‘I can’t even think about the girls – I don’t want to die and leave them. I am so bloody scared’ (From Bournemouth Echo)

‘I can’t even think about the girls – I don’t want to die and leave them. I am so bloody scared’

7:00pm Tuesday 30th June 2009 in

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YOUNG mum Nikki Hastings has written about the moment that she was told she was dying from cancer.

In a moving and honest journal, the 35-year-old mum-of-two has spoken of her shock at discovering she had cancer and how she and her family have coped with the devastating news that she didn’t have long left to live.

She was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer in October last year and doctors said the disease had spread to her liver and bones.

Her next journal entry dated November 7, 2008 said: “I have cancer. I have breast cancer which has spread to my liver and bones.

Read Nikki's journal online from the beginning

See the Related Links at the bottom of this story

“This means I’m going to die of cancer – they can’t make me better. How the hell does that happen to a fit, healthy 34-year-old?

“I’ve had no symptoms, I’ve been well in myself – a little tired perhaps, but you show me a mum-of-two littlies who isn’t tired.

“I start chemo on Wednesday, they are hopeful that they will be able to manage it for ‘many many’ months – maybe even years.

“My hair will probably fall out, I already feel like s***, my family are devastated, the girls are confused.

“I can’t even think about the girls – I don’t want to die and leave them.

“I am so bloody scared.”

As reported in yesterday’s Daily Echo, Nikki is putting together a book of photographs and memories to help her two little girls – Leah, four and Megan, two – remember her.

Each of the beautifully crafted ‘Mummy Books’ contain pictures and letters of Nikki as a baby and child, her first day at school, when she met her husband and their father Kevin and how she felt when Leah and Megan entered the world.

Nikki said: “This will be something they can have as soon as I have gone – something to remember me by. I have also written a life history on the computer from my point of view about their lives and how I felt. They will be able to read this as teenagers and then they can read my messages in the journal when they are adults – the stuff they should be talking to their mum about, but won’t be able to.”

Nikki has always written a journal and said she has found it therapeutic since being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“When I found out I had cancer it did change the way I write because I now know people would be reading it. It became a way for me to send messages to people and a way of telling the girls things that I won’t be around to say and they are too young to know about now.”

Nikki has agreed to share her journal with Echo readers and hopes to raise £1,000 for Cancer Research UK in the process.

• To make a donation visit Nikki’s Just Giving page justgiving.com/Nikki-Hastings