I’ve just had a few days away with friends. The holiday was booked at the beginning of this year and if Ray had been home he would have gone into respite for a week or so in order for me to go. It was a seaside resort with cabins, caravan sites and tent sites about two hours up the coast from here on a beautiful bay. Our club mainly took the cabin option but some brought their own vans.

Trevor said all would be well as he would monitor my messages, collect my mail etc. I left several contact numbers and also advised the nursing home staff that my son would pass on a message if they needed me. Seemed like a plan but that was not how it worked out.

Apparently Ray had a seizure on Monday, which adds up to one a week for four weeks, and then a "turn" on Wednesday which is when the staff started leaving messages on my answering machine. No calls to my son at all.

So today I went in to the nursing home to try and sort it out. The staff nurse said the doctor said the "turn" may have been a slight heart attack and so the doctor wants Ray to have a heart monitor for a 24 hour test. I am not sure he will leave all the wires attached as when he was in hospital he pulled out both the catheter and the canella.

I didn't feel up to arguing after a three hour drive so said I would think about it over the weekend and discuss it on Monday. He is not a candidate for a defibrillator or pacemaker so I don't know what the monitoring will achieve apart from confusion and frustration on his part and probably mine if I have to sit by his bed for 24 hours!

It was great to get away and not think about the problems I left behind at home, to sleep in, visit with club members in the other cabins, have a BBQ under the stars, walk on the beach and enjoy good company, with not a care in the world. It was hard to come back and find Ray's health and his care is still as much of a problem as when I went away.

It was a little daunting being “Sue alone” as with this particular group Ray and I have shared a lot of friendships. They have been very supportive to us over a lot of years. We have spent a few weekends away with them and also been to conventions with some of them and enjoyed their company over a 28 year period. Not as much over the past few years of course as Ray has not been as mobile or able to happily change environments.

I shared a cabin with a couple and another woman who was recently widowed. We got along just fine. The majority of members remember Ray back in his best years so that clouds the issue of my putting him into a nursing home. I think they can accept that he is sick but maybe not see how sick. I could see some looking at me across the room and nodding to me rather than coming over and talking to me. It is a hard adjustment to make, I know that.

I had some time to think while I was away. My widowed friend and I discussed some of the hazards of being a woman on her own. Of course a lot of the common ones, like doing the things the “man of the house” usually does I have faced up to anyway. There is still more for me to do as I am still the person responsible for Mum and Ray. She acknowledged that and that I still have a lot of decisions to make on Ray’s behalf. Her husband died of cancer so she did nurse him and knows some of what I am going through.

I know some of the other club members relate to what I do for Mum as they too have looked after aged parents, both at home and in a care facility. It seems common to find among the caring population people in service clubs, who are practical by nature and fit into that category somehow.

The male half of our club members belonged to a service club called Apex, now almost defunct, that helped out in rural communities, their service work included establishing in some small towns community based care facilities and sponsoring help for disabled people so they have giving hearts. Just seems harder for them accept when it is one of their own that needs the care but we are all ageing and will be there ourselves one day.

I am glad I had the break, sad it did not work out for Ray, a bit anxious about what I should do for him to ensure his care need are met appropriately.

PS Lucas fell off a jousting pillow at his school fete last Sunday and has broken his left forearm. He has it in a fiberglass cast and is okay with that. He has gone away with his Mum and Trev this weekend to some friends in the country. I have my fingers crossed that he will not do anything foolish while he is away!