journey - you never know who it might inspire.
https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Speaker 1:
Welcome to why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, usa, nashville, tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry. Feel like people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to why Not Me the World. Today's guest is Elise Adele. She lives in the UK and she's raising her autistic niece. Welcome to the show, elise. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1:
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you. It's my understanding that you've been instrumental in raising your autistic niece.
Speaker 2:
Raising is, I would say, an odd verb to use because she's. Let me give my quick maths here she's 35, 36 in a couple of weeks time, but she's severely autistic and requires 24-hour care.
Speaker 1:
Okay, at what age was she diagnosed autistic?
Speaker 2:
Oh, now, this is a good question. She was born in 1987. Now I have to remember now my sister's history with her, because she, my sister's no longer here. That's Hannah's mother, hannah, her name is.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. What did Hannah's early years look like, as she was growing up?
Speaker 2:
When Hannah was born, developmentally she had some things. She excelled quickly and other things sort of dragged. So she was walking, crawling and walking and climbing. My goodness, she climbed everywhere. She was very hyperactive. She's very advanced physically. She was also mentally quite advanced because from a young age you know, she wasn't speech, she didn't have any speech. She would drag objects and items to her mother to help, you know, for example, a bottle of soda. She'd drag a bottle of soda over to her mother so her mother would open and give her a couple of soda and not take the thing. But we noticed obviously that her speech was not developing at all.
Speaker 1:
So there's a couple of things that I'm wondering here. She's 35 now, so when she was three years old, autism wasn't really thought of that much. So if she wasn't having any really good results with her speech, how did your sister approach that?
Speaker 2:
Well, there were a lot of things going on at the time. One of the popular series was, along with an awareness, beginning with diagnosis of autism 87, we're looking around the year that the Chernobyl disaster happened. I remember that being forefront in my sister's mind with all the worry and the news about radioactivity in the air. So she thought her and a group of other mothers who were expecting and giving birth at the same time. Quite a few of them had children with learning difficulties. And of course there was also another scare at the time about the new MMO vaccine and whether there was a link with that.
Speaker 1:
And that's a lot of things to be thinking about, especially when you're trying to get a young child diagnosed.
Speaker 2:
Hannah's path to diagnosis was very slow. We also noticed that she was sound sensitive. She didn't like the tiredness being flushed, she didn't like hair dryers, she didn't like the washing machine on spain, etc. She went to a clinic in London to have treatment for sensitive hearing. But I think I don't be accurate. I think it took from the moment her speech didn't develop to about, I would say, on average, about five, six years of age, before she actually got a diagnosis of autism.
Speaker 1:
When you got that diagnosis, that must have been. That's early on, probably some way as late 80s, early 90s.
Speaker 2:
Born 87, so I'd say early 20s. Yeah, 92-ish.
Speaker 1:
So in 92, autism wasn't really recognized all that much yet how do they handle it? Did they set her up for any type of therapy?
Speaker 2:
There wasn't really a great deal help for my sister Janet, which is Hannah Smith there. I think she was briefly offered what they called the British signing for the deaf.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
Which is like a standard, you know, universal course to go on to the country to learn how to do signing and communicate. But Hannah's problem wasn't deafness, it was understanding words being said to her, right. Hannah wasn't particularly successful because Hannah wasn't learning what the sign language meant herself, you know Right. But she did end up going to a nearby primary school which had what we would call a cabin I'm trying to think what you'd call. It is like a portable building that they drop into a yard and it was a unit where all young children with special needs mixture Okay, and I don't think there was more than 10 children in the area that were attending. So she had primary school education there for her abilities. Secondary was the same, another sort of same sort of style cabin on the secondary school grounds where she had, you know, a group again of very special needs people and what would have been our university college years between 18 and 21, residential then on the outskirts of Cardiff in South Wales. That was excellent, that was absolutely fantastic. She loved her time there.
Speaker 1:
That's really great to hear that she found a good spot that she liked. So how has she grown now? Has she got to the point of more verbal, or does she still have some issues dealing with it?
Speaker 2:
Very limited. She's written down medically as non-verbal because she doesn't grasp conversations. Okay, she's very clever, that's good, and she adapts. What she has is a series of catchphrases. She's learned these catchphrases mostly from Disney films and cartoons and such like, and she uses them appropriately, that's really good.
Speaker 1:
Early on they had a therapy where they'd show pictures to the kids to have them relate to what they wanted. Does she have to use that at all?
Speaker 2:
She doesn't need that. She does it herself. She's drawn a picture of something she wants for her birthday. Add an eye-watering well, for me an eye-watering £75, which is more so than dollars $80, $90. Right, but she draws what she wants. She uses a tablet where she gets onto the internet and picks out images. She types what she wants. She can find the image of what she wants and she shows me Right. So she's very adaptable. I have a certain instinct as well for things like when she's hungry. But try and get her to ask. But some things she doesn't register. But she is hungry. If she left her own devices, she'd go without food, even if it's prepared and ready for her.
Speaker 1:
Well now, some autistic people have issues with texture of their food. Is that an issue with her?
Speaker 2:
I think so. She's obviously again non-verbal in being able to describe that.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
But she loves tomato ketchup Okay, but hates tomatoes. She will spit them out.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
Not putting on onions. That could be a strong flavour for texture as well. My grandfather her grandfather hated onions for the texture as well as the taste. Strong cheeses Again, that could be more flavour than texture. She can't really say about texture, but I guess it's in the mix.
Speaker 1:
It sure is Everyone's different. So how's her temperament? It's known that autistic people can have major meltdowns and some can have just meltdowns. How is her temperament overall?
Speaker 2:
I'm very lucky. She's very good, very happy most of the time.
Speaker 1:
Lockdown was challenging. Issue was for all of us.
Speaker 2:
We had a terrible set of circumstances in October 2019. My sister fell ill and I took her to emergency after trying to get sense from our local doctors. She was eventually diagnosed with cancer and would have to receive treatment.
Speaker 1:
Oh wow, that's just so sad to hear.
Speaker 2:
They had said it was terminal but they were going to go ahead and give chemotherapy a gore to extend her life. But she was very, very sick at the time. She didn't have to ask. But she asked me if I would take care of Hannah, with it possibly being permanent, and I said absolutely, in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1:
Well, that is just tremendously amazing. What a great thing for you to do.
Speaker 2:
But then in the UK our lockdown came in March 2020. My niece I always think of her as a girl, even though she's 35, she's got that personality. So this poor girl was faced now with her mother in isolation so we couldn't see her. Well, I can't imagine that. And her mother was quite sick as well, so she wasn't up for phone calls so she had no way of seeing or contacting her mother.
Speaker 1:
That is just so sad.
Speaker 2:
She had left her family home to come and live with me, so a lot of her belongings. At that moment, until we were able to meet up as a family and organise a move Again, we were in lockdown. Nobody could go back and forward easily, right? She couldn't go out for shopping, walks, cinema and she went into huge meltdown, the biggest and most challenging behaviour I've ever ever experienced from her, because she's generally so facet.
Speaker 1:
That's just so sad to hear. These were extraordinary times and we'd never seen anything like this. It must have been really challenging for you, but challenging for her as well, because she couldn't see her mother.
Speaker 2:
Now she's had harms in her temper.
Speaker 1:
I've heard that a lot, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:
She did at one point almost go to shake me on lockdown which is the first time she's ever laid hands on anybody but she thought it would end and stopped. So she's very, very caring about your space. But she will scream very high and very piercing, very loud in your face when she's having meltdowns. But to be fair, she's come through all of that. She accepted her mother passing away superbly. I could not believe it.
Speaker 1:
Wow.
Speaker 2:
Obviously she was sad and grieve, but I think a lot of her grieving was at the beginning of lockdown.
Speaker 1:
Well, that is just a lot to take in for a young girl. It's just amazing that she did so well, considering everything that was going on in everyone's life.
Speaker 2:
Exactly, and we were trying to explain to her that Mummy's sick. We kept it simple Mummy's sick.
Speaker 1:
Sounds like the best way for sure.
Speaker 2:
Eventually, I think I had a breakthrough with her understanding lockdown. She can read a little bit and she loves London. She knows what London is. I showed her Piccadilly Circus with pictures saying from our National Health Service, our healthcare. They put banners saying stay at home during COVID.
Speaker 1:
That must have been pretty tough on you to try and explain what was going on around the world, because that was tougher for everyone.
Speaker 2:
I couldn't explain to her what COVID was. I couldn't explain to her it was germ or disease. She couldn't get it.
Speaker 1:
That's totally understandable.
Speaker 2:
So I showed her, very simply, these banners saying stay safe, stay at home. I showed her the red double decker buses which are from London as well, synonymous with understanding, and they had the same banners on. I showed her Boris Johnson and told her he's the boss and he says stay at home as well.
Speaker 1:
Did that help her understand it at all.
Speaker 2:
Something clicked and she just went okay, okay, and I could sort of almost get that moment of connection with her where I thought she doesn't know why, but she knows, it's not my decision to say it to him, I'm not the wicked witch yeah, because I think a lot of it. She thought that I had suddenly taken over and stopped her from seeing him and taking her from her home.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean, that's a tough situation for someone that's not autistic, let alone someone that's going through what Hannah goes through.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm trying to understand where her mind was.
Speaker 1:
If I was in her shoe. That speaks very highly of how you're handling the situation. You have to think of your situation too, and your health.
Speaker 2:
I gotta be honest. This is where I said at the top of our conversation about Max from showbore she was amazing. She poured in every day to make sure I didn't go insane.
Speaker 1:
It's always great to have someone you're calling for support.
Speaker 2:
Apart from the physicality, I felt like a battered wife, and I'll explain this because she would follow me around the house with this meltdown, self-harming and screaming and shouting and occasionally slamming doors to the point where objects were getting thrown off the walls and breaking. And again, this is not as severe as what many experienced, you know, over a lot of time with the same people, with Hannah's condition, you know, right, right, but I couldn't get away from her.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's a tough situation to be in for both of you.
Speaker 2:
We were on lockdown. We were on your level 15 minutes' exercise outside of the house.
Speaker 1:
That's just so tough, because that's when the walls in the house seem to just close in on you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, she'd follow me around the house everywhere She'd stop me from sleeping. You know I was trying to get her to sleep. One of her mother's bad habits was she used to leave Hannah asleep when Hannah felt like it, and sometimes she would stay up till 3, 4 am in the morning playing games. So I was trying to break this cycle, you know, which was another added problem. But thankfully now she's in a normal routine.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's the key just getting someone to get used to a certain pattern and then hopefully they'll adjust to it.
Speaker 2:
But at the time that was another born of contention. I would have lights out, games off, tv off went to wind down and I would give her time countdowns, you know to tell her 10 minutes and then switch off.
Speaker 1:
So how did she handle the new structure in her life?
Speaker 2:
And she was terrible. She'd come in and ripped the quilt off me until the lights on and generally have a meltdown because I was going to sleep. So I was getting sleep decry and being screamed at all day.
Speaker 1:
That's a very tough situation to handle.
Speaker 2:
Actually, when you're screamed so close into the face, within inches, and as loud as she does, so how did you find a way to cope? At one point I slept so hard across the top of her arm she actually stopped and burst into tears and I felt so guilty. But it was a reflex reaction. I didn't expect it, you know, and it was a reflex reaction. So I was feeling I was failing and, you know, god. God helped me. I prayed, you know, for something to happen First, to somehow find some sort of symbiotic coexistence in the same house.
Speaker 1:
That's just such a tough situation. So what happened from there?
Speaker 2:
And at one point I actually locked myself in the bedroom just to get away from her.
Speaker 1:
I guess the next question is did it work?
Speaker 2:
Well, this is. This in hindsight is actually hilarious.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
Because and I mean it's affectionately the little cows that have started battering the door, ganging and not just kicking the door but kicking the wall in the hallway, which is just a weak partition wall, and slamming and slapping the door and yelling let me in, let me in, let me in. And all she wanted to do was to scream at me. There was nothing she wanted. I locked myself in and I wouldn't let her in. I was choked and go away all the time.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
And she got out of the back door. The back area was secure so she could come and go in the garden as she pleased, you know. Okay, she grabbed the back door and started banging the window. And she was outside banging the bedroom window shouting at me let me in, let me in, let me in. I had to because I thought, oh my God, we've got neighbors here. They're going to phone these thinking I've shut her out of the house. Well, actually I'm locked in the bedroom.
Speaker 1:
Oh, that's a tough situation.
Speaker 2:
And I got like a social worker because of a unique situation and I thought, my gosh, social services are going to be here, they're going to take her away and I'm going to be in trouble, and so, oh, this is something about her. No, she's a beautiful spirit, absolutely beautiful, but there's a Machiavellian manipulative streak in there.
Speaker 1:
you know Well, we all have that at times.
Speaker 2:
She knows how to work you and how to get her own way.
Speaker 1:
So how did that end up? Once you brought her in, did that help settle things down for both of you?
Speaker 2:
Well, no, that was just one memorable moment. To describe what it was like on lockdown Friendly, little help from the GP. I found the GP to find out what could be done. I don't know what the American name for the band, but the British name is Dayazepam, which is in the family of relaxers. Ok, he didn't want her to get hooked on them, but he said in an emergency you could give her a dose of up to two tablets, you know, to see if that would calm her down.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
I joked that I'd be back for more because they'd be handy for me if they don't work on her.
Speaker 1:
Well, a little levity is always good in life.
Speaker 2:
To be fair, as I said, once I had that breakthrough, I was telling you about getting her to understand there was a reason we were staying home because outside at the moment was dangerous. Right, she did seem to switch and cope better.
Speaker 1:
Oh, ok good.
Speaker 2:
And as time progressed and she realized mummy's very sick. One thing that's fabulous about Disney, thank God, because she's a huge Disney fan, as most are. Disney are very good at getting children and early understanding about death in their cartoons. So you know she understands things like bambis, mother dying, and the In the Lion King when Mustafa dies, and he understands the concept of death. So I'm sure she knew her mother was going to die before we had to tell her and I think that was a problem as well, you know.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I get that and it is just so tough to lose a mother at any age. Did she get to see her at all? Zoom or a phone call or anything that would give her a connection?
Speaker 2:
No, no, just before lockdown, my sister had been going through half of her chemotherapy Right when she was very sick and weak. She had lost all her hair, yeah, and we went to see her in this for want of a better word hospice Right. We were looking after her. I could never have looked after both of them at the same time.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, that had been tough.
Speaker 2:
Because, also, janet required transport back and forward to hospital to receive treatment for our care and bathing and all the rest you know, sure. So Hannah saw her mother just before lockdown and that saying you know, one picture paints a thousand words. She could see her mum was very ill and had lost a lot of weight and her hair lost. She actually went forward and lifted her mum's calf to see there was any hair underneath and Janet sort of looked at me and said I don't know if she should see me anymore like this, it might upset her. I said I don't know what's for the best. I said because the advice I said from the social workers is that, you know, hannah does have a great deal of more understanding. If not in language, she can see things and has a certain amount of her. Well, she's incredibly intelligent in many ways, you know.
Speaker 1:
Well, that is just such an incredibly hard situation to be in.
Speaker 2:
The decision was left out of our hands in the end because lockdown occurred. It was summertime when we were allowed to meet people outside. Months later we weren't supposed to meet my sister inside, but she was sick. She was just sick to be reeled outside and I won't name the hospice. But on compassionate reasons they decided to turn a blind eye and they allowed one family member, next of kin, to come into the room fully masked, ppe, scrubbed and gloved, to go in and spend some time with our sister because they knew that her death was close by. She refused further chemo after lockdown. She only had half her chemo. She wanted a go. Basically, she was in a lot of pain, but she was just tired and re-given up.
Speaker 1:
you know, yeah, I had a friend of mine that was in the same situation. It's a very tough, grueling process.
Speaker 2:
And the treatment is grueling on top of it as well. You know, she just didn't have any f***ing hair.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and that part is just so tough.
Speaker 2:
I saw her. Personally I couldn't bring Hannah. That would have broken their agreement. But to be honest, she was in such a sad state I think it would have been cruel for Hannah to see her at that point.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and that's a tough decision, but you have to do what's best for her. Did you get a chance to see her one last time?
Speaker 2:
Well, actually I did see her the day before she passed away. She passed away August 30th 2020.
Speaker 1:
Well, even though that's sad, you can take comfort knowing you did the right thing for her and her daughter and she is in a better place now.
Speaker 2:
Well, do you want to know what a horrible twist of irony is?
Speaker 1:
OK.
Speaker 2:
I was sick last year, hannah and I got a very great, stable relationship. She has her own room with all her needs and it's fully decorated in the theme of Disney Frozen and we were going along, getting along famously. And last year I got sick in June and at the end of September I was diagnosed with bowel cancer. I was rushed into hospital because my digestive tract was blocked by this tumor in the bowel. I had to have an emergency colostomy. I've been through five weeks of radiotherapy, every day, monday to Friday. For five weeks I had three months of chemotherapy. Sadly, I've had the news that the cancer has spread to my lungs. Now I've got about 12 months Wow.
Speaker 1:
I just don't know what to say. That is just such awful news. I'm so sorry to hear this, both for you and for Hannah.
Speaker 2:
I was happening to her again and that makes me mostly angry.
Speaker 1:
I completely understand that for sure.
Speaker 2:
I started to get to that place where I really felt I was doing a great job of looking after her and coping myself, and her room was beautifully decorated. This is the very first time she's had a bedroom of her own decorated the way she wants it, because she's sleeping with me in my bedroom all the time. She has her own bedroom now and she can get all her belongings easily. They're not mixed up and lost. All her clothes are in the wardrobe and in the cupboards rather than on the floor and in the tub.
Speaker 1:
Well, I'm just so glad that she's adjusting.
Speaker 2:
She's loving this new bedroom and it just upsets me.
Speaker 1:
I don't blame you at all for being upset. I don't know how I would react with what you have to deal with now.
Speaker 2:
I know I can't help it, but I'm so cross with cancer because I had promised my sister that I was going to take care of her.
Speaker 1:
The best I can. Well, there's no doubt in my mind that you've done everything possible to make a good life for her.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I just wish I had longer than 12 months.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, me too, but you never know, they're always coming up with something new, so maybe they'll come up with something that might be able to help you and extend your life a little.
Speaker 2:
I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, they haven't offered me any alternative therapies, because what they offered me was chemo and the effects of chemo. It's incredibly, incredibly grueling, and this next round of chemo they offered me was going to be even more intensive.
Speaker 1:
Oh, that's. I hate to hear that. That's just so sad.
Speaker 2:
Well, my philosophy was that if I could gain an extra few months at the end of my life. It's taken me three months to recover from the last chemo and obviously during chemo I was also very sick.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
And I didn't on the advice. Basically, I didn't allow anybody to come near me without a mask on.
Speaker 1:
That makes total sense.
Speaker 2:
Because I had spent five weeks in hospital with various infections, because my immune system was messed.
Speaker 1:
How is Hannah handling what you went through? Because where she's living with you now, she has to see what's going on and where you said she's very intelligent, she's probably realizing something's not right.
Speaker 2:
Oh, absolutely she was. As I say, she's got a very beautiful soul. She's very, very caring and she was tremendous. She was wonderful. If I asked her to go and get me some water, she'd get me water. She kept her volume because she's quite loud. She likes to sing along to music and shout and dance and you know she's happy, always noisy.
Speaker 1:
Well, I think it's great that she's doing what she's doing to help you, especially with all the challenges that's in both of your lives right now.
Speaker 2:
Well, I tell you, it's been the biggest challenge of all for me. Obviously, apart from the challenging behavior that she had, what wasn't challenging was the fact that she's my niece and I've often taken her out on my own for a few hours every week to give my sister a break. So I was very familiar in general on how to care for her and communicate with her on a basic level. My most challenging aspect of all of this is becoming a new parent. Never had children of my own and suddenly I was a parent on lockdown.
Speaker 1:
Well, it seems like you've done a fantastic job.
Speaker 2:
Well, it's been beneficial in many ways and what's been interesting is that I've been able to bond with friends my age or have had children and newly teenagers. You know, in many, many ways I would class on as a teenager, a young teenager sometimes, although she does have a massive crush on Will Smith. I haven't told her that he's in the bad books at the moment. Yeah, okay, don't want to burst her bubble, so, yeah, she can very much like a very stroppy teenager.
Speaker 1:
It does sound like you've had some good times though.
Speaker 2:
I've had some fun conversations with other moms that I never had before, who have been friends for years, but I'm learning. I'm learning more aspects about my friends as well.
Speaker 1:
Well, even though you've been thrown a curve, it does seem like things are working out.
Speaker 2:
The way I see it, I always wondered why I never had the chance to have children of my own, and I accepted it, like many women do, as it's just, you know one of those things and I really did feel that God had set me up for that moment to take over, you know, and cancer is a wicked thing. Maybe this is God's plan. Maybe you know it is time for Hannah to be more independent and live in a house with other artists, especially needs, and have a new life. Maybe that's best for and this is my time to come home.
Speaker 1:
Well, I have to say what a good person you are to think the way that you think and handle it the way that you are. Hannah is a very lucky person to have you in her life. I think you told me that her mother wanted her to go on a Disney cruise.
Speaker 2:
One of the things that Mam said was to make sure she goes on holiday on the Disney cruise ships. After I had come out of treatment and started to heal from the treatment, her brother said right, everything has stopped us from going, including lockdown and your illness. We're booking it, we're going. Oh, you know you'll miss your chance. You know, we're going to make sure. It was horrendous to find and costly. When we did find it, we managed to go on a cruise, a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1:
So, with this being something that she's never done before, how did she handle it?
Speaker 2:
She was outstanding. She cooked with two wings. It was obviously cute to go on to the chef and cue when you come off. Excellent with crowds, small spaces and lots of people. She was wonderful. She was wonderful about food. She wasn't adventurous but she did try a little bit of everything. No, she was, she did, she did not she. She had two tiny blips, as we call them. One was rescued with a generous other auntie. My sister really went to the rescue and bought her a new cup because her old cup broke. And there was a moment at the table and I just said to her look, you know, you have a choice. You either eat nicely in the restaurant or we eat in the cabin. And here she comes. I'm going to say hello, Say hello to Tony, hello Tony.
Speaker 1:
Hello.
Speaker 2:
And that's the benefit she's done a job. She said hello and now she's gone.
Speaker 1:
Yes, she did her job and I think it was awesome. I also think it's awesome what you've been doing for Hannah. Giving you circumstances, I think that you've gone above and beyond, and it shows what type of person you are, and that's a truly great person. With that said, I have to say this has been a tremendous conversation, one that I will remember for a long time. I really appreciate you taking your time coming on to my show today.
Speaker 2:
No, it's been lovely chatting. Thank you for spending your time listening to me.
Speaker 1:
It has been my pleasure. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to TonyMantorcom Contact Then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask Tell everyone everywhere about why not me, the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.