How we got here
I regularly say about how Daisy & Joy started with the idea in my head, of what I wanted but that I couldn’t find anywhere else. So, I decided to design them myself. This is completely true. However, I don’t think I have ever shared how I got into digital lettering/illustration in the first place and I have been encouraged by others recently to share this story too. I have never shared it in this detail before, as I always have the fear that people will think I am looking for sympathy and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Just to warn you it’s a bit of a long one and could be a difficult read for some. I have found this very emotional to write.
My story starts in 2005, as a 12-year-old girl who LOVED hockey at school and had recently started to learn how to play the electric guitar. In the November of that year, I had been complaining of a pain in my armpit area for a wee while and we as a family were under the assumption it was just due to a hockey injury. But one evening (14th November if my memory serves me right) my mum decided to rub Deep Heat in to help ease the pain and she felt a lump. She told me to go back to bed but she phoned the out of hours doctors right away and not long later was getting me out of bed and we went straight to A&E that night in my jammies. I had no understanding of what was going on. I was just delighted to be missing the chemistry test the next day in school that I hadn’t revised for (sorry Miss Maxwell!). Little did I know I wouldn’t be back in school again with my friends for almost a year.
We got to A&E and I was sent for an X-ray that night. I still remember the radiographer to this day, a lovely young blonde girl with her hair in a ponytail (this is important for later). The x-ray showed the lump was growing out of the side of my upper arm bone. I was sent for biopsy surgery a few days later (long story short this part had to happen twice, as they didn’t get a good sample the first time). A short time later I was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma and started chemotherapy in December 2005. I’ll speed things up a little here, I was in hospital for weeks at a time (thankfully with mum able to sleep in the same room as me) in the Haematology ward in the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children. I don’t know if I’ve said this before but I bore VERY easily, so long stints in hospital lying in a bed for treatment wasn’t great for this particular personality trait of mine. Don’t get me wrong there were lots of times when I wasn’t feeling up to it due to the different side effects of some treatments but there was one of the chemotherapy drugs that didn't wipe me out like the others. The play therapist on the ward, Sophie, quickly ran out of all the arts & crafts supplies she had and that's when mum and dad bought me my first card making supplies.
A 17 almost 18 year old original Emma Bamford greeting card!
I’ve included a picture here of one of the cards I made, that my mum has kept. After a while mum thought it might be a good idea to try to sell my cards to raise funds for the Haematology Unit. I made cards for months…...birthday cards, congratulations cards, Christmas cards and I think I remember making some thank you cards too.
The day after Boxing Day 2005 I was due to go back into hospital for another round of chemotherapy, and as sisters do, we were playing and Sarah was chasing me to try and give me a kiss before I left, but I slipped in my socks and fell to the floor and in trying to protect my arm where the tumour was, I inadvertently landed on it causing the bone to break right in the middle of the tumour... So not only was I going to have to undergo surgery for the tumour but also now for the broken bone in the middle of it....well that’s what we thought.
We come now to March 13th 2006, after two blocks of chemo and several additional hospital stays, I had to fly over to Birmingham with mum & dad to undergo surgery. I wasn’t aware that at the time there was a likelihood that I would have to have my arm amputated and that this was also a very risky surgery (they were planning to remove my entire upper arm bone and replace it with a titanium one– surgery was near a major vein and a vascular surgeon was on stand-by, in case it got ‘nicked’). I don’t want to make this any longer than it has to be, but there were lots of ‘God moments’ throughout my story too many to recount here so I won’t get into all of them - but one of them was that the surgeon said when they opened up my arm it was as though the vein ‘moved out of the way’ for them to get access to my bone and tumour. They said that when they check the tumour, it should be dead on the outside, otherwise the chemo isn’t working. My mum had also received a piece of scripture earlier that year from, my then, youth pastor Michael Wylie, from 2 Chronicles 20. In this passage the children of Judah are facing an overwhelming enemy, their entire families were going to be wiped out –the Lord told them, the battle was His, but they still had to face the enemy – they went to battle singing praises to the Lord. In verse 24 it states ‘When the men of Judah came to the place that overlooks the desert and looked toward the vast army, they saw only dead bodies lying on the ground; no one had escaped.’ At this point mum says she wondered if that meant the Lord was going to completely kill the tumour. She kept this in her heart and the first night of my chemo, as I slept – my mum sang praises over me – she says it was not easy but she wanted to follow the example of the children of Judah, as we went into our own battle. We had to wait for about one week after surgery to find out if the tumour was dead on the outside – my mum rang my Consultant in Birmingham – he told her that when they tested my tumour it was 100% dead and...or as we say no cancer survived!
As part of the surgery, I had to have part of my right deltoid (shoulder muscle) removed and the whole bone from shoulder (inc. ball part of the ball and socket joint) down to elbow removed and a new metal one screwed in in its place (I have included a picture of my x-ray).
I won’t go into further details as that could be too graphic but as a result of the surgery and all that had to be removed and reconfigured it has left me with a partial disability that I struggle with daily.
My left arm is fully functional but my right arm has very little strength, no forward reach and limited mobility. It’s also, did I mention, the hand I write with, played the guitar with and held a hockey stick with. Or did until this point.
I won’t go any further into the story of my treatment and physio other than to say I got the all clear on the 26th September 2006 praise the Lord! and I was allowed to rejoin my classmates at school after the Halloween half term on 6th November (1 week shy of a year from last being there).
This is a photo of me a few weeks after returning to school with our new family puppy Reggie (Reginald Oscar Bamford or handsome Rob as we also called him).
On my return to school and daily life in general there were rules I had to follow to keep my ‘new arm’, as we have affectionately called it since, in good health. Hockey was out of the question for many reasons especially the vibration that hitting the ball would have on my arm, I could no longer play the guitar because it was too painful to hold my arm over the guitar in the way it needed to be able to play and most, if not all, school sports weren’t allowed due to the pain it would cause.
Due to all this, it took years of trial and error for me to find a hobby I could physically even do never mind enjoy it. I tried the ukelele (and was not too bad actually) but it was too painful, Peter (my husband) bought me a keyboard (I loved it but wasn't very good because I couldn’t properly reach the keys to play, our close friend's little girl now uses it to learn and is much better than I ever could’ve been). I tried lots of different things and nothing stuck. Then we come to 2019, I was recently married and enjoyed decorating and faffing round the house and posting about it on our home Instagram page @myhomeedit and I had recently started to follow the @mummyandme instagram page. They were hosting a hand lettering and macrame workshop in Belfast and one of my best friends and I went and I LOVED IT!! I wasn’t all that good but I thought it was great and it was something I could actually do! Don't judge my first attempts below – yes I was so proud of myself, that I could do it, I took photos and have kept them to this day.
Hannah (one of my best friends) went with me and later that year bought me a hand lettering book for my birthday. I also downloaded a free app that you could doodle on the iPad and as they say, the rest is history. I didn’t set out to start a business at all, I had just finally after 13 years found a hobby I enjoyed and could actually physically do. It was just after designing my own prints for my home (and Pete thinking I could sell them) that I then took the plunge to try it. Another almost 5 years later and here we are.
Don’t get me wrong, I did regret starting to make cards again as the manual steps of cutting and scoring I have always (and still do) found very painful (both during and for days after) but thankfully my friend Rachel from @throughcreationdesign directed me to @mcgowansbelfast who take that step out for me and I just design and package them now.
While this all seems heavily negative, when I look back now, I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s made me, me.
Even though I was unaware of the scale of the situation at the time, the people surrounding me were not. My family, including my church family, were fantastic prayer warriors throughout it all & the network of people praying for me stretched across the world.
Almost 2 years post-treatment I committed my life to Christ & began the start of a meaningful Christian life. From becoming a daughter of the King, my whole life changed, and definitely for the better. While I have lots of difficulties & obstacles to overcome daily, I don’t dwell on them & just think of 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
While I have gone through many difficulties & will do in the future, I know that God has given me this blessing so I can share it with others & help others who are struggling with difficulties of their own. My faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which my life is built.
The limited function in my arm hasn’t stopped me; the Lord has provided everything I need & a fantastic support network of family, friends & a husband who all love God. When you have a good Christian network to support you, people to depend on & pray for you, you realise everything else in this world is meaningless other than your relationship with Christ. Yes, we will all still have challenges but Lord will never let us down! He never leaves us or forsakes us.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” - Jeremiah 29v11
I was told there was a high likelihood I wouldn’t be able to have children due to the long term effects of the chemotherapy. In December 2021 we went to get checked and before we got our results a few months later we found out we were pregnant with Seth and a matter of weeks after that I got a call from the Consultant to say “I’m relieved to hear your pregnant Emma as we were going to recommend you for IVF due to your results.” What a miracle our little boy is! God’s plan are greater than we could ever think or imagine!
It has taken me years to get to this point. I believe that God has called me to be creative and I don’t say that lightly or flippantly but rather I feel it's the method through which I can share the good news of the gospel far and wide with my designs. It may have taken a very long and winding path but it's how we got here.
Oh, and at the start of my story I mentioned my radiographer I had said that this was important for later...this is because I appreciate how God can be funny sometimes. Not only has my husband worked quite closely in recent years with my oncologist from when I was ill, but last year he was treating a little boy in A&E and was telling me how his mum worked in the hospital as a radiographer and how nice she was. I happened to ask was she blonde and her hair in a ponytail at work and was her name ‘ABC’? I won't share her name but it was the same radiographer that did my first X-Ray from almost 18 years ago, Peter got to treat her son in A&E and send him home well. Isn’t God funny sometimes! I find that so cool!
