We were sharing the house provided by Clic with a family from Greece, their son had been in Bristol Children’s Hospital for months with a brain tumour.
They had come over to the UK as a last resort, it must have been awfully hard for them as they had left a young daughter behind and the Mum never spoke any English at all. Most of the time she stayed at the house cleaning, that was her way of dealing with things.
It was only a week until Christmas but none of us were in the mood for celebrating, how difficult that was when you are in a hospital ward full of children!
They are so resilient it made me ashamed of myself for feeling despondent. So many were there with very serious illnesses, Cancer, Organ transplants, Cystic fibrosis just to name a few. And yet very rarely did you see a child complain or even cry , they put us adults to shame.
So many emotions were flying around, everyone was afraid and didn’t know what to say in case they upset you.
Here we were just Laurrie, Tony and myself in a strange City 125 miles from home.
David had gone back as he still had his job to hold down and the cats to look after.
Christmas was now on the back burner, but how do you explain that to your 5 year old estranged son ?
I was so torn how could I give my 3 beautiful children all this support without falling apart?
How could I tell them that everything was going to be OK when I wasn’t sure it would?
I was missing James so badly he should have been with us, there was plenty of room in the house that had been provided. His bastard father will one day pay for what he has done to my family. Could he not see that these siblings should be together, he knew in his heart that the only reason he ‘snatched’ James was for his own gratification and that’s what scares the life out of me….
I hate being a grown up, nobody told me I was going to have this much hurt in my life, what have I done to deserve this…..more to the point what have my children done?
*Tony went to theatre the following morning to have the line in his neck removed and a new one put in his chest (Hickman line).
Whilst he was under the anaesthetic he had the catheter removed and a lumber punch was performed, this was the first stage of treatment which was known to us as the COP.
From now on as part of the treatment he was to have steroids every day. When he returned from theatre he also had a line in his hand which was where they were administering morphine.
Generally although VERY grumpy he appears to have accepted this awful situation and is dealing with it as I thought he would with a positive mental attitude.
Tony you will never know much I love you and am proud of you xxx *
* Extracts taken from the ‘little black book’.
