What a month this has been, I’ve never experienced anything like it before. It’s been a struggle to keep up and has been spent mainly trying to think about things too much.
As you might know, my wife, Sinead, has not been well for over a year. It started with celiacs disease, but there have been multiple other things going on as well. Fixing her diet pretty much took care of the gluten thing but she started having “episodes” in the evenings, which we thought for a long time was diabetes, all the while she’s been working harder than ever, not stopping and exercising. Then things finally caught up in a major way. About a month ago she started vomiting and the doctors thought it was gastroenteritis, gave her anti-sickness tablets and a bunch of other things and told her if it didn’t’ get better to go to the hospital. It didn’t and being Sinead she didn’t either. After another trip to the doctors and an anti-sickness injection, she finally concedes to go to the hospital, as we’re getting ready Katie-Ann says mummy why are your eyes yellow.
Long story short, its jaundice from acute liver and kidney failure. She spends 2 days in intensive care and then another week in another ward. The doctors can’t figure out a direct cause for it, as always they are looking for one smoking gun. There’s a virus that might be responsible for one part but nothing that would explain both the liver and kidney failure. So the whole time Sinead’s in the hospital I’m either with her, looking after the girls or traveling to the hospital. For the first few nights, I had to stay up late watching crap so that I didn’t think. I knew I could start dealing with things once this moment had passed, but I just wasn’t equipped to think too deeply about what was happening. I can’t even start to contemplate what our lives would be without the person that holds our lives together. And now it’s done, it’s passed, kinda. Sinead thought she’d be out and back to normal within a week, but it’s going to take months before she’s anywhere near where she wants to be and is being back to normal a good thing? If normal played a big part in Sinead ending up in the hospital is normal a place we really want to revisit.
The truth is our lives are epic, but we like everyone else, put off happiness until tomorrow. Put off living until this or that is done, this debt is paid, that job is finished, until we are fit and healthy until we have more money in the bank. But guess what guys, tomorrow may well never come. Sinead stresses easily, her body is fairly finely tuned so stress, diet and exercise have a major influence on her well being. It’s taken this to realise just how much. She was working 7 days a week because we “needed the money” but the truth is we would have survived without it but, survival without her would be a very different prospect. So jobs have been quit, routines have been changed and priorities have been addressed. Sinead made a comment when she left the hospital, “What was it all for?” What was working 7 days a week and collapsing on the sofa every night for. Were the few extra pounds worth missing out on those evenings with the family? It’s easy to get caught up with a problem when you are so close to it. We don’t often think about the day to day livings of our lives, but the day to days is actually life, they are the moments that add up to your life. Tomorrow is a day that has never arrived and never will, it’s all about today. When you almost lose someone who is more important to you that then air your breath you change the way you look at today. The idea of the rest of my today’s without her is too much to contemplate so my today’s need to count that little bit more.