This is a follow-up post to “My Cold July – Part I“, part of the My Cold July Series, dealing with our Family history of Brain Aneurysms.
Its well after 3am as we wind our way through Footscray, heading west, heading home. I am wide awake and dead tired at the same time, sick of driving, and knowing that I wont be able to sleep at all tonight.
Princes Highway, Footscray. 3:52AM
My little sister is due to fly in from New Zealand in less than 8 hours… My Baby sister, shes a real sweet heart, driving 10 hours to Auckland, just to wait for a 4 hour flight to get her here. The funny thing is, she was just over here on holiday and only went back to NZ a week ago… this is a crazy world.
Its mid morning by the time we meet her at Melbourne Airport. I didnt expect to see her again for a while, but we are all glad she is here and wishing it was under better circumstances… After a good hug and a quick chat over a bite to eat, we are soon racing to Ward 4 South, Royal Melbourne Hospital. Freeway, city streets, car park, long hospital corridors, left and right… an elevator… and there we are, finally.
We are told to wait… Mum is not out of surgery yet.. so we wait, like others are waiting, like so many others have waited… we wait…
Taking more than twice as long as expected, but with no complications, the surgery goes well, Mum is now in the HDU (High Dependency Unit) on the long road to recovery, but things are not over yet, not by a long shot. But she is awake, and talking, and its start…
Later that day she is transferred to ICU due to falling O2 levels and is there for 2 days… then finally back to HDU where she spends the next week. By this time my other little sister and one of my little brothers has arrived as well, and I cant thank them enough for all the effort they put in to get here as quickly as they did. (not that either of them are little any more, being just a few years younger than me…)
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many staff at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, especially those in Ward 4 south, and also in Level 2 ICU. They did an outstanding job caring for my Mum during her several stays there during July.
Yes, that’s right… After most of my siblings had returned home, and things looked like there were going well, Mum developed further complications resulting in a stroke. She was rushed to Camperdown Hospital, and then to a local Airport via Ambulance. Then flown by the Royal Flighing Doctors to Essendon Airport in Melbourne and then on to Royal Melbourne Hospital via Ambulance again… And again we are lucky, its not as serious as it could be and she is home again in a few days…
The reason its taken so many months to write this post is simply this… Even though Mum is making a full recovery, its that “Not Knowing” kinda feeling, that I always have, and it was a long cold July with too many sleepless nights… Hard for a Self Employed Wedding and Portrait Photographer who has a Business to run and clients needs to attend to. But thats life, and I love it.
by Robb Duncan
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