The bit where we maybe get to breathe
As those who have been following on Facebook and Twitter have already heard at great length the last couple of weeks have been pretty shit.
Three Monday's ago (I think) we found our much loved cat Boadecia collapsed on the floor. She was elderly and diabetic so we had little hope as Jamie made the midnight dash to the after hours vet. Her blood glucose was very low but after some time on a drip she improved and for the best part of a week looked like she might recover. As time went on though she ate and drank less and less and the vet diagnosed renal failure. Anything we could have done to prolong her life would have been very short term and purely for our own benefit so we made the agonising decision to help her go peacefully. We got Boadecia and her sister Thalia, as tiny kittens, almost exactly 14 years ago, only eight months into Jamie's and my relationship. A house without her in it doesn't feel like any kind of home.
A few hours before Boadecia collapsed (although I didn't learn of it until the morning) my father also collapsed with a heart rate so low he was having seizures. After a stay in ICU it was determined that he needed a pacemaker. Because he was on Warfarin he had to wait several days in hospital before surgery so I left Jamie with the kids and the ailing cat and went up to Nelson to help. By the time I got there Dad wasn't looking too bad but Mum was still very stressed so my job was to cheer, distracted and talk her down. Fortunately dad's surgery went well and he was home with a glass of wine that evening. He's doing really well and is already able to walk further than he has in quite some time.
And while this was all going on we had to pack up our house for the builders to come in and repair our earthquake damage. We severely underestimated the effort required to pack up six and a half years of accumulated detritus and failed to ask for enough help (and what little we did have lined up fell through) then everything caught up with me and I had a very poor mental health day (not a racing off for meds level issue but a definite need for extra care of myself) so had to be quite picky about the tasks I took on. Poor Jamie landed up working through the night but everything got sorted and now we're living in a motel while half our walls and ceilings are replaced.
Finally we are able to stop for a moment. We're fitting a whole school holiday's worth of stuff that isn't packing into this last week: movies, swimming, friends, and the Buskers Festival. It's helping and I'm slowly starting to feel less brittle. I'm hoping that we've got the worst bits of the year over with early - eventually something has to be easy, right?
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.