2 weeks ago we had had such a good catch up with Bills family, most of whom travelled down from Auckland to A: Have a working bee at our whanau urupa; B: To have a meeting about the Gardiner whanau reunion and C: To see Bill. Bill caught up with some of his cousins, brother and sister and heaps of nieces and nephews, so he was on a high after they left. And then came Sunday….thought he may have caught a slight chill so he remained in bed all day Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, by Wednesday I had his GP on our doorstep who immediately phoned for an ambulance and off to hospital we went…….Pneumonia…AGAIN! Not a very pleasant time there, but we were in the best place while he was sick. I stayed with him while he was in hospital, he suffered from severe panic attacks while in there and really became quite dependant on me being within eye contact all the time. It’s exhausting sitting in the hospital day in and day out if you are a caregiver, much better in your own environment doing things in your own time. His mum and sister travelled down to be with him on Friday, which was really nice, that allowed me a few minutes to go walk out the kinks so to speak. Then on Saturday, my two sisters rocked on in to the hospital, told my husband in no uncertain terms that they were going to look after him for the afternoon while I had a break with the kids…….lol, if you could have seen the TERROR in Bills eyes hehehehe it was really comical. Even he was seeing the light side of things before I left. I said to him, mate it could be worse, you could have got my MOTHER…..lol. Long story short, took my 2 youngest out to watch their big brothers playing rugby then all of us went back to the hospital to find Bill and my sisters having a whale of a time……blinkin MARVELOUS….
Returned home from the Hospital on Tuesday evening so not quite a week in there but Bill is still very weak and has become more dependent on us for his personal needs then he was before we went in to hospital. Is this a permanent change? Only time will tell I guess. He now depends on us for feeding and still has panic attacks if we aren’t within hearing distance but the hospice staff came out today to help us deal more effectively with the panic attacks so hopefully after a few days he’ll get on top of that. If anything good has come of his hospital stay I think it is that our oldest boys finally realise that this is the “real deal”, Dad isn’t going to get any better and in fact he’s starting to get worse. They’ve all been falling over themselves trying to help, so in that sense its been good. This has knocked Bills confidence a whole lot and I think it will take a while before he gets back to that positive headspace, but if anyone can, he can.
So, for the time being at least, we will literally take each day as it comes, help each other through the rough times and enjoy the good times…..
Life's too short to sweat the small stuff
