"One, maybe two days in ITU, then seven to ten days back on the ward.."
Those words echoed in my ears for two long, terrifying weeks in ITU, and for the three and a half weeks we spent back on the ward. Number two daughter has had her scoliosis correction operation and is finally back at home.
In the eighteen years since we started to care for her I have never felt so impotent and it really wasn't a good experience. I held her hand and told her I loved her as I watched her slipping under the anaesthetic and I was there every day in ITU when she lay sedated and struggling. Not being able to help her, not being able to look after even her most basic needs, and most distressing of all, not being able to ease her pain, has been terribly upsetting.
There's one area I could help - I've been her voice, I've been able to let people know when she was in pain or simply sad, almost like an interpreter.
As I said before, she's home now and we're both getting used to a new regime, she sleeps a lot, and she can't stay in her wheelchair for more than two hours before she's worn out, but she's so happy and so much straighter, it was all worth it.
The x-rays are astonishing, her spine was so badly distorted that her right ribcage was in her pelvis, and on the left, her spine almost touched her ribs, and now she's so much straighter with two titanium rods down her spine. Feeding her is so much easier, she's able to breathe without struggling and the improvements will continue over the next year, as her body adjusts to its new shape.
I'm sitting in one of the side rooms of an orthopaedic ward in frenchay hospital tonight. My middle daughter is sleeping fairly peacefully next to me at the moment, but tomorrow morning, if all goes as planned, she'll go down to theatre for a major operation to try to straighten her spine a little. She'll be on the table for between five and seven hours, so we're not looking at anything simple.
Currently, she has a 120 degree scoliosis, making her backbone look rather like a hairpin bend and putting the right half of her ribcage into her pelvis. This doesn't make for easy breathing, squishing her right lung and stretching her left lung as it does, so the surgeon is hoping to make sufficient correction to allow her to breathe properly.
Those who know me, will know that she's not my natural daughter, but having fostered her for the last eighteen years, I think of her as one of my own, and the anxiety and fear I am feeling now is just the same as if it was one of the other two.
In some ways I'm glad her understanding is limited - she knows that she's having an operation, and she knows a bit about what that entails (she had a double hip replacement operation when she was nine), but she doesn't understand the implications of the surgery, nor does she know that the recovery time could be six months or more.
I'm doing everything I can to ensure a peaceful and stress-free time for her, and I'm determined that she won't know how worried I am because that certainly won't help her at all.
After a long time away, I'm back again, like the proverbial bad penny.
It's been a somewhat strange time, so much has changed, so many things have happened and I have now emerged, butterfly-like (ye Gods, that's a hell of a big butterfly...) into another new phase of my life.
In a year or so things will change again, but for now, I can sit relatively calmly and take stock.
#1 daughter is fairly settled in her new job, living a little way away with her boyfriend/soon-to-be-husband. They have worked everything out, aiming to get married on or around the 23rd April 2010, and probably starting a family not too long afterwards if all goes to plan (I'm WAY too young to be a granny!!!!!!). She graduated on my birthday last year, and I don't think I've ever been so chuffed.
#2 (almost) daughter is as happy as she's ever been. We've managed to keep her living with us, though at times it was a bit of a battle, and now things are settling down into a peaceful routine again. She made the transition from school to day centre very easily, and is having the most fantastic time making new friends and having fun. She has a new respite placement too, one where the people running it actually care for her. She's safe, loved and lovely, and I couldn't be more pleased. The one blip on the horizon is the scoliosis operation scheduled for February 5th - 7 hours under anaesthetic scares me to death, but because her understanding is limited, she remains blissfully ignorant of my fears for her.
#3 daughter has a social life that defies belief - she goes out more than she stays in, staying with friends, going to gigs and festivals, and working now too - and still she finds time to study for her A levels, and run a campaign to become one of the school officers. She's an amazing girl, the change of schools could have been a time of anxiety, but she entered into the challenge and has grown beyond belief.
I'm so proud of all three of them.
As for me, after 6 months of tests and worrying about my eyesight, I seem to be in the clear for now. I have to wear glasses all the time (at least I do if I want to see things in focus....), but I can handle that as I have to handle to stockings etc..
Happy days ahead....
