Tag: family

the week that was: The Year of Hell

The Week That Was

I haven’t done one of these for a while so it seemed time for some personal stuff. It’s not really a #WeekThatWas, more a #YearThatWas. It was one of the formative years of my life, if not the formative year.

Mr AL and I have a year that we describe as The Year Of Hell. Partly because we are Star Trek Voyager fans. And partly because, well, it was.

We had Talking Child in autumn 2007. It was all rather unexpected. We’d just completed the rigorous two year adoption procedure and were about to be matched with potential children. When we discovered I was knocked up, we were delighted on the one hand and on the other a bit confused, because we had put all that work in to getting ready for a family in one way and now it was happening in another.

So, TC arrived and that was great. And because I was knocking on a bit, we thought it would be a good idea to try to ride that alleged post-pregnancy fertility and go for Littlest. To our surprise, this worked when Talking Child was three months old. Go me. Yay. At age thirty-seven, at the beginning of 2008, when I’d resigned myself to never having a tiny baby, there I was, not only with a tiny baby, but with another one on the way. I was exhausted, pitifully sick and with awful, awful post-natal depression. Retrospectively I have NO IDEA why any of it seemed like a good plan. But eh, hormones.

At the time, Mr AL and I were working together in the audio-visual industry, mostly doing work for conferences. It came as a genuine surprise to me that no-one would let me climb ladders whilst pregnant or with a baby strapped to me in a sling. Mr AL still trotted off to work for days at a time and left me in rural Wales with the baby, climbing the walls. He couldn’t understand why I was virtually bonkers each time he came home from a tour.

And then, because the post-natal depression was so debilitating, I didn’t keep track of who had paid us and who hadn’t. A big customer that we trusted screwed us over. They got us to do a second large job for them before they had paid us for a large job a few weeks earlier and then they went bankrupt. They knew it was coming and they hung us out to dry, owing us about thirty grand. They opened up under another name a few weeks later and we had no recourse. That left us with a small baby, me unable to work because of small baby/pregnancy/depression, and an enormous mortgage on our idyllic rural house.

And then there were the deaths. My Pa died. He was elderly and it was expected. I was still devastated. I nearly went in to labour in the Chapel of Rest when I went to say goodbye. Then the mother of a dear friend died. That was unexpected and terrible. And two friends in their forties died out of the blue, one from a brain aneurysm and one from a heart problem.

We lost the idyllic house in our own bankruptcy, three weeks before the second baby was due. We found somewhere to live, but it was a very near thing. Mr AL crashed the new-to-us car Ma had given us money to buy and wrote it off. In the autumn, Littlest was born with pneumonia and at eight weeks old was on a ventilator. We spent the winter going back and forth to hospital in ambulances, with her on oxygen. We fell out with Mr AL’s parents in a comprehensive and horribly damaging way.

Littlest, back from hunting, with her walking frame, rifle and camo face paint.
Littlest, May 2013, back from hunting, with her walking frame, rifle and camo face paint.

If I had to have a do-over for a year, it would probably be that one. But having said that, I don’t know exactly what I’d do differently. I feel very strongly that what happens to you forms you as a person. I love my life and my beautiful family as they are, despite the difficulties we face.

Plus, that was the year that did a great deal of the excavating of the inner me. I don’t take bullshit from people as easily these days and I am more cautious who I trust. If someone lies to me, I cut them out completely. I am more vocal and I stand up for my family more quickly and perhaps too aggressively. When you’re under that amount of stress, friends you thought were close turn out to not be so close. People you weren’t close to become closer.

I don’t think any of those things would have happened as they did or in the same way if The Year Of Hell hadn’t happened. So, 2008, you sucked. But good things came of you, so you can stay.

the week that was

I was going to write a post telling you all about my hydroponic lettuce growing set-up, because why not? But instead it’s been such a bloody stressful week that I’m going to moan about that because I need to get it off my chest.

The Week That Was

These are the things we’ve had to deal with this week:

  1. Decide whether to go ahead with Littlest’s elective surgery that is supposed to help with her curling-in feet. The hope is that she’ll be able to stand again. However, it’s been delayed for twelve months because #Covid and in all that time she has been without splints (more #Covid) and has not been standing. It is therefore likely that she doesn’t have enough strength left to regain where she was, even with lots of physio. But she might. Also, the anaesthetic is a bit dodgy, because of her breathing issues.
  2. Still pushing for a vaccine for her. The local health service is only calling clinically extremely vulnerable 12-15 year olds who are in residential care at the moment. Other services nearby are calling all children in special schools. It was a bit of a blow, but it will be a matter of weeks apparently.
  3. We needed to sign off her ‘Advanced Care Plan’, which used to be call her ‘End of Life Care Plan’, but they changed the name a couple of years ago to make it more fluffy and less brutal. It’s still brutal. We have decided we do not want resuscitation.
  4. My mother has updated her own DNR paperwork. She’s done, pretty much, and is perfectly happy with her low intervention decision; as am I because it’s what she wants, but it’s my mum.
  5. As the filling in the shit sandwich, one of our carer’s other clients has suspected Covid and she is therefore isolating until this person gets their test results back. It should have taken three days, but the test has been lost in the post. So we are managing without help.
  6. Mr AL has put his back out. (Lifting a bloody piano. Don’t laugh). I can move  her, but it’s a bit much for me and tends to mean I have a seizure afterwards, so as he’s recovered we’re double-handling her…she has a hoist for actually getting in and out of bed/her chair/the sofa etc, but still needs moving once she’s landed.
  7. Talking Child has had another round of bullying at school. School sounds like half the student body have gone feral after three months of no real structure and a lot of staff are still off, shielding or whatever, and I wouldn’t be a teacher for all the money in the world at the moment. TC was disappointed that she missed a huge fight in the playground yesterday and when the head of year rang me, she sounded exhausted. If you are an educator, I applaud you, hang in there.

Anyway, all these things are why I’ve been quiet. I’m drained, I’m sad about my mum and the issues our kids are dealing with and I have been struggling to adult. I so want to get back on the writing horse in the mornings; and the last few days I have actually rolled out of bed and sat at my desk. But my brain hasn’t kicked in yet.

Inheritance of Shadows

Eight Acts came out last weekend and As the Crows Fly is dropping on the 13th April. Inheritance of Shadows is in the process of going wide in audio with a new cover. My slate is clear, but I feel completely uninspired about getting on with Sylvia Marks, although I know where I want the story to go.

I was talking to Littlest’s community nurse yesterday and she says that pretty much all her families have crashed in a similar fashion. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel finally being visible, I think.

So for #TheWeekThatWas, that is all.

life chaos abounds

I missed last week’s post because life got in the way, I’m sorry. Littlest has been in plaster casts on her lower legs and feet for a fortnight after a botox injection in to her ankles. This is to help prevent her feet from curling under any more than they are and hopefully enable her to do standing transfers for a little longer, rather than needing hoisting all the time. The casts have meant the moving and handling we do on a daily basis has been much more difficult because you can’t get them wet. They are very hot pink though, which has caused some glee.

In addition we have had to update something called the ‘Advanced Care Plan’ which is basically setting out our wishes should she become very ill. It’s good to have in place, but flipping heck it’s grim to fill in. And Talking Child has had all sorts of traumatic appointments as well. We’ve collectively been sat on the sofa in a heap with our respective pants* on our heads. No writing was done and we all felt awful.

Since Friday, I’ve been clawing myself back up the slope and have written a handful of words – a few hundred – every day. Plus we managed to fit in a family trip to Longleat, where we fed giraffes, held snakes, watched giant otters sleeping and generally had a brilliant time. We have more trips planned over the summer holiday, starting with a weekend at the Children’s Hospice this coming Friday. I can’t wait.

Finally, I’m signed up to the SFF Book Bonanza giveaway this week – there are more than a hundred free SFF books and stories available for download for your reading pleasure should you so desire.

Next week: An excerpt from my work in progress, The Flowers of Time, which is cracking along slowing but steadily now, thank goodness.

*British pants, for maximum comedy value