That’s Life

                    ‘That’s Life’!   

       ‘One minute’ life and everything and everyone that I knew in this World seemed alright and I briefly and naively thought that I could relax enough to say “at last, I think I’ve got ‘this life’ ‘figured out’ and I’ll continue with what I am doing because this formula seems to be the right one! 

       My life before had been a life of poverty and unnecessary stress ‘as well as’ regular and painful migraine headaches that began soon after I suffered a head injury at the young age of about 5-6 years old.

       My life would begin in a nice large house and with both a Mum and a Dad, but they separated when I was a little ‘toddler’ and we lived for many years afterwards in poverty and uncertainty! 

       I suffered badly with regular and sickly migraine headaches all through the rest of my childhood, and as I grew older they gradually became less frequent and I thought that they were connected with my own pubescent ‘stage’, and when I eventually left home or ‘flew from the nest’, I was 24 years old, I would create a new lifestyle with my Fiancée and severe migraines were now very rare and I could finally relax in our first property together - which was a reasonably sized two bedroom bungalow with one previous owner who clearly favoured the colour pink and wasn’t keen on gardening- “perhaps she was previously a jungle living pink pig”? So, to say that our home needed work would have been an understatement, but with no serious issues to deal with, we could concentrate both our finances and time towards potential purchases!

      Thankfully my Fiancée and I both had good jobs because there would always be a very regular demand on our finances to pay for utilities, groceries and other household expenses, which were before unseen when I lived at home- ‘WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD’! 

      ‘This World had something in it called RESPONSIBILITY’!……… ‘YES’, this new World that I had recently entered into wasn’t as cosy or as blissful financially as the one that I had recently and willingly vacated and it was without a chef, a cleaner, a laundry maid, a gardener or a chauffeur, who were otherwise known as ‘Mum and Dad’! 

       This was a very demanding World now and both my financial and physical capabilities would be tested and ‘stretched’, especially because of the demands for buying and furnishing our new home, and so an untimely demand from my employers to arrange and complete a thorough annual stock check to ‘balance the books’ was about as welcome as a punch in the face! But this requirement would be part of my job as a Stock Controller and I knew that this annual duty would be very long and stressful because I had previously been involved in one before this recent promotion!

       With the extra physical and mental pressure that both work and home ownership would bring I would then receive the very sad news that my Nan had died and my mum, who wanted to attend the funeral, had recently acquired two Daschund puppies and asked me if I would look after them whilst she was away, and I, ‘of course’, would say yes ….”I mean, what harm can two little puppy dogs do”?….. “Below are just a few adjectives and verbs that might help you create your own story”-

‘Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark’ (‘24/7’), ‘scratch, scratch, dig, dig’(“that was mostly during the night on our newly painted doors and on the wooden flooring”), whining several times during the night to let them out to empty their bladders and the need to take them out for regular and vigorous exercise would be necessary ‘in order’ for me to attempt to get a well needed good night’s sleep, and so, I would walk the dogs in the morning before I went to work, I would then drive home in my lunch break to walk and run with the dogs, which I would then again do after my evening meal before their final walk of the day that was at about 10 o’clock, before I could finally and briefly relax to enjoy my very own peaceful hour before my own bedtime and before the new day began again! 

       I was physically ‘shattered’ and I had a lot on my mind BUT during the twilight hours do you think that those dogs cared…….’Bark, bark, bark’ and at least 140 barks ‘more’ could very clearly be heard and that was soon followed with a whine and then another whine and more whinging’ that could not be ignored and so, believing that they were desperate for the toilet, I would let them outside whilst I stood around ‘half-naked’ for twenty minutes and endured an annoying sequence of stopping to think,‘do I really want to go out now’? ‘I know I’ll just annoy him some more by going ‘in and out’…’in and out’ and I’ll continue with this routine for about twenty minutes before they eventually ‘sprayed it all about’ and during that stressful time they continually decorated my previously green and well maintained grass with small round circles of yellow that would appear soon after their relieving times along with little blobs of brown that together created a design worthy to be on a camouflage outfit! 

      The puppies(“well, one in particular”!) briefly paused from their own personal ‘bark-a-thon’ to sleep, which would be a welcome relief and would allow us a few hours of blissful peace before the constant barking could be heard again in the ‘early hours’ of the morning and despite my angry and frustrated shouts from my bed I leapt up so quickly in annoyance that I immediately lost my balance and collapsed backwards onto the bed and this action could ‘well have been’ a warning sign of something big about to happen? I would have further days of this unsettling behaviour and my mums eventual return from her mum’s funeral was a very welcoming sight.

      Anyway, I digress from this true story, although the above incident might have been a warning sign for a big and stressful occurrence that would soon arise and this lack of concentration is just one symptom after having it!

      We enjoyed our very first Christmas in our new home together, which had now been for ‘just over’ five months now and we were about to celebrate a New Year but any plans for that day or evening would be quickly and dramatically altered by a sudden, rare and very unexpected brain haemorrhage and after that early diagnosis from a doctor an ambulance was immediately called for and from the initial hospital, that was close by, I was flown in an air-ambulance to a larger hospital that had better facilities to operate on my head/brain. 

       That morning would never be unintentionally erased from my mind because I ‘live with’ it’s disabling affect every single day!

       Instead of my Fiancée and I spending the evening celebrating the future together in our new home on ‘that’ New Year’s Eve of 1992, my fiancee devotedly sat by my bedside in a small ITU(‘intensive treatment unit’) ward in a City that was about seventy-miles away from our home! Apparently, the likelihood of me surviving this type of brain haemorrhage were very very doubtful but my Fiancée remained by my side and never gave up on me or stopped believing that I would survive! 

      Thankfully (“and obviously”!)I did survive and after spending nearly a month in a coma I could clearly see my desperate state, which would include the worrying sight of thin tubes that came from inside my torso and ‘snaked’ their way across my bed into illuminated machinery that would occasionally make a noise, that would then alert a nurse, who would then attempt to reassure me that everything was alright! I couldn’t tell anyway because this haemorrhage/stroke seriously affected my sense of feeling and I would have falsely been awarded a bravery medal or prize because I couldn’t feel anything! 

      My brain, ‘or the bodies computer’, had nearly shut down completely but instead it needed to be reprogrammed and there would be many abilities to try and regain, ‘like’, learning to read again, learning to write again(and I think that I’ve achieved that, although ‘some people’ might say “that’s debatable”?) but physically there was something that could never be regained, despite years and years of extensive physiotherapy along with my determination, but I could not recover the ‘art’ of walking again!(“it’s overrated anyway and it wears your shoes out”!)

      ‘My World now’ mostly exists behind a computer screen(“which I was initially and gradually introduced to whilst I was in hospital”) and along with the invention and introduction of ‘liquid soap’ have both become regular and reliable friends that make my housebound days ‘more bearable’ and years later I made the fatal mistake of reading up on my prognosis and it didn’t bode well, with survivors of this type of brain haemorrhage being very rare and generally not living beyond their fifties and I am now 55 years old BUT I will never complain, “and never have”, because I was in three hospitals for 10 months and I saw some very poorly people of all ages and, sadly, some of those people never survived beyond the week or even the day!

      My illness is blessed with the daily love and affection from my wife(“my Fiancée that devotedly remained by my side”) with whom we had a baby boy and now we have a little puppy, who can be just as demanding as a baby but unfortunately unlike a baby he doesn’t have a nappy/‘diaper’!

      I can manage my illness relatively easily now because of my initial psychological talks, my own observations of those that are ‘worse-off’ than myself and because I have the close friendships from my wife and son and our families.

      “Never put your health before wealth because I could have a fleet of cars BUT I wouldn’t be able to drive any of them and I could have a big mansion with acres of land BUT I wouldn’t be able to walk around them or ‘truly’ enjoy them”! 

      “Bless you for reading this and look after yourselves and others people”.