NEWS - THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY

Back to The Farm

The next few months of lives will hang in our memories for a very long time, there were some very sad times and some happy moments mixed amongst the sad. I hope you will excuse me for relating most of the events with a certain amount of levity. Life itself is often sad and dramatic, I don’t think I need to add to the negatives. Please understand I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone when I use humour to convey our story.

On the Saturday morning prior to taking mum into RPH I had a minor nose bleed. Nothing to be alarmed about – I had a series of them around 3 years ago just before we travelled. Some of those had been doosies and very hard to stop, but this was just a little baby one. I simply thought to myself (stupid woman), how fortunate it was that the bleed had happened on the Saturday and not the Monday morning. Monday morning we needed to off from the farm around 7.15 in order to pick mum up some 40ks further south, so that we could get her to her appointment at RPH yet another 30 or so ks south. Fortunately, I had a very early shower and was dressed by 7am. At 7am, I sneezed! From that point on, my nose started not to just bleed, but to absolutely gush blood. Nothing I did stemmed the flow in any way. How I managed not to get blood all over me, I just don’t know. I certainly did a good job of decorating the ensuite in the van! I could do nothing. I could not remove my hand from my nose for even a split second without torrents of blood spilling out. The pressure behind my ear-drums was incredible and the pain was quite significant. I expected blood to start gushing from my eyes and my ears the way things were going. Anyway, I was determined to be with Mum this day and so I managed, with DD’s help to board Zed and we headed down to pick Mum up. When we arrived at her place, the bleeding had not abated and so I was unable to help her leave the house or, as I would usually do, help her climb aboard the Cruiser (Zed). Poor old DD had to do all the honours and I (by now on my second box of tissues along with numerous wipes etc) sat miserably in the front seat of the car.

Evening Glow

Locals

We took off and but by the time we reached the hospital, while the bleeding had slowed a little, my nose was still bleeding. Now...........the Ear Nose & Throat department in that old mausoleum that represents RPH is at least a half k walk. Bear in mind that I normally would be helping mum, holding her hand and making sure she didn’t stumble etc. This time, I still had one hand clamped firmly to my nose, my handbag, mum’s handbag, mum, and I think from memory, her brolly too! Off we limped on our long and (for both of us) tortuous journey to the EN&T dept. Amazingly we were on time! When we arrived and I advised them of mum’s presence, Mother, never usually very maternal loftily demanded that ‘somebody’ tend to her daughter. It seems quite hilarious, if not very fortuitous that it was the Ear Nose and Throat Dept. I was duly carted off to the nurse’s station where a nice young Registrar came along, examined me, had the nurses finally staunch the red flow and then cauterise the offending vessel. All the while I was carrying on about being with Mum when she saw the Dr. Finally I was sorted and returned to Mother’s side well in time for her to see her Dr.

Green Fairies Dancing

We were ushered into a room where sat a delightful young fella. All roses and cream complexion and cultured English accent; he seemed to me to be around 19 years old. Once we were seated, Mother declared in vibrant tones, “Thank God you are white and Australian!”, while I muttered something helpful like “Oh mum!”, trying to look inconspicuous and ignore the very large Indian Dr lurking in the doorway, the young English registrar simply smiled sweetly and advised mum to ‘get it all out’ – what a honey! Mum then launched into the story of the Indian cab driver she had drive her to the hospital the previous week. When Mother had deposited herself into the front passenger seat of the taxi the nice turbaned Indian gentleman behind the wheel had proceeded to regale her with the story of his arranged marriage gone wrong. It seems that his wife- to- be was brought out from India for their nuptials and he (I guess being slightly Westernised) proceeded to attempt to please her, giving her all manner of gifts etc. It seems that the lady was not unduly impressed and the whole thing culminated in her departing our shores minus a wedding commitment. As Mum and her erstwhile driver arrived at the front steps of the hospital, it seems his parting words to mum were “and I bought her a Fucking Mobile Phone!” You may be shocked to think a gentleman of this ilk would use this type of language in the presence of an elderly and very upright looking passenger, but trust me, he was doubtless encouraged by that same elegant personage.

A chat around the Water - Cooler

I have never seen a young man blush the way that young Registrar blushed that day. I doubt he had kept bad company much and certainly was not expecting that sort of language from the very proper looking, diminutive, frail old woman sitting opposite him. He truly didn’t seem to know where to put himself. I have long since been accustomed to mum’s verbatim story-telling, and so my degree of embarrassment was minimal.

That was the fun part of the day – the young Registrar’s next words seemed to rob the day of any further joy. The lump on mum’s face was in fact a form of blood cancer and many more tests were needed and she was quickly scheduled an appointment with a Lymphoma specialist within the hospital. The week spiralled out of control from that point. That was the Monday, from the ENT department, we went to arrange RMI scans and a CAP scan was arranged at Charlie Garner Hospital for the Thursday. By Friday we were sitting in front of the specialist with all the results. It evolved that mum had a form of Lymphoma (Non Hodgekins I believe) which we were told categorically was curable. The cure however involved up to 6 lots of chemotherapy followed by a series of radiation treatments. I was somewhat horrified as I really didn’t think mum could manage all of that. Mum however was quite positive and keen (well sort of keen) to get on with it. The Registrar arranged for her to be admitted to hospital the following Tuesday for further tests, largely to satisfy him that she was indeed strong enough to withstand the treatment.

Just Dropped In

Just before I lead into the next part of Mum’s story, I must just tell you about the day we had all the children together to tell them about our marriage. Everyone was there with the exception of Bree who was by now in London. Getting everyone there at the same time proved to be somewhat of a nightmare; as I have said before, they are all soooo busy and without telling them why we wanted them there it was hard to convince them of the necessity.

I had arranged (made) a large cake for the announcement, that being my way of sharing the day with all. Predictably Naomi was super late and so making the announcement to everyone simultaneously still did not eventuate. We did manage to tell everyone tho’ and all were predictably happy for us. The day was marred however by the revelation that two of our various offspring were facing marital problems. Brett & Nom were it seemed on the brink of dissolving their marriage for at least the short term and Danni took me aside to tell me that they too were not experiencing plain sailing. It was sad news indeed, particularly in the case of Brett & Nom as there are children involved there. Hopefully all will be well in each instance.

Peace