Time heals , they say

Time heals they say.......

Back story - Tues 22nd May 2002 my second daughter Eloise was a fit and well 21mth old in nursery for the day. Wednesday 23rd May she was in intensive care ventilated with a barely functioning heart because a virus (later to be confirmed as hand, foot and mouth) had caused myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy, she was fighting for her life.

I don’t actively feel pain because of the 23rd of May 2002, but the memories, when they do cross my mind, evoke a myriad of emotions. I have hoped for indifference, to be able to let go of past hurts. I’ve found that the hurt shifts, it bends and lays dormant…but the hurt stays, just in a different way. My pain is from my memories and no amount of therapy will erase them.

Time is interesting. Time can be my greatest friend, and my enemy. 17 years have  passed but my mind is still triggered regardless of time. Time has brought me so much happiness , my beautiful children, my friends, all the wonderful things I get to see and experience. I still grieve for the life I thought I’d have with Eloise,  I’m not consumed by it but it remains. Just yesterday I said I was fed up with chasing hospitals, GPS, nurses for appointments, blood test results, who is doing what with the blood samples that were taken. I want someone else to do it but there is just me. I get tired of it, tired of a system that never communicates within itself , tired of everything being so complicated, tired of explaining, tired of assumptions , just generally fucked off ! Obviously this is then followed up with my old favourite guilt ! Time hasn’t erased those feelings either, has time run out? 

Time has taught me a few lessons over the past 17 years, I never thought I’d be sat here writing this with Eloise upstairs on her computer an 18 year old student currently doing her A’levels . In the beginning I never saw a future for her, I didn’t see her surviving the night she was that ill. Now we know she’ll be starting a degree course in September just like her peers. You know I love a musical so I guess time has shown me that “the show must go on.” I had to pick myself up when all I wanted to do was lie there , silent, numb, broken and alone.  

 I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve told me that time is a great healer. I know I’ve avoided using the phrase especially to my bereaved friends, the pain of losing someone will never heal completely, in my opinion. 17 years have passed and I’ve not healed, the pain is still there but it is less. However when I’m triggered the flashbacks are vivid, the conversations from that day word perfect, the dragging fear , the suffocating feeling, life changed forever. I’m scarred , the wound will remain now. My whole life plan changed with the results of Eloise’s chest X-ray and subsequent echo scan. Originally I was locked into my sadness, I found it hard to go on with my life but I did. I put on a bloody good show, no one would have known how traumatised I was. My fault I didn’t want to talk, so I didn’t want anyone to ask if I was ok, I didn’t want to upset anyone else as I found it just meant that I had to support them emotionally too, I became the strong one. Inside I continue to grieve to this very day, fate can be an absolute bitch ! 

I do look after my wound, with my thoughts, my inner will and by keeping myself in the present moment as much as possible. By living for the day I don’t think too much about the past as I have never wanted this event to define my life, it changed it but it doesn’t own it. Today I’ll be honest my wound will give me pain, it will haunt me like a movie on replay.  It’s just a day and it will pass. So while time hasn’t been a great healer for me, I have learnt that time is now. 

The Other Life

The other life.

May is here again, a beautiful month full of hope for sunny days and blue skies. Yet it’s a month which holds memories of my darkest days, my black days, the day my life changed forever. At the time I thought these dark days had settled in forever. I didn’t think I could be happy again or that life would return to my version of normal. Of course like right now my sunny happy days can have a shadow cast over them. I’m being taken back to those awful days as the anniversary of when my world collapsed is drawing nearer. I didn’t know for many, many years after the event that what I was feeling right now was due to post traumatic stress disorder. I feel myself pulling back a little, lost in thought, recalling , revisiting, asking why, tears aren’t far away and my heart keeps racing. I’ll be ok, the days will keep coming and then the ones I dread will pass. I’ll distract myself, I’ll reassure, I’ll carry on, I’ll go through the motions but during the night the hours will be longer, the memories more focused , the pain more intense but Morning will come again it always does. 

     This has been my life now for 17 years, the other life is a distant memory really.  I try to recall it. Married mother of two little girls, working part time as a nurse and a husband who worked away all week. Was I just going through the motions every day, week, month. We’d just moved from a flat into a house the month before Eloise was taken ill.  What would have happened if Eloise hadn’t had myocarditis? Where would we be?  Would she have been leaving home in September to go to university? Would I have had any other further children? Would I be divorced ? Was I happy?  Unanswered questions that will remain that way.

            When people say if they went back in time they’d not change a thing is that true? I find this difficult as of course I would love Eloise to have her own healthy heart inside her but this transplant journey has taught me so much. It’s taught me to enjoy every day, to make each day happy, to make memories, to say yes to opportunities , to take nothing for granted, it’s taught me who my friends are, it’s shown me strangers can give you the most precious gift in the world. It’s shown how strong I can be, how fiercely I can fight for my child. It’s shown my passion, it’s shown me determination. I have a purpose. So many important life lessons, so I live differently , I cope differently using the scale of I nearly lost a child so I can cope with x, y, z.  

          Tough things have been learnt too I know how fragile life is, I grieve for myself, for my daughter, for an uncomplicated life . I grieve for losing my ignorance , I didn’t really understand organ donation, didn’t really think that time would run out before a donor was found. I’m terrified too, scared of something happening to Eloise, anxious for every appointment, looking for reassurance that her donor heart remains perfectly healthy. During my darkest days I can’t stop myself thinking about what if she wasn’t here, it tries to destroy me but I don’t let it. I run (not literally obviously ! ) back to the present and embrace the day I’m living. 

      These days I rarely return to the darkest of times, the shadows are fleeting and I can deal with them.  The life I’m living now maybe different than the one I was experiencing 17 years ago. The light shines differently now, it highlights and enhances what is important in life. It illuminates who and what is most important in my World. I have adapted to this new light.