family stuffs
We lost my cousin Gareth this week, Wednesday night. We knew it was coming, we’d known for a year, he lived a good six months longer than originally predicted, but in the end it was really fast. I was watching an American presidential inauguration for the first time in my life when the message came through that he'd developed serious breathing difficulties and been taken to hospital, and by 10pm it was all over.
He was tested for covid on admission to hospital and it came back positive, so he'll probably go down as a covid death, but he was also end stage lung cancer already living on borrowed time, so the main implication of the positive covid test is that his wife and children will now have to isolate as they grieve.
Three kids aged 15, 12 and 7. After his diagnosis he fought tooth and nail to buy as much time with them as he possibly could. He made it to another birthday and he lived long enough to enjoy a final Christmas with his family. I hope those memories are of comfort to them.
This picture was taken in Vienna in December 2019 when Gareth was celebrating his 50th birthday. The calm before the storm. A week later he was in hospital, by Christmas he'd been diagnosed, and just 13 months later he is gone. Throughout his illness, he always worked hard to maintain an upbeat outlook. We've been having weekly extended family Zoom sessions since the pandemic began, and Gareth came to them for as long as he could, even though speech was one of the first things he lost to the brain tumours. We have a silly little quiz most weeks and when he was there, Gareth almost always won - even when he could barely spit a sentence out! I spoke to him last just before Christmas, when he was waiting to have cement injected into his spine, which was being eaten away by the cancer, and despite the pain he was still as cheerful as ever.
This picture has always been a favourite. Little cousins all in a row. This was 1977, I was the baby here. It seems strange to think that two of these cousins are now gone. We lost Paul (4th from left) in a road accident more than 20 years ago. And now Gareth (the little blond boy 2nd from right).
Pandemic restrictions mean it is unlikely the extended family will be able to attend Gareth's funeral, just as we were unable to join him for his lockdown wedding back in the summer, and that grieves me, but I know that many other families around the nation and around the world are going through the same thing. Gareth's own brother is in the same position, living as he does on the other side of the world in Japan.
Their other brother, incidentally, also has covid just at the moment. And my aunt is struggling, having now lost both her husband and her youngest child to cancer.
The other thing that happened on Wednesday was that my dad had another big bleed in his bad eye - the same thing happened just over a year ago, and he ended up losing part of his vision in that one eye, so it's a big concern. He had initial treatment at the hospital yesterday and is now waiting to have laser surgery in about five weeks, once the blood behind his eye has cleared.
Never rains but it pours, right. Meanwhile, my sister has had a full medical ahead of her coloscopy, which we hope will happen soon.
And Layla-May has been diagnosed with asthma and is on inhalers.
But apart from that, everything is fine! How is everyone else coping with this latest lockdown, pandemic, floods, January blues, and all the rest of it? This entry was originally posted at https://llywela.dreamwidth.org/1052060.html. Please feel free to comment either here, or there using OpenID.
He was tested for covid on admission to hospital and it came back positive, so he'll probably go down as a covid death, but he was also end stage lung cancer already living on borrowed time, so the main implication of the positive covid test is that his wife and children will now have to isolate as they grieve.
Three kids aged 15, 12 and 7. After his diagnosis he fought tooth and nail to buy as much time with them as he possibly could. He made it to another birthday and he lived long enough to enjoy a final Christmas with his family. I hope those memories are of comfort to them.
This picture was taken in Vienna in December 2019 when Gareth was celebrating his 50th birthday. The calm before the storm. A week later he was in hospital, by Christmas he'd been diagnosed, and just 13 months later he is gone. Throughout his illness, he always worked hard to maintain an upbeat outlook. We've been having weekly extended family Zoom sessions since the pandemic began, and Gareth came to them for as long as he could, even though speech was one of the first things he lost to the brain tumours. We have a silly little quiz most weeks and when he was there, Gareth almost always won - even when he could barely spit a sentence out! I spoke to him last just before Christmas, when he was waiting to have cement injected into his spine, which was being eaten away by the cancer, and despite the pain he was still as cheerful as ever.
This picture has always been a favourite. Little cousins all in a row. This was 1977, I was the baby here. It seems strange to think that two of these cousins are now gone. We lost Paul (4th from left) in a road accident more than 20 years ago. And now Gareth (the little blond boy 2nd from right).
Pandemic restrictions mean it is unlikely the extended family will be able to attend Gareth's funeral, just as we were unable to join him for his lockdown wedding back in the summer, and that grieves me, but I know that many other families around the nation and around the world are going through the same thing. Gareth's own brother is in the same position, living as he does on the other side of the world in Japan.
Their other brother, incidentally, also has covid just at the moment. And my aunt is struggling, having now lost both her husband and her youngest child to cancer.
The other thing that happened on Wednesday was that my dad had another big bleed in his bad eye - the same thing happened just over a year ago, and he ended up losing part of his vision in that one eye, so it's a big concern. He had initial treatment at the hospital yesterday and is now waiting to have laser surgery in about five weeks, once the blood behind his eye has cleared.
Never rains but it pours, right. Meanwhile, my sister has had a full medical ahead of her coloscopy, which we hope will happen soon.
And Layla-May has been diagnosed with asthma and is on inhalers.
But apart from that, everything is fine! How is everyone else coping with this latest lockdown, pandemic, floods, January blues, and all the rest of it? This entry was originally posted at https://llywela.dreamwidth.org/1052060.html. Please feel free to comment either here, or there using OpenID.