November 2008 Archives

Tonight I bought two tickets to the Coldplay concert on March 3. It's a Tuesday at the Rod Laver Arena at Melbourne Park. Carly's never been to Melbourne and the last concert we went to (Avril Lavigne when Carly was 11) was in Sydney. This is Carly's Christmas present and will be a bit of mother-daughter bonding. I'm a huge fan of Coldplay and love their music, and I'm already looking forward to the concert.

Where we'll stay and what we'll do is a few months off so I won't even worry about it yet.

I've been over to Wagga nearly every day after work to visit Dad in the hospital and it's so sad to see him. He's off with the fairies most of the time with all the drugs they're giving him and I worry every night that he'll deteriorate further. He looks terrible.

Monday I took Carly to the Borambola Sport and Recreation Centre where she was going to do a week's work experience. It was to cost $185 for her food and accommodation for the week. Then yesterday morning she rang to say she woke up with conjunctivitis and I had to come and get her because it's highly contagious. So I took 2 hours off work and collected her after lunch. Big surprise, they didn't charge me any money for her staying there, so there was something good that come of it. Then around midnight she came in to my bedroom with her eyes so swollen and red I took her to the Junee hospital, where they gave her some anaesthetic drops and antibiotic drops. They padded her eyes and I had to lead her out to the car and then inside when we got home around 1am. I took her to the doctor today and she said to keep using the drops every 2 hours.

The one day I didn't go to Wagga to visit Dad and I'm at the Junee hospital with Carly. I'd love to say I don't want to see the inside of a hospital again any time soon, but it's going to be a long time before Dad is getting out so I'll be a regular visitor for a while yet.

I went over again tonight after work, and though he looked a little better, he's still a pitiful sight. He's so thin and never hungry, but because I'm there around the time they deliver his tea, I've been spoon-feeding him the soup or desserts each night just so he has something. He's too weak to do anything except doze off. The nurses have had him up during the day and sitting in a chair, but so far he's only walked the length of the bed and it hurts him too much to do any more. He's taking Valium for the tobacco withdrawals and I think it's making him hallucinate. He was quite funny on Tuesday night, talking about things that I couldn't see. If it wasn't so sad I'd have laughed.

My sister-in-law is going to visit him in the mornings and again in the afternoons, and I'm there of an evening. He doesn't remember much and so my not going over last night went unnoticed.

Dad came back to stay here last Tuesday and we had a good few days with no raised voices or walking on eggshells. Then on Friday just before lunch I got a call at work from my neighbour who said that Dad had fallen and she'd rung an ambulance. When I got home the ambulance still hadn't arrived, and Dad was laying on the front path and couldn't move his leg. He'd gone out to collect the mail for me.

I followed the ambulance to Junee Hospital where Dr Corbett immediately phoned Wagga to order x-rays for a fractured hip. I hung around in the Emergency Dept. in Wagga from 1 to 7.30pm when the orthopaedic surgeon came to speak to us. It was pretty scary what he had to say, even suggesting that they might not operate at all because of Dad's poor health.

After consultation with the anaesthetist, Dad was taken up to surgery this morning, and this afternoon he's out of recovery and everything went well. He's had a partial hip replacement and still has a long road to recovery but I expect he'll be getting around again in a few weeks. I'm hoping that after a couple of days they'll bring him back here to Junee Hospital. I can have lunch with him each day at least. I'll need to speak to a doctor because I'm really not sure what comes after a hip replacement. Obviously the scar needs to heal and there'll be physiotherapy, but for how long I don't know.

It's a huge relief to know it all went well. The doctor had us thinking he could die on the operating table because of the poor state of his lungs, so I'm very grateful that the man upstairs was looking out for him.

Dad came home last Sunday, Carly moved into the caravan on Sunday night and it's been a week that feels like a month, for both me and the kids.

Monday I had to take Carly to the doctor. She had tonsillitis again, and had 3 days off sick. She went to school on Wednesday for a Food Technology exam but came home at lunch time. Alex has been the quietest he's ever been.

With Dad here, the kids haven't been themselves at all. It's been a real strain on all of us, Dad included because he sits around doing nothing all day, waiting for someone to come home. I'm home for lunch, but it's only for 45 minutes, and then I'm gone again. I don't suppose it's much different to what he was doing in Kirra, but he had his own car to come and go as he pleased. He went to the club nearly every day for a couple of beers. Here, he's just sitting around.

Dad hates the TV and has the sound muted all the time. He hates the fact that he's up at 5.30 and we like to sleep in. We've had a few clashes about what goes, and it hasn't been pleasant. Today, Alex got up about 10.30 and Carly was an hour later, and the usual criticism followed. I didn't get up till 9.30 but I told Dad last night that I planned on a sleep in and that was fine.

Tuesday he has an appointment in Wagga and I think he'll stay with Warren and Julie for 8-10 days, and then he'll come back here for a similar time. For now, that's all we can think to do because it's hard going. He's not the most pleasant man to live with and I've got plenty of unwanted childhood memories coming up that I'd thought I'd dealt with years ago. Obviously I hadn't. Obviously I could write a lot more about how I'm feeling but it's all too personal. For now, enough said.