3 years 8 months

It is early...... 

Today, October 15^th, is pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day. Kim and I have experienced this heart breaking situation. Our beautiful little girl Violet would have been 4 years and 8 months old this month. I have imagined what she would look like. Going by our 4 other children she would have been blonde with big blue eyes.  

James when he was about 4

 This is going to sound really odd and perhaps heartless. In the end it was probably for the best. I was very sick with my brain tumour and getting worse. There are a number of different ways this could have played out.

1. I stayed on the medication and she was seriously affected. It would be heart breaking but we would do what we could.
2. I came off medication and neither of us survived. Kim would have lost his wife and his daughter. He would have a teenaged boy without a mother and missing a sister.
3. I came off medication and I didn’t survive. Kim would have a baby daughter and a teenaged son without a mother and he would be without his wife.
4. We both survived and I then went on to have brain surgery leaving Kim with an 11 month old daughter to care for while I recovered.
5. We both survived and I then went on to have brain surgery and didn’t survive it, leaving Kim with an 11 month old daughter etc.
6. We both survived and I then went on to have brain surgery and was profoundly brain damaged, leaving Kim with all of us to look after.

We would have done whatever it took and given it our very best. That was taken out of our hands. We now have each other and our family and miss our little girl.

Thank you Kim Sinclair

I am battling depression. A number of events have caused a knock on effect leaving me in my current state. Depression is an ugly beast and has a massive effect. I am having an awful lot of trouble trying to find the motivation to do much. I am getting things done but it is very much an uphill battle. I was going to head over to Dads house and start scanning slides, negatives, historical family paperwork and photographs. It is something I am looking forward to. I hope that I can possibly put some more pieces together and remember some more of my history. I want to wade through that richness, life and history documented there. I can’t seem to get myself over there. I plan it all out, I will get there early and work my way through while I shred that mountain of paperwork that was left to be done after our clean-up of the filing cabinet. I can sit around doing that, grab the mail, pay any bills, stop for lunch and then keep going til the last bus or alternately walk home. So far I have managed to get up late. I have sat around in my pyjamas. I have found any number of reasons not to go and do it.

Along with that, I am looking at the courses I am doing at the moment and either putting them off or thinking about bailing on them altogether. It feels like it is too big, too hard and I am not smart enough to understand what I am doing. Depression really rips your self-confidence to shreds and takes the wind out of your sails. I am feeling like I have slipped backwards a long way in my recovery. I probably haven’t even a little tiny bit, but I feel like I have. Basically it sucks and it hurts.

I went through a step by step illustrated explanation of the things that were done during my surgery (and now can’t find it). It started with being hooked up to the respirator and ended with being sent to recovery. It was a real eye opener. I’m pretty sure you won’t want me to go in to graphic detail. It does however explain a lot of things that confused me. I had a couple of sore spots on the back of my head, a black sharpie mark in my hair line in the middle of my forehead and a bit of a dent further down from there. Turns out it was from this awesome device. It looks like it has come out of a torture room. It is called a three-pin Mayfield skull clamp.

Along with this nifty gadget and it’s after effects. I now know why I have a section of nerves on my scalp which feel like that creeping gooseflesh feeling. They are so ‘jangly’ that sometimes my hair moving in a breeze or touching my head in that area will feel hideous. When Kim was shaving my head (with the razor) it felt like that part of my head was badly bruised and that he was cutting my skin.

I was about to apologise for being so miserable with this post. Truth is, life isn’t always fun and games. I have an awful lot to be thankful for, I’m just in a really sucky place at the moment.

Be kind to each other.