An emotional but great day…
…counting my blessings – again!
5.40am
Eeeeep! It’s GCSE results day! Simon will update me, shortly, on what kind of night Hannah has had and how she is, then either one or both of us will go back to Doncaster with Charlotte to get her results.
6.10am
I just spoke to Hannah and she said “I want you to stay here with me today”, so I’ll stay. Her headache / migraine got worse overnight…she had more Paracetamol and Ibuprofen and it helped a little.
I can’t stop crying right now 🙁 This is such an important day for Charlie and I won’t be there with her. I feel like I’m letting her down, like I’m choosing one daughter over the other. This is so hard! They both need me. They’re both my babies. I love them both more than I ever imagined, before having children, that it would be possible to love someone. I wish I could be in both places at once, but I can’t, so I have to stay with Hannah who is in hospital and in pain.
Nobody ever warns you how hard it is to be a parent; yes, you’re warned about the sleepless nights, the lack of money, the tantrums, the teenage behaviour etc…but not the pain of making difficult decisions or how it feels when your children are ill.
I remind myself that we’re lucky. Charlie is very well at the moment. Hannah is well enough to speak to me and ask me to stay. I’ve slept well in a comfortable bed tonight and am about to have a lovely hot shower…
…things we usually take for granted but that I’m hugely appreciative of right now.
8.30am
I came in around an hour ago to find Hannah smiling and chatting to me as normal. Her migraine has lifted and she’s bright as a button and back to her usual self at the moment. I hope it lasts!
Hannah’s breathing exercises were much better this morning, too: She nearly matched her previous best on the massive fast big breath ones and successfully matched (possibly slightly exceeded) her previous personal best on the slow and steady ones.
I’ve told Simon and Charlie that I want a photo of the moment she opens the GCSE results envelope and a photo of the results so I can take them in properly and send them to grandmothers and aunties who are waiting to hear. Charlie started doing her usual “you’re not having a photo…you’ll be lucky if I tell you what I got” and I told her to stop being so bloody awkward! She seems fine with me not being there…I think the disappointment and sense of loss is mostly mine, but in the grand scheme of things, worse things have happened. I’m with her in spirit and I’ll get the results as soon as she has them.
I’m on tenterhooks!
I’m delighted to be here to see Hannah feeling so much better today instead of being away and spending all day worrying.
In other news:
I keep forgetting to mention…We were chatting to Jules, one of the lovely ANPs (Advanced Nurse Practitioner, I think) on the ward the other day, about both girls (she’d spotted Charlie’s scar) and everything they’ve been through and she said I should write a book…I told her that, funnily enough, I had…and gave her a copy of Recipe for Happiness.
She saw me this morning and said she’s enjoying it. She wanted to know if she can post it back to me if we’re gone by the time she finishes it, but I said to keep it or give it to someone else who might enjoy it.
9am
I was chatting to one of the other mums earlier…her daughter is 6 and is taking ages to recover. She has a fever and lots of infection markers in her blood, but they can’t pinpoint what’s wrong. It’s her fourth open heart surgery and she’s had so many complications each time, including Endocarditis and a Stroke! Even one of her cardiac catheter procedures, which are fairly straightforward compared to open heart surgery, resulted in major complications: they nicked an artery, she bled into her lungs and was on a chest drain for weeks!
We are so, so lucky, really!
Just seen the Doctor. He said yesterday’s x-ray was much better so we’re moving in the right direction (slightly confusing as I thought yesterday we were told it may be better but it was difficult to tell….but then this particular doctor has been looking at Hannah’s x-rays for days so if it’s a matter of perspective and interpretation, I am more inclined to trust the Doctor who’s watched and monitored the changes regularly). Hannah needs to keep walking & doing breathing exercises.
Another x-ray tomorrow. If it’s much better again, they might let her out on ‘home leave’ for the day!
End of day update
Well, what a day! Hannah has been feeling great all day. Her migraine stayed away, thank goodness (and Simon brought back her Imigran from Doncaster, just in case it re-appears). We took off the steri-strips from her chest wound and the wound looks great! (I forgot to mention that the stitches were removed from the chest drain wounds a few days ago…one of them was gaping a bit and also had steri-strips applied. This was fully healed up today!)
And Charlie’s GCSE results were fantastic!!!
She has expressly forbidden me from publicly sharing them online, so I can’t say what she got, but I can say that, aside from one subject where she was disappointed with her grade (though it’s still high enough to meet the requirements of her conditional offer of a 6th Form place at her new school), she did extremely well across the board, including in maths & sciences – the subjects she hates. And she has exceeded the requirements of her conditional offer for the 6th Form overall. Woo-hoo!!!!! Over the moon. Well done, Charlie!
Funny moments of the day:
When Hannah was weighed this morning, the nurse stood on one side of her and the Doctor on the other and, unbeknownst to her, they each put a foot on the scales, so she’d suddenly gained 30kg overnight. Her face was a picture!!! We all had a good laugh and the Doctor confirmed he’d only done if for therapeutic reasons, of course, as laughing expands her lungs! heehee
This evening, she was showing Simon something she’d done earlier when speaking to me. It was so unbearably CUTE (there’s that word again!|). She was wagging her finger in a way I’ve never seen anyone wag their finger…it was mesmerizing…and saying “No more cuddles for you because you called me cute”. I filmed her and we had such a giggle. She looked in great health and it was a really happy moment. At times like these, you could almost forget she’s just had major open heart surgery! I wanted to post it on Facebook as so many people have been following Hannah’s progress and they’d have loved to see the video. At the very least I’d have loved to post it in this blog, but Hannah vetoed it. Sorry!
As well as Hannah doing really well in her breathing exercises, she’s been doing brilliantly with her walking. We went on 4 walks today, including stairs, and she is walking faster & faster. We went out into the garden again and managed to catch the only bit of proper warm sunshine all day. Lucky again! 🙂
Taking a stroll in the sunshine in the hospital garden
And we caught up on a few episodes of Dragons’ Den. Great fun!
Tonight, it’s my turn to stay on the ward with Hannah. “Educating Yorkshire: One Year On” was on tonight so we snuggled up in bed watching it. We giggled over Bailey and her eyebrows…and Sheridan’s driving lessons (“Best thing is, if you want to turn left, just steer left”), got all emotional over Musharaf’s progress and how grown up cute little Ryan is, and both felt gutted that Sheridan didn’t get her C in her Math’s GCSE this morning…again! 🙁 Love her determination though and the fact she’s not giving up. Oh, and I may have ‘fangirled’ a bit over Mr Mitchell! 😉 As charismatic as ever…
So, another day draws to a close. A very positive day. I hope Hannah has a good night (I know Charlie will – she’s staying with her friend Sophie for a few days and has been taken out for meals all over the place…plus she now has her reward money to spend, too!).
I know Hannah reads this blog every day, so I’ve just explained to her my feelings of this morning (she had already worked out that I’d been upset first thing – she’s pretty perceptive!) and she was all apologetic. I don’t want Hannah to be sorry. I’ve explained that she needed me at that point and that I am so, so glad I’ve had a great day and seen her being well rather than spending all day worrying about her. Simon filmed the moment Charlie opened her GCSE results envelope and I was with her in spirit and she’s old enough to understand why I couldn’t be there with her. As parents, we have to make lots of choices and I know I made the right choice this morning. I think – hope – Hannah understands, especially now we’ve talked about it.
I’m hopeful of another positive day tomorrow and more progress towards getting Hannah home! 🙂
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