Today was Ray's birthday, it was also Daycare, Craft group afternoon but not Lions Dinner night so Trev and I took him out to dinner tonight instead. Of course because we were all out today we missed the birthday phone calls but I am sure some of the callers will ring again later in the week.
Ray seemed quite pleased with all the fuss. The first greetings were by phone just as we were finishing breakfast. His sister Judy rang just as Jeff the shower nurse came in the front door. Jeff was
It seems a long time since I last posted a blog. I have been in what feels like imposed solitude since June 26th along with 5 million or so other people. We are in a huge area known as Greater Sydney, we haven't had many cases but because so many people commute from the Central Coast to businesses in Sydney and the surrounding areas whenever parts of Sydney go into lockdown we do too. It annoys the locals as we don't get the benefit of living in Sydney just the side effects. We will not come out
I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer this morning, my melanoma specialist Prof Saw will find me a throat specialist who can see me locally but who operates in one of the Sydney hospitals. Then the throat specialist will liaise with the neurosurgeon who wants to operate now on my brain aneurysm to see who gets to operate first. Not a good day.
I wrote that to a few friends yesterday. I was in shock, I had gone to the doctor to discuss some options and he read out the biopsy report and
Tracy wrote in a reply to Janelle that it is hard to get her head around the fact that we in the southern hemisphere are in summer and a hot one at that. It makes the Christmas we have very different from what most of our readers are experiencing. And it is hard to imagine unless you can think of the Fourth of July and Christmas coming together. Then add mosquitoes, bush fires, heatstroke and crowds of people flocking to your town from the nearest big city and you are starting to get a picture o
Being a widow is different from being a wife, loneliness is a factor, not having someone to consult, doing all the things you have to do alone, planning for one, eating alone...you get the picture. But there is also a prejudice out there about widows. Someone recently called me a "merry widow"...hmmm, not sure about that. I do seem to be happier these days and probably just as well, it stops my friends asking the "are you over it yet" question all the time. Yes, I am over the initial shock, I do
Sunday is 1st September, it is Father's Day here in Australia, the first since Ray died. The following Sunday 8th September would have been his 71st birthday, this makes for a hard week for us as a family and one that will surely stir up emotions. I don't plan to do anything on Sunday 1st but Trev and Edie are taking me for a picnic on Sunday 8th. This is their way of making sure I am not alone. I am often alone. Sometimes it feels as if there isn't a place for me in other people's lives. The
I've had a few blue days. I hate the wind howling around the house and the rain smashing against the windows when I am alone. Just a couple of days of that and I can feel blue. I can tell now that winter with it's short grey days is coming and do not look forward to that with joy. But I have warm clothes and a roof over my head, enough food in the freezer so I don't have to shop in the bad weather and no-one but me to worry about so I should feel happy with that.
My daughter and family we
I wonder why I think if I just sit down and talk to "someone" all will be well and I will sort things out and things will be different? I had planned to talk to my daughter about the difficulties I am going through with processing my grief, the loneliness, the frustrations etc but we never seemed to have the time to just sit down and do it. A Salvation Army officer is constantly on call and as soon as she'd sit down with a cup of coffee and a free couple of hours the phone would ring and she wa
I am recently widowed and mentally I am still a mess. I plod on, day by day, doing what housework and yardwork has to be done, shopping, visiting Mum, keeping a smile on my face. People are kind and rush up to me in shopping centres to tell me how they only just heard Ray has passed away, how sorry they are etc and I just want to scream. By the time I have thanked them and they move on I find I need to rush to the rest rooms and have a few tears (stress release), wash my face and compose myse
No chat today so this is a blog to add comments to about what you are facing today. Remember it is a public blog so others can see it.
I am sorry that this is happening right now as I know it is frustrating not to be able to meet up with your friends in this way.
My today is a hot one and I have a lot of clothes flapping on the clothesline. Edie has been having a lot of trouble with blood pressure during this pregnancy so she is at Prenatal Clinic today and then goes to work, Trev is a
The past week has been one of frustration on many fronts. I lost the internet for a week, partly due to my Telco who claimed it was my modem (also true) and the person who sold me the WRONG modem. Lots of days of trying to sort out the problem and the solution finally came when Trevor once again got his old computer up and functioning and here I am again on a dinosaur when I need to email, blog etc.
Ray has regressed not progressed this week with the sudden appearance of spasticity in his
Ray is officially out of danger now as his kidney function has improved and his diabetes is almost under control again. He is on the thickest of thickened fluids but he is still coughing so that is a bit of a worry. He doesn’t talk much, an occasional “yes” or “no”, no extended answers. It may just be that he is in a strange place and that is inhibiting him. The room he is in which is a small triangular single room has a nice view out of the window and they sat him near the window for a coup
I had a lovely ten days with my daughter and her family. I was “obedient” and stayed at home and read and relaxed and didn‘t worry about anything. I talked to the two grandchildren before and after school. I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner which someone else had prepared, I watched television and played on the Wii with the kids. Everything was nice and easy to do this time around.
Trevor watered my plants but some of them went “crispy” on a day where the mercury hit 42 (105 degrees). At S
I've been on this site going on for four years now. In those years I have of course grown four years older, I'm now past sixty, Ray and I had our fortieth wedding anniversary, he is now sixty six. We are not the young folk we used to be, nothing like we were in 1990 when he had his first stroke at aged forty eight. And yet, in a way, a huge part of our lives got left back there. We are part of the lost generation, those who for one reason or another were unable to fulfill their dreams, who ha
Somtimes I am really dumb. I think I have listened to what a person has said but I haven't really heard them. Tonight Ray was asking me a question. Now he doesn't have aphasia but the dementia seems to be slowly robbing him of some language skills.
"What happened to the orange thing?"
"What orange thing?"
"The orange thing you took."
"The orange thing I took from where?"
We did this for a while before I realised the "orange thing" was a half eaten candy bar that I had
We had a few people in chat today and we were talking I think about severe strokes, such as Sarah's Gary had and for some reason I typed the title of this blog at the end of the sentence I was typing. I think I shocked myself when I saw it on the screen and wondered why it had popped into my mind. It could be that we have had hints of the old euthanasia campaign back on tv talk shows and I read an article in an old Readers Digest on a mother who "euthanased" her disabled son. It is a big topi
Hi all
Have a Happy Christmas - or do the best you can - whichever applies.
I have been off the computer as mine crashed and now at last I might see mine rebuilt, everyone was too busy prior to Christmas. Trev said to do a blog entry so all my friends here will know what is happening to us.
We had a quiet Christmas Day today. I have been aware the past month or so that Ray is not coping with noise, crowds etc. He seems to have more vagueness about him, as if he is walking about
Funny how soon that holiday feeling fades away and the normal vultures start to circle overhead again. Today was one of those days where you just shrug your shoulders and know that whatever life throws at you means you just need to pick yourself up as best you can and get on with it.
Today I almost got to the kidney specialist's appointment when the car started to act crazy. We went jumping up a hill just like a kangaroo...jump...jump..jump... Luckily I was within half a mile of the work
Most times I plod along from day to day. Like most people I do my best. That's about all your average caregiver can do. I am not rich, or beautiful or clever. I am just your average middle aged woman. I am plain and kind and reasonably good. Not outstanding in any way, shape or form.
But we all excel sometimes. We are cited for awards of various kinds, from certificates in kindergarten to doctorates in University. We may be praised by our bosses, awarded by the community for acts of
Well, the computer went kaput! Again. Third time this year. Now I am back on an older model rebuilt to serve me for a while I hope. I have a new firewall program thanks to Bonnie so let's hope it doesn't let any more of those dastardly trojans in to zap my bios.
I have missed you all times 1000 and I have wanted every day to come on and catch up on the latest postings, the latest blogs, the latest news of any kind concerning any of you. I missed my chat and being without that left a ho
Well, here I am back in the chair in front of the screen, home again. Got home about two hours ago. And after the balmy north it is so COLD! You probably get that when as a snowbird you come back home from somewhere like Florida - from the warm winters back to reality. And yes! there were two frosts while I was away and people said they can't remember when they had one before etc. But I remember "when I was a girl we had real frosts and ice formed on the puddles...." you know what I mean.
What makes me mad as a caregiver? Well everything at the moment. I am sad, I am mad, I am stressed and I am frustrated. Not necessarily in that order. It is mid-winter, I haven't had any kind of a break from Ray in a long time and I find that makes me build up stress until I want to go "Whoosh" like a small angry volcano. I know he was in hospital for eight weeks but that was not exactly a break as I was up and down to him all that time, 35 minutes travel each way, a couple of hours there a
Now before you get too excited this is not an expose of the night life here. It is an explanation of why we have been off the air from 9.30am Friday till 12.30am Sunday morning. We have been experiencing really rough weather on our part of the coast and the power lines were down all over so no lights, no power, no computer...wah!!
The drama started on Friday morning when after an overnight of high winds with some rain the lights went out. This happened just before our Friday minder came,
This time of the year as the church goes into Lent, a season of depriving yourself to benefit your soul, and in our neck of the woods the transition into autumn (fall) it seems as if I become reflective again. It is a sometime thing with me. Mostly I live life from day to day, don't plan too far ahead, don't look too far back. After going on for eight years since Ray's major strokes I know the danger of planning only to have those plans dashed by another stroke, or another critical incident.
Ray and I sold raffle tickets in a giant Christmas stocking, at our local shopping centre today for our Lions Club. We have seven four hour "slots" to do this Wednesdays and Saturdays until 20th December.
One buyer, a slight acquaintance from years gone by complimented Ray. He said: "Buddy, you are doing what a lot of able bodied people never do, paying your way in society." I take that point. Ray IS doing what a lot of able bodied people don't think to do, working for others: the blind,
