A blessing

As mentioned last post, my dad's not been at all well recently. He fell victim to an extremely nasty NHS superbug which no-one seemed to have heard of until it finally hit the news last week.

Clostridium dificile (aka C.diff) has been approaching epidemic proportions here for some time, largely because it wasn't getting properly reported or even diagnosed. The recorded survival rate among people Sid's age is frighteningly low, mostly as a result of secondary and tertiary complications. In his case, it destroyed the wall of his bowel; the resulting peritonitis caused respiratory and renal failure, which was bad enough, but it also meant 90% of his large intestine had to be removed. Colectomy is a seriously risky procedure but, like the C.diff, thanks to timely intervention and an amazing resilience he's shown in the past, he's survived it.

He spent five days out cold in the Critical Care Unit and took a further week to re-orient himself and recover to the point of being able to communicate normally, and although he's still too weak to stand on his own two feet he's just about able to feed himself and slowly understand what's happened to him. This week, as the tubes and drips have been gradually withdrawn, he's started to show definite progress. A major turning point was Wednesday's request for a sausage... a sure sign the old Sid is re-emerging at last :)

It's hard to believe this all started with a completely unrelated bladder complaint, which now seems utterly trivial in comparison, just over six weeks ago. That was yet another complication of an earlier surgery, the whole saga going back to his cancer treatment of several years ago. Just before the C.diff took him off the radar he told me some stuff about all this trauma which has changed my perception of medical intervention for ever. I'm still digesting it, maybe I'll write it down one day but I'm already way too far down the page today to start elaborating it now. Suffice to say, life's too short.

Sometimes things coincide in a very pertinent way, and it was during the darkest hours of this whole nightmare that our inchoate relocation efforts (finding shippers and insurers and airlines and accommodation and god knows what else) all started to deliver results. One after the other, things have just fallen into place with barely any effort at all. We're now all booked up onto a flight to Singapore on the 30th – just over 3 weeks time –arriving in Auckland around midnight on the 2nd October. We have a trip to Barcelona organised in the meantime, the shipping company have been very reassuring, we have a lovely place to stay when we get to NZ, it's all, suddenly, sorted.

A few weeks ago, Dad got to his feet as I made to leave the cubicle, grabbed my arm and said, "for god's sake, don't let all this crap get in the way". At the time, I didn't know what to say. As I traversed the warren of corridors back to the car park, I started to realise how lucky we were to be here for all this crap; we could so easily have still been stuck in Spain. I'm just thankful we were around for him and me Mam, who has been amazingly strong through even the most desperate times. We're not out of the woods yet and life is clearly going to be a bit of a struggle for a while after he gets home, but it's important that life goes on with the same determination as before, for everyone concerned. The resilience I've seen this last few weeks will always be an inspiration.

Get well soon, mate.