Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Probably those words will not mean anything to younger people, but they will be very familiar to my generation. When I was a child it was fairly common for technical difficulties to interrupt television programmes (there were only three channels back then) and the when things went wrong they would put up the test card and play music until they could fix the problem. The announcer would tell us that "normal service will be resumed as soon as possible" and we would wait hoping that the break in service wouldn't last very long and even normal broadcasting was about to resume the announcer would say ".... Normal service has been resumed"

From the point of view of the blog 'normal service has been resumed'. I stopped writing the blog several months ago because I was unwell and my stamina levels were extremely low. It was a real struggle just to cope with the essentials of life. I was determined that the blog would not become a miserable tale of woes, but it was such a struggle to keep my writing bright and up beat when I had been feeling unwell for so long that I was losing hope of ever feeling better.

The good news is that after attending a lot of hospital appointments and seeing three different consultants I am finally getting better. I am not coughing anymore - well not much anyway! More importantly I have reason to hope that this is not just a temporary calm between bouts of illness, but a sign that we are dealing with the  causes of the problem rather than the symptoms. There is still a long way to go but I feel so much better.

So what has been happening with us over the last few months? I suppose there are lots of things that I should have written about, but I will catch up with some of those over the next few weeks. Robbie has been working in Darlington for the greater part of each week. Surprisingly it is an arrangement that suits us both fairly well, Robbie enjoys the work and staying in Darlington is better than a long commute every day. I miss him of course but it is nice not having to get up before the birds every day to take him to the station. I'd better make the most of it because his contract ends in mid September and his next contract will involve a daily commute. He is really looking forward to a new challenge and it will be nice to have him at home again. My daughter obtained her post graduate qualification in June and she is now a fully qualified geography teacher. She has a job at a school about half an hour away from our home and she is looking forward to the new challenges that the September term will bring. 

Robbie and I are getting ready to go on holiday to Norfolk, so I will do my best to update the blog every day, but the Internet connection in Norfolk is precarious that I will not make any promises! I probably will not be able to add any photos I get home again.

He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything ~ Arabic Proverb

I went to the doctors in mid November for my annual review and made the mistake of commenting that I was feeling well and that my breathing was good (I have asthma). The very next day I had a sore throat and started sneezing - typical! I have now had a cold, sore throat and horrible chesty cough for three weeks and I am struggling to breathe. It is just a cold and it is annoying rather than serious, but it turns ordinary life into a real effort because I have no energy.


Putting up with a cold is really not such a big deal in comparison with Robbie who has to cope with more or less constant leg and back pain because of his spina bifida. I know he can be challenging at home sometimes but I think he does remarkably well to remain cheerful, determined and positive most of the time. I feel really sorry for him this week because his legs are misbehaving and he has got my cold, he was burning up last night but he was determined not to miss work, he has some important deadlines looming and he has his Christmas meal today - I hope he is well enough to enjoy it

The Meaning of Life

In my experience life has a habit of creeping up and smacking you around the face when you are not looking. In the last week or so there has been a whole collection of worrying and upsetting things, but one thing has pushed all the others into the background. A very special friend of mine is terribly ill and the outlook has been bleak in the extreme. It made me very sad and every time the phone rang or a message arrived I expected the worse, but yesterday afternoon there was a tiny hint of hope and I am clinging to that.


The thing that makes this friend very special is that she has a very different take on the world because she has a learning disability. We have had so many happy times together and a few sad ones too. When my first husband died she didn't struggle for words like everyone else, she said exactly what she felt with tears rolling down her face, that meant such a lot to me. Mostly I remember the good times and the crazy moments that always managed to bring a smile to my face. There was the time when she got a new chest freezer, among all the usual items she froze a whole cucumber and a tinned steak and kidney pie. We laughed so much when I told her they would make excellent weapons but they would be useless if defrosted! 


I remember one day when we were out shopping she queued up in Boots to pay for some shampoo and when she got to the counter she announced to the cashier "If I hadn't been a twin I would have been a triplet" it made perfect sense to her but the look on the cashiers face was priceless. One day we went to London by train, we travelled on the underground, we went to Madame Tussauds then we looked at the shops in Oxford Street and Regent Street. By the time we were heading home on the train I was exhausted but she was still full of beans. We had seen and done so much, but when I asked what she had liked most she said "I liked that man in Mc Donalds". Then there was the time when she got a new budgie, she wanted to name it after me, but since she and I have the same name she wanted the to give the budgie a different name so she called it Nissan after my car! Not long after we first met she got very upset with her work placement because they listened to the wrong radio station. I tried to tell her that it wasn't such a big deal, but she was in a bad mood and she said "anyway there is too much f---ing bad language in that place". We laughed so much about that and in a strange way it made her feel better about her work.


She asks very little of life, she accepts people on face value, she doesn't judge or tell people what to do but she takes great pleasure in her friends and in the simple things in life that so many of us take for granted. I hope with all my heart that she will get well again, the world needs more people like her.

Perspective

Life has a way of putting things in perspective. It seems as if one thing after another has gone wrong recently, a broken shower, a nail in my tyre, my mobile phone has given up the ghost and worse of all my laptop is apparently beyond repair. Last week I had a painful reminder that they are all just things and in the end none of them matter a jot. We heard last week that Robbie's friend who has been ill for some time has taken a turn for the worse. It is a very difficult time for him and his family and it leaves everyone feeling completely powerless.

Not Feeling Good

Robbie is so poorly today, the Marley's ghost stage has passed, now it is more like a death bed scene in a Victorian melodrama. He is burning hot one minute and shivering the next, his moans of agony have given way to exhausted whimpers. Poor old Robbie, I can tell he is ill, he has refused coffee and the mere mention of food made him curl up in agony. As soon as I got up I was dispatched on an emergency errand for Lucozade to satisfy his inner child. He can't actually drink it, but seeing it standing on the dressing table seems to reassure him. He managed to ring work to tell them he was ill, but other than that he hasn't even mentioned work, he has just dozed and shivered. It is unheard of for Robbie to be ill enough not to think about work.

A Difficult Night

I went to bed before Robbie on Sunday evening, I was totally exhausted - by him and his illness. He arrived in bed a bit later, I have a vague memory of it because he trod on me as he got into bed, but I must have been very sleepy because I don't remember anything else until I woke with a start because there was apparently a block of ice in the bed next to me. I cautiously prodded Robbie, he was freezing even his usually radiant rear was ice cold, it made me worry that he was right after all and he really could die of a cold. A couple of hours later I woke again to find that I was unbelievably hot, Robbie was still asleep but was now too hot to handle. I gave up and decided to lay on top of the duvet to cool down. Later on I woke again because there was an eerie moaning like Marley's Ghost without the chains, I lay very still and listened - it was Robbie! He was moaning in his sleep! I hope he soon gets better because I can't cope with much more of this.

Keeping Busy!

I took my step dad and my mum to hospital on Wednesday for his follow up appointment with the consultant after his surgery in September. The consultant was very pleased with his progress, they have decided that he will not be able to go back on Warfarin any more because they think it was responsible for his bleed around the brain he will have to take asprin every day instead. He is not allowed to drive again until March next year, so as well as being the only driver in our house my role as driver for mum and David will continue for the next few months. It is a small price to pay when you consider that in the first few hours after he became ill there was little hope for David's recovery.

Yesterday I drove to my mum's house to pick her up and take her to the hairdressers, she lives about 7 miles away. I had just arrived home after dropping her at the hairdressers when I had a panic stricken phone call from David demanding that I should take mum straight home because his heating wasn't working. He was clearly getting uptight about it and he said the house was cold so I drove back to their house to see if I could sort it out. When I walked in the house was so hot it was like a sauna, so there was no chance of David freezing to death. The heating was not working because David had forgotten to override the timer, so it was easy to put that right. I set the heating to constant for him with the intention to put it back on timed when I took mum home. I was almost home again when David called on the car phone, panic again, this time he thought the radiators were too hot and he couldn't turn the system off, he was afraid that there would be an explosion so he had turned the boiler off! There was a danger of explosion, but it was my temper rather than the radiators that were at boiling point. I couldn't go back until I had picked mum up and taken her to get her food shopping.

When I took mum home I restarted the boiler and stayed a while to check that the radiators were OK, everything was fine, but poor old David was in mum's bad books for giving me the run around!

Not a Good Week

It is a week since we got home from holiday and there is only one thing that I didn't miss when we left Cornwall – the narrow roads! The Cornish roads around Padstow are not very wide and if you meet a vehicle coming the other way it can be a hair raising experience. The roads are beautiful with high hedges and wild flowers growing along the verge, they may look harmless but they demand respect. The hedges are built with earth and stone, they are made to last, so when you have to pull in to the edge of the road the innocent looking vegetation may conceal sharp edges ready to scratch your paintwork. It feels good to be driving on normal roads again!

It has been a horrible week. After a fortnight of Robbie 24 – 7, I was quite looking forward to sending him back to work, but I really missed him and I hardly saw anything of him during the week. I missed a school reunion when I was on holiday, I was glad of an excuse not to go. I am not a going out sort of person anyway, but after this long I convinced myself that my former classmates would be younger, thinner and smarter than me! Despite my misgivings I was keen to hear news of the reunion and I contacted one of the people who had organised the event. I was expecting the usual inconsequential stuff about people I knew a lifetime ago. Instead she told me that someone who was a close friend during my school days had killed herself. It came as such a shock, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I have perhaps encountered more than my fair share of illness and loss, but I had never been confronted by suicide before, I can't imagine the despair and distress that would lead someone to take their own life. I wish life had been kinder to her.

Robbie also had bad news, he has been worried about his friend's health for months and last week his friend was finally diagnosed with a brain tumour. Robbie is a typical man, he is not good at feelings and all that stuff, and he found the news very difficult to accept. At first Robbie's anxiety and shock combined with an inner rage because he felt so powerless to help. I felt pretty useless too because there was nothing I could do or say to make him feel better. His friend has been foremost in his thoughts all week.

Royal Scotts Grey 24.02.08

Robbie went to see his Uncle on Friday. It was one of those uncomfortable situations where he needed to visit, but once there he felt lost for words. There isn't very much that you can say to someone who has only just been told that their time is very short, perhaps just being there was enough. I spoke to him afterwards and I think he was quite shaken by seeing his uncle looking so poorly.

On Friday evening he travelled north and stayed overnight somewhere near Liverpool ready to make an early start for the charter trip in the morning. I was woken at 7.13am by a text from Robbie to tell me that Royal Scots Grey was purring nicely - do I care? After plotting my revenge, I curled up under the covers determined to have another half hour in bed before facing the demands of the day. After that he got so caught up in the day's activities that he forgot all about me, but I was busy with my own activities.

On Sunday Robbie began his very slow journey home. Network Rail must have known that Robbie was heading back from the North and they did their best to keep him off the rails, he encountered delays and replacement busses and took almost as long to get back from Liverpool as Sam took to get back from Austria! Hopefully he will have taken some nice photos, I have been so busy with washing that I haven't had a chance to look at the camera yet.

A Busy Weekend 22.02.08

Well, Robbie has gone for the weekend. After work today he is heading off to see his other woman - Royal Scots Grey (an engine!). I don't mind, it makes him happy and at least he doesn't expect me to go with him. He was really looking forward to this weekend, but sadly some family news has overshadowed everything. His Uncle is dying and is not expected to live more than a couple of days, so Robbie is going to see him this afternoon.