Ten years ago today I was sitting in Bendigo Hospital about 800 miles from home. In the bed I sat beside was my seriously ill husband Ray who had had a major stroke and was now completely paralyzed down his left side, arm and leg now useless. He could not eat without assistance and his words were slurred and almost unintelligible. It was a bitter end to what was supposed to be a ten day holiday. We had taken our time driving down to Victoria from New South Wales. We had visited friends on the way and had a great time catching up with them. There had been a lot of driving for Ray as we had also gone to the north west corner of Victoria to visit a couple I was friendly with before coming back to Bendigo.

Then came the four days of the convention which had been a busy and exciting time. Like the convention we have just held locally it was a get-together for folk from all over Australia who only see each other maybe every second year but have in common the fact that all the men had once belonged to a young men's service organisation called Apex. They had all been kicked out (retired) from Apex at 40 ( they had to leave when they turned 40) and now just treated the annual convention of Apex 40 as a get-together, a time to laugh over old memories and make or continue friendships. As soon as the convention came to an end we were heading off home and back to work.

That never happened. Ray finished up being six weeks in Bendigo as he had a second stroke there on May 10th, pulmonary embolisms, stomach ulcers, arterial fibrillation etc etc. The hospital up here couldn't accept him until he was safe to travel and that took a while. I lived for six weeks in a building that had once housed trainee nurses, the rent was cheap and I was one block away from where Ray was so I spent most days with him. I crochetted enough squares to make up three rugs when I got home so my fingers were busy while I watched him sleep of an afternoon. I asked questions, compared treatments, watched the physios and learned as much as I could about strokes and what it meant to be a stroke survivor.

Our children flew down to be with us, each for a few days, even friends from four hours away visited and we had an especially good friend who was also the local Bishop of the Anglican church who together with his wife were our siupport team. Thank the Lord for such good steady friends. And we had support from the Apex40 club, the hospital staff and people who came into our lifes just for a short time but filled a much needed role as friends and counsellors. I had other wives also staying at the ex-nurses home to talk to at the end of each long day.

After six weeks I drove home and Ray flew home by air ambulance and was taken to Woy Woy Rehabilitation Unit where he spent the next three months. I count as the anniversary of my caregiver role the 3rd of September 1999, the day he came home and became my full-time responsibility. Most of you, if you have read these blogs have heard most of the rest of our journey as I refer frequently in posts and blogs to what has been happening in our lives over the ten years. It has not been an easy life for either of us but it has had it's joys as well as it's sorrows. On the whole I am glad we have managed to stay together for the 40 years of our married life. It is, after all, our only reality.

Now we feel as if Ray has well outlasted the early predictions from doctors at the time of his stroke, three to five years they said when I asked how long they saw his future as being. He has surpassed that prediction by many years. Of course he has had a lot of other medical problems too. A broken hip in 2000, the result of a fall upon slate tiles, the 2001 and 2005 strokes, the broken pelvis in 2007. He has also had many short periods in hospital. Ray has many medical conditions, some caused by the diabetes which he learned about in 1990 after his first stroke. Because of his lack of mobility and his inability to do more than exercises for flexibility and partly because of increasing years he now has osteoporosis. And since the 2005 stroke vascular dementia also. But he is still able to walk short distance, to talk and sustain interaction with old friends, to go out in the car with me, to socialise to a certain extent and to enjoy life. Ray ignores what he cannot fix and I think that is what stops him from being depressed.

The changes stroke made to our lives were radical. I had to leave work, first of all to be Ray's cheerleader, then to be his full-time caregiver. I had to give up my voluntary work as a part-time unpaid pastoral assistant at a local Anglican church. I had exercised a ministry there after completing my Diploma in Theology in 1995, it was my aim to be a hospital chaplain but that never eventuated. I did three days paid work in the public service and two days unpaid work in the parish. Ray had worked as a maintenance carpenter in a mental hospital for fourteen years so had a lot of holiday pay, sick leave etc coming to him and did not officially retire until December 1999. But he went back only to hand over his keys, a very sad day for him. He had survived the 1990 stroke and gone back to work after six months of rehabilitation etc but this time the retirement was permanent.

I have reached an acceptance of how my life is as a caregiver. I still vent about the things I cannot fix. Unlike Ray I am never content to ignore the things that bug me. I work hard to look after Ray. And of course as I still have my mum, who I visit twice a week. It is seven years now since she went into a dementia specific lodge - Nareen Lodge. It is a good place, run by a staff of good people. Mum's care has been excellent. She has falls but then she cannot be wrapped in cotton wool or any other substance that would cushion her falls. The internal walking track which she walks many times each day gives her an illusion of freedom and she is well looked after and safe there.

I don't know what the future holds for us and frankly I don't want to know. I have enough trouble just doing life day by day. I will go on caring for Ray as long as I can. I pray I stay well so that I can do so. We said : till death us do part and in my opinion that is all there is to it. But that is today's feeling and tomorrow's may be different.