Faith

It was summer three years ago, a boiling hot June weekend just after my youngest daughter's birthday.

In the space of that weekend, mum became extremely ill. It was so sudden. She woke covered in bruises, her arms, her mouth, her eyes.

Leukaemia

I took her into the QMC and she was blue-lighted to the City. It was leukaemia and she was just hours from death.

My dad was one of the longest surviving 'type one' diabetics. He and I stayed at mum's bedside as my brothers made their way to us. One driving up from the south, the other flying in from Europe.

Jo and her mother in Lourdes

Mum's condition had also caused a bleed in her brain, she'd had a stroke. The next 48 hours were crucial, the leukaemia or another stroke could kill her.

Professor Nigel Russell and his team worked flat out over several weeks to pull mum from the brink... and they did. We are forever indebted to them for saving her life.

Three years later, soon after my father died, a bone marrow result showed the leukaemia was coming back. That was earlier this year.

Mum attends Keyworth Catholic church, she converted to Catholicism nearly 50 years ago, when she married dad.

Lourdes diary

The congregation raised funds to send mum on a pilgrimage to Lourdes with the Nottingham Diocese this summer. I went along as her carer.

Lourdes is the holy shrine in the South of France where it's believed apparitions of The Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette, a peasant girl. That was 150 years ago and since then a spring of healing water has flowed from the place where the apparitions are said to have happened.

Millions of sick and disabled people from all over the world have visited the shrine to bathe in the water.

Mum found the trip overwhelming and immensely rewarding. Lourdes is a place where the sick, disabled or vulnerable come first. It's also a place where millions of young people come and volunteer to push disabled people round on wheelchairs or stretchers. Very humbling.

Arsenic

When Mum's leukaemia returned this year, Professor Russell decided to treat her with arsenic therapy.

She had arsenic intravenously for two seven week periods, and we understand she's the first person in the East Midlands to have been given it for her condition. It was pretty gruelling treatment but her determination to survive pulled her through… even though she'd lost dad months earlier.

Just last week we had her bone marrow result, what a nerve-wracking wait. Amazingly, it showed she was in remission. The team at the City Hospital had pulled her through again.

We don't know how long we'll have her but we do know she's been lucky, both at the City Hospital and through Lourdes, she's been in great hands.

Jo Healey can be seen reporting for BBC East Midlands Today, BBC1 weekdays from 18:30, and presenting the late evening news.