Tuesday 4 February 2014

Derailed!

Life for me often feels like a complicated dance between two parallel worlds, the real one where my family, friends, work and most of the other things I hold dear in life are carrying on in relative normality, and the world of parenting a sick child. Most of the time, in recent years certainly, these worlds have been bumping along together pretty well in tandem. Since the start of this year, keeping everything cruising along has been a lot more challenging as Wills and I have been back in hospital, now in a city away from the one where day to day life happens.

This blog is all about my attempts to keep spinning all the plates I need to have up there on sticks in order to keep the family, and myself not only functioning but moving along in life. It's part of a wider plan to keep writing, keep the novel growing, keep finding and pitching stories to my magazine editors, keep my newspaper columns going… keep my brain and creativity going! I was doing pretty well too. I guess this current journey in our lives can be viewed as a bit of a detour off the mainline and onto a windy and bumpy branch line then. Well,  the last few days, have felt more like this…






Wills has been really very sick. It all came from nowhere. Without any warning I watched him crash down and down and the little nest of calm and routine I try and carve out for us when we were in hospital was invaded by emergency and chaos. My little man is one of the biggest fighters ever and is a long way back to how he was exactly a week ago, when all this started and when I was last able to find the space and in my day and in my mind to think deeply enough to string some written sentences together. The drugs, physio and ever awesome team of specialists at Birmingham Children's Hospital have done their job and rescued him from the crisis. The crisis wasn't all bad, it taught us all a lot about what is going on his body, the reasons why we have been in hospital since the start of the year and, I hope, some ideas about the solutions that will get him well and home again. I can see the positives but I am still left feeling derailed from the track I was on. In an emergency, you just do what needs to be done. You walk beside your child to scans and x-rays, help staff with oxygen masks and accessing his Hickman Line for drugs, help encourage him to engage with painful and difficult physio, despite him feeling completely wrecked. When he is awake, you try and distract him but when he's sleeping all you can do is watch. There seems to be nothing left in your mind or spirit to be able to think about anything else. It's shock really and, when the crisis is over, that shock takes a little time to dissipate. I've written this though so I must be on my way. Now to find that 'to do list' I wrote this time last week. Where was I…?

1 comment:

  1. Sorry to hear that William is unwell again. Sending healing vibes to him and positive thoughts to you too. Take care of yourself xx

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