When I first heard about people starting blogs and sharing their innermost private thoughts on the internet these days it made me think how weird it would be to share that aspect of your life.
When it was suggested that I start my own, detailing what I’d been through with my mother and her illness at the time I’d scoffed and thought I personally couldn’t share this story, that no one would want to know what it was like to take care of someone who had multiple illnesses and the only outcome was a peaceful death. I wasn’t brave enough.
But then mum who was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease caught a common cold off of a family friend and she was hospitalized.
They said that it was just the next phase of her disease and they would be discharging her home to my care. Which as someone with a basic background in medicine. As well as being the person to care for her for ten years I didn’t think anything of it.
But sadly that wasn’t going to be the case. The day I went to pick her up and take her home she couldn’t breathe, she was sitting in the chair in the corner of her hospital room fighting to breathe with literally every breath she took.
The very blunt, and kinda really rude doctor told us then and there to contact family, and say our goodbyes because she wasn’t going to see tomorrow.
That was 7 days ago.
My stubborn, horrid, beautifully crazy mother didn’t die that night. Even now as I’m starting this blog she’s laying beside me in the chair still fighting.
And it’s selfish of me I know to pray for a miracle, especially when it’s been a long time since I’ve thought of a god, but I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want to have to face the world without the woman I’ve literally spent 24/7 with for years.
In the last week, the world has lost its shine. It’s no longer bright and filled with wonder.
It’s a dull, cruel place with no joy to be seen.
And I need to share not just her story but my own. The things we went through not just together but apart, what we us a whole family gave up just to be with mum.
To let others in mum’s situation know that its ok to be frightened, and to feel that no one understands what you’re going through. That its ok for the carer to be angry sometimes or need to leave the room to have a solid cry. That hopeless feeling welling up inside you its normal.
And that at the end of the day, when all is said and done, there is always someone you can talk to about what you’re feeling.
Thank you
Haylee B.
Haylee's blog 