2011 Retrospective
Besides being a complete failure of blogging, 2011 can be describes as the year I could have done without.
January was the floods, of course which I did actually blog about, and which thankfully weren't as bad as they could have been (though quite bad enough for the people directly affected - I was one of the lucky ones).
February was spent house hunting. I moved closer in to the city, following the relocation of my office from the Bayside to the inner suburbs, as the commute would have been longer than I was prepared to tolerate otherwise. Being in competition with all the returning uni students *and* the people who needed temporary accommodation while their flooded houses were being cleaned and repairedmade things a bit scary - quite a few of the places I inspected had 40 or 50 other people show up for the 15 minute inspection-times. The rent I can afford gets me quite a bit less in this area than it did way out on the city's edge, so I am back in a non-airconditioned flat, which is a bit cosy after the townhouse I had last time, but a reasonable size for one, and close to public transport.
I moved in the last weekend of February. The removalists showed up with just a little truck, assuming that a single-person household would fit in that easily... which lasted just up until they saw the pile of boxes that was my book collection, followed by the fabric stash boxes and the far, far too many potplants! They did manage to get all the furniture and heavy boxes packed in, but I ended up having to hire a trailer and move the remaining boxes and all the plants myself. I don't think I've ever done quite that much heavy lifting in a short period of time before, and would be quite content to never have to do it again.
March was spent unpacking things, and adjusting to working in an office building again. It's a nice enough building, and not actually a cube-farm, but it *is* mostly open-plan, and the grumblings of many researchers who have spent their entire careers so far with private offices in a purpose-built lab by the water's edge was quite loud!
April was Rowany Festival. I had been looking forward to spending the week onsite, catching up with old friends and generally having fun. Unfortunately my Dad had to go into surgery over Easter to have part of his liver removed: he was diagnosed with colon cancer in late 2010, and appeared to be recovering well following removal of a large intestinal tumour, but scans were showing a few spots on his liver that the oncologist wanted to have gone. Two bouts of major abdominal surgery in six months is no joke, and I ended up dividing my Easter weekend between the Festival site and visiting Dad in the intensive care ward. Being a wet year, Festival was a bit of a mud pit, and hospitals are never fun, so it wasn't exactly the break I had been hoping for.
May must have been quiet, because I don't remember anything much happening. I took photos of the planetary conjunction, which was intersting to see, but not earthshaking. Looking back, it was the only 'normal life' month in the whole year.
June saw a visit from Mum and Dad to my new place during the long weekend. He was tired, but looking much recovered and glad of a few days in the warm.
I replaced my old car, ending up with a new version of the same model. My siblings loudly proclaimed that boring, but hey - it handles in a familiar way, but has better safety, and a non-dodgy clutch, so that's pretty much what I was after. The new one is the first brand-new car I have ever owned.
July unfortunately saw Dad's condition deteriorate again. He started to have severe nausea, gut pain, and problems with fluid buildup in the abdominal cavity (ascites). This is apparently not uncommon after liver surgery, and a biopsy showed no trace of cancerous cells, so it was put down to post-surgical complications, and the fluid was drained off in a series of outpatient procedures (two or three litres every week). He and Mum had to cancel a planned holiday to Fiji at the last minute, which they were both upset by - it had been planned for ages and Sydney was having a freezing winter, so the warmth would have been very welcome.
I visited Mum and Dad for a weekend at the end of July, mostly to be in town for a baby shower for my sister's third child. Dad wasn't at all well, and Mum was wearing herself out looking after him.
In early August I had a call from my brother saying that Mum needed help, and could I come down, followed not ten minutes later by a call from Mum saying that she had taken Dad into the hospital with serious dehydration. I flew to Sydney the following day, expecting to stay for a week to give Mum a hand.
After a few days, it was clear that Dad was going to need to be in hospital a bit longer, so I planned to extend my stay another week. I originally hoped to fly back to Brisbane for an SCA event that I had been rehearsing music for, but couldn't get flights at a decent price, so I had to bail out on that. Luckily, as it turned out! My newest niece was born on the weekend I would have been away, and I watched her two older brothers overnight. My sister had a fast and easy birth. It was 10:30pm when she gave in and headed to the hospital, 11pm when she got there, and the baby was born at 11:20pm! The midwife only just made it to her in time, but everything else went smoothly, and by 6am she was demanding to go home. I took the boys in to meet their new sister at a slightly more civilised hour, and they were all appropriately besotted :).
Later that same morning, though, I had a call from Mum saying that Dad's PET scan results had come back, and his doctor wanted to talk to the whole family together, which rather put a sudden damper on the day. My sister got herself released from the maternity ward, caught two hours sleep, then we all switched hospitals for the rest of the afternoon. The news wasn't good: the PET scan was showing tumours all over the lining of the abdominal cavity and the outside of most organs, which had cause multiple intestinal blockages. This is a very agressive form of metastasis (effectively peritoneal mesothelioma, but without the link to asbestos). There was nothing more that could be done in terms of treatment, and Dad could have between two days and two weeks left.
Dad was moved into palliative care, and the whole family dropped everything to spend time with him. I told work I didn't know when I'd be back, and am extremely fortunate in my employer, in that they allowed me to take whatever time I needed as carer's leave. Mum moved into the hospital, sleeping on a sofa-bed in Dad's room, and I looked after the house and the cat and attempting to coordinate visiting friends and relatives. My brother and his family came down for weeks at a time, but were in the middle of renovating their house, so had to go backwards and forwards a bit to ensure they would have someplace livable to go back to. My sister tried to adjust to having a new baby in the house at the same time as her husband's new business was just starting to ramp up *and* having to drive across town to the hospital as often as could be managed.
We called as many of Dad's old friends as we could, and asked them to visit him, which I think he appreciated. I know he was glad to get to spend at least a little time with his new grandaughter:
It was not remotely an easy time. Dad lasted far longer than expected - nearly two months - and while we all treasured every moment, having so many lives on hold and anticipating his loss was really difficult for everyone. During those two months we had additional drama with my brother's youngest daughter hospitalised twice with convulsions, and my only surviving grandmother (Dad's mum) arriving at casualty one afternoon after taking a header off a flight of stairs. We had more of the family spending a night at the hospital than at home for a few days that week.
Dad passed away on September 26, aged 62, after being in a coma for the previous three days. Knowing it's coming didn't make things any easier. The funeral was huge - Dad had been a volunteer firefighter since he was 16, and was actively involved right up to the end (the State RFS commissioner came to present Dad with his long-service medal in the hospital, and got a lecture on safety improvements that should be made to all fire trucks, which he duly promised to follow up on). About 200 firefighters showed up to be a guard of honour, plus scouting and guiding people, and friends and family from all over. I'll be forever grateful that many of these people did get to visit him in hospital and reminisce in person: wakes are all very well, but it's important that Dad knew how much everyone valued him as well.
I returned to Brisbane in mid October, slightly more than two months after I left expecting to be gone for a week. Mum is now on her own in the big family home (except for Dad's cat - but she's not a cat person herself), and is having a hard time adjusting to that even without her grief. She's been seeing a counsellor, which I think has helped, and several neighbours and old friends of hers have been doing as much as they can to keep her socialising a little, but it's going to be a difficult transition. My Nana, Dad' mum, is taking things hard as well, and all of the rest of the family are still rather lost.
I've kept myself occupied with work - they were understanding about time off, but of course none of the work goes away, so I now have 12 months worth of project work to finish in 10 months. This has been complicated by some problems with the air quality in the new office building: people have been experiencing bad smells, headaches and nausea, which has led to our wing being evacuated for weeks at a time. I worked out of meeting rooms, the library and the office coffee shop for a week after getting back, then from home for several weeks more, which was all quite isolating, and not especially productive.
In November I went back to working out of the ofice once the airflow was increased, but we've had the fire escape door to outside propped open during daylight ever since. If things haven't improved over the shutdown, we may be relocated across the city for six months or so.
Early December brought my Nana's 90th birthday. We had as much of a party a party as we could manage, using the restaurant booking Mum and Dad had made nearly a year ago for the celebration of what would have been their 40th wedding anniversary. It was a ridiculously hot day, and there were mist-sprinklers above our outdoor table to try and mitigate that. This was not a happy combination with the fancy cake!
Late December was Christmas, of course. None of the immediate familty felt able to face Mum and Dad's house, so they all came up this way and we spent 5 days at the beach. This sort of worked - the actual beach was closed until the 27th due to very high swells, but the resort had a good pool, so we counted the trip a success on points.
Being the first time I've stopped for the last six months or more, I'm now, perhaps inevitably, spending New Year's Eve fighting the lurgy, which is hopefully not an omen of things to come.
May the year to come be an improvement in all respects. May family and friends be healthy and happy, the weather be kind, and the earth steady. Best wishes to you all for 2012.
January was the floods, of course which I did actually blog about, and which thankfully weren't as bad as they could have been (though quite bad enough for the people directly affected - I was one of the lucky ones).
February was spent house hunting. I moved closer in to the city, following the relocation of my office from the Bayside to the inner suburbs, as the commute would have been longer than I was prepared to tolerate otherwise. Being in competition with all the returning uni students *and* the people who needed temporary accommodation while their flooded houses were being cleaned and repairedmade things a bit scary - quite a few of the places I inspected had 40 or 50 other people show up for the 15 minute inspection-times. The rent I can afford gets me quite a bit less in this area than it did way out on the city's edge, so I am back in a non-airconditioned flat, which is a bit cosy after the townhouse I had last time, but a reasonable size for one, and close to public transport.
I moved in the last weekend of February. The removalists showed up with just a little truck, assuming that a single-person household would fit in that easily... which lasted just up until they saw the pile of boxes that was my book collection, followed by the fabric stash boxes and the far, far too many potplants! They did manage to get all the furniture and heavy boxes packed in, but I ended up having to hire a trailer and move the remaining boxes and all the plants myself. I don't think I've ever done quite that much heavy lifting in a short period of time before, and would be quite content to never have to do it again.
March was spent unpacking things, and adjusting to working in an office building again. It's a nice enough building, and not actually a cube-farm, but it *is* mostly open-plan, and the grumblings of many researchers who have spent their entire careers so far with private offices in a purpose-built lab by the water's edge was quite loud!
April was Rowany Festival. I had been looking forward to spending the week onsite, catching up with old friends and generally having fun. Unfortunately my Dad had to go into surgery over Easter to have part of his liver removed: he was diagnosed with colon cancer in late 2010, and appeared to be recovering well following removal of a large intestinal tumour, but scans were showing a few spots on his liver that the oncologist wanted to have gone. Two bouts of major abdominal surgery in six months is no joke, and I ended up dividing my Easter weekend between the Festival site and visiting Dad in the intensive care ward. Being a wet year, Festival was a bit of a mud pit, and hospitals are never fun, so it wasn't exactly the break I had been hoping for.
May must have been quiet, because I don't remember anything much happening. I took photos of the planetary conjunction, which was intersting to see, but not earthshaking. Looking back, it was the only 'normal life' month in the whole year.
June saw a visit from Mum and Dad to my new place during the long weekend. He was tired, but looking much recovered and glad of a few days in the warm.
I replaced my old car, ending up with a new version of the same model. My siblings loudly proclaimed that boring, but hey - it handles in a familiar way, but has better safety, and a non-dodgy clutch, so that's pretty much what I was after. The new one is the first brand-new car I have ever owned.
July unfortunately saw Dad's condition deteriorate again. He started to have severe nausea, gut pain, and problems with fluid buildup in the abdominal cavity (ascites). This is apparently not uncommon after liver surgery, and a biopsy showed no trace of cancerous cells, so it was put down to post-surgical complications, and the fluid was drained off in a series of outpatient procedures (two or three litres every week). He and Mum had to cancel a planned holiday to Fiji at the last minute, which they were both upset by - it had been planned for ages and Sydney was having a freezing winter, so the warmth would have been very welcome.
I visited Mum and Dad for a weekend at the end of July, mostly to be in town for a baby shower for my sister's third child. Dad wasn't at all well, and Mum was wearing herself out looking after him.
In early August I had a call from my brother saying that Mum needed help, and could I come down, followed not ten minutes later by a call from Mum saying that she had taken Dad into the hospital with serious dehydration. I flew to Sydney the following day, expecting to stay for a week to give Mum a hand.
After a few days, it was clear that Dad was going to need to be in hospital a bit longer, so I planned to extend my stay another week. I originally hoped to fly back to Brisbane for an SCA event that I had been rehearsing music for, but couldn't get flights at a decent price, so I had to bail out on that. Luckily, as it turned out! My newest niece was born on the weekend I would have been away, and I watched her two older brothers overnight. My sister had a fast and easy birth. It was 10:30pm when she gave in and headed to the hospital, 11pm when she got there, and the baby was born at 11:20pm! The midwife only just made it to her in time, but everything else went smoothly, and by 6am she was demanding to go home. I took the boys in to meet their new sister at a slightly more civilised hour, and they were all appropriately besotted :).
Later that same morning, though, I had a call from Mum saying that Dad's PET scan results had come back, and his doctor wanted to talk to the whole family together, which rather put a sudden damper on the day. My sister got herself released from the maternity ward, caught two hours sleep, then we all switched hospitals for the rest of the afternoon. The news wasn't good: the PET scan was showing tumours all over the lining of the abdominal cavity and the outside of most organs, which had cause multiple intestinal blockages. This is a very agressive form of metastasis (effectively peritoneal mesothelioma, but without the link to asbestos). There was nothing more that could be done in terms of treatment, and Dad could have between two days and two weeks left.
Dad was moved into palliative care, and the whole family dropped everything to spend time with him. I told work I didn't know when I'd be back, and am extremely fortunate in my employer, in that they allowed me to take whatever time I needed as carer's leave. Mum moved into the hospital, sleeping on a sofa-bed in Dad's room, and I looked after the house and the cat and attempting to coordinate visiting friends and relatives. My brother and his family came down for weeks at a time, but were in the middle of renovating their house, so had to go backwards and forwards a bit to ensure they would have someplace livable to go back to. My sister tried to adjust to having a new baby in the house at the same time as her husband's new business was just starting to ramp up *and* having to drive across town to the hospital as often as could be managed.
We called as many of Dad's old friends as we could, and asked them to visit him, which I think he appreciated. I know he was glad to get to spend at least a little time with his new grandaughter:
It was not remotely an easy time. Dad lasted far longer than expected - nearly two months - and while we all treasured every moment, having so many lives on hold and anticipating his loss was really difficult for everyone. During those two months we had additional drama with my brother's youngest daughter hospitalised twice with convulsions, and my only surviving grandmother (Dad's mum) arriving at casualty one afternoon after taking a header off a flight of stairs. We had more of the family spending a night at the hospital than at home for a few days that week.
Dad passed away on September 26, aged 62, after being in a coma for the previous three days. Knowing it's coming didn't make things any easier. The funeral was huge - Dad had been a volunteer firefighter since he was 16, and was actively involved right up to the end (the State RFS commissioner came to present Dad with his long-service medal in the hospital, and got a lecture on safety improvements that should be made to all fire trucks, which he duly promised to follow up on). About 200 firefighters showed up to be a guard of honour, plus scouting and guiding people, and friends and family from all over. I'll be forever grateful that many of these people did get to visit him in hospital and reminisce in person: wakes are all very well, but it's important that Dad knew how much everyone valued him as well.
I returned to Brisbane in mid October, slightly more than two months after I left expecting to be gone for a week. Mum is now on her own in the big family home (except for Dad's cat - but she's not a cat person herself), and is having a hard time adjusting to that even without her grief. She's been seeing a counsellor, which I think has helped, and several neighbours and old friends of hers have been doing as much as they can to keep her socialising a little, but it's going to be a difficult transition. My Nana, Dad' mum, is taking things hard as well, and all of the rest of the family are still rather lost.
I've kept myself occupied with work - they were understanding about time off, but of course none of the work goes away, so I now have 12 months worth of project work to finish in 10 months. This has been complicated by some problems with the air quality in the new office building: people have been experiencing bad smells, headaches and nausea, which has led to our wing being evacuated for weeks at a time. I worked out of meeting rooms, the library and the office coffee shop for a week after getting back, then from home for several weeks more, which was all quite isolating, and not especially productive.
In November I went back to working out of the ofice once the airflow was increased, but we've had the fire escape door to outside propped open during daylight ever since. If things haven't improved over the shutdown, we may be relocated across the city for six months or so.
Early December brought my Nana's 90th birthday. We had as much of a party a party as we could manage, using the restaurant booking Mum and Dad had made nearly a year ago for the celebration of what would have been their 40th wedding anniversary. It was a ridiculously hot day, and there were mist-sprinklers above our outdoor table to try and mitigate that. This was not a happy combination with the fancy cake!
Late December was Christmas, of course. None of the immediate familty felt able to face Mum and Dad's house, so they all came up this way and we spent 5 days at the beach. This sort of worked - the actual beach was closed until the 27th due to very high swells, but the resort had a good pool, so we counted the trip a success on points.
Being the first time I've stopped for the last six months or more, I'm now, perhaps inevitably, spending New Year's Eve fighting the lurgy, which is hopefully not an omen of things to come.
May the year to come be an improvement in all respects. May family and friends be healthy and happy, the weather be kind, and the earth steady. Best wishes to you all for 2012.