Other Sutff | picklebums.com

Things I’ve been doing while not blogging.

May 14, 2010 | Filed in: Life on the Pickle Farm,links, links and more links!

So what have I been up to while my blog has been out of action? And since it came back up?

Looking for my car keys.
For three days I searched high and low for my keys, only to find them in the pocket of my jeans. Yes, the same jeans I’d been wearing for two of those three days.

Cooking a Cake
Made our stock standard ‘we always have some in the garden’ Rhubarb Tea Cake on a whim the other night. Yum.

Blogging for Eco Toys
My kids and I were lucky enough to be given some fabulous Glob natural paints to test out for Eco Toys. Unfortunately they are having a few blog problems at the moment but you’ll be able to read what we think really soon!

Cleaning
Did a mass clean up of the girl’s room and made a start on the study… a small start, but a start none the less.

Getting the kids to take silly photos of myself for Bloggers Without Make-up Day
Which is kind of strange really because I never wear make-up, ever…. still, thought I’d play along anyway, cause the sentiment behind it is good!

Flogging My Blog…. over at Mummy Time :)

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Sitting here… 11:27 pm Saturday night here (must remember to get one of those clock thingies for this!). I have just finished printing out 24 4×6? layouts for my step mother-in-laws ‘brag book’. It was her birthday on Wednesday and although we already contributed to her present this week has been total hell for her, so I figured she could use a little something extra to make her smile. This mini layout is a favourite of mine from her book…. my two little miracles…. and we could use another miracle here about now too.

My Father-in-law had a heart transplant almost two months ago now. He’d been unwell with a virus in his heart for longer than I’ve known him (so more than ten years) and the last few years he’s been really really ill. Two pacemakers and loads of drugs failed to do any good and it became clear this year that he was going downhill really fast. So his only option was to wait for a donor heart and have the transplant….

The call came only 6 weeks after he was put on the list! A total surprise as we all expected he’d have to wait a lot longer! We all rushed in to say our good lucks and possibly our goodbyes but thankfully the operation went well, the heart was working great and in a little under two weeks he was home and looking better than I had ever seen him! I couldn’t believe how lucky we were! He was cracking jokes and mucking around and telling the girls it would only be a few more weeks before he’d be well enough to hold them for the first time. He even came to the zoo last Sunday for the girl’s birthday something he’d never have been able to do before the transplant.

But here we are less than a week later with every body part crossed hoping he will live. Things went downhill fast this week. He is now in critical tissue rejection, he has a lung infection and his BP is out of control. Last night they put him in a medically induced coma to ventilate him and put him back on heart/lung bypass to give his new heart a break while they try to combat the rejection and infection.

The doctors say that they have been through this many times before with others and he still has a 70-80% chance of coming through all this, which was much better than I had hoped for. But because my big pram wouldn’t fit in the waiting room, the girls and I waited in the hall while the doctors spoke to the family and we saw him being rushed to theatre to hook up the bypass machines…… it was almost surreal… like I was watching an episode of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and yet this was my father-in-law…. Grampy….

So we are just waiting now… it will be around 5 days before they will attempt to take him off bypass and see what happens… I have no idea what will happen if that doesn’t work.

So many things whirled through my head as I drove home last night. It’s just not fair really…. not fair to us or to the person who donated their heart and their family. But of course this is life… bad things happen and we have to deal with them. But I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to loose my father… my heart aches so badly for Baldy Boy and his brothers and sisters having to face this. And to loose a husband…. that is too scary to contemplate.

I know we’ve had our fair share of miracles but I so hope the universe has another one in store for us right now.

*My FIL lost his battle and died on December 22nd 2005. The above photo is of our girls aged almost two.

So now who else wants to do this Me Me… it’s easy really (which is probably why I managed to remember)… so step right up and claim your prize! If you play along let me know and I’ll add your link here!

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Being crammed into a small room, with people you don’t know, with just a thin curtain separating us all (sometimes one that doesn’t even reach the whole way around), listening to them sleep, or snore, or toss and turn, it’s a new kind of hell. The worry is palpable, and then there are machines and night nurses and strange noises. Sleep is not easy to come by for anyone.

Add to that the fold out beds are not exactly comfortable. They are usually old and battered. The bottom sheet never seems to stay on. The springs squeak. They are tiny, with torn vinyl and strange smells.

Don’t get me wrong… I know most of us would sleep standing up if we had to, just to be near our children when they need us. I also know that the hospitals that we’ve stayed in do a fabulous job of not only looking after our kids, but caring for us too. But funding falls short and beds for parents are at the bottom of a long long list of much more important hospital equipment.

So why am I rambling on about this?

Well I know someone, a hero, though I know she’ll hate me calling her that… Someone who has slept on many a fold out hospital bed. Someone who has seen first hand how much hospital staff care about our sick kids. Sometime who knows much more about this than any parent would ever want to…. and someone who is making a difference.

Please pop over to Tiffs blog – Three Ring Circus and read more about her efforts to raise money to buy parent beds and a fridge for the ward nurses at John Hunter Children’s Hospital.

Sure, the likelihood me ever sleeping on a fold out bed in NSW is slim to none (since we live in another state!), but I know what it’s like. I’ve been there. I can imagine how horrible it must be for those parents with longer or recurrent hospital stays. So if I can donate a few dollars to make just one parent’s hospital stay a little easier… I’m up for it!

When all of us bloggers and blog readers get together we can do amazing things.. so donate a dollar or two and make someone’s hard night a little bit easier!

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