Homecoming, Part II

At the risk of awakening the jinx pixies, Tony is finally home.  We pulled off the escape early yesterday afternoon in the rain.

As seen through the eyes of our 9 year-old granddaughter this morning.  Note my hanging glasses.

It will take a few weeks of cardiac rehab for Tony to regain strength - we are taking it one step at a time.  He even managed a trip to the barber this morning for a much needed haircut.

Next stop was coffee and Anzac biscuits straight out of our daughter's oven.  The children had each composed a Welcome Home Granddad card for the occasion.

Grandma through the eyes of a four year-old is a bit of a worry.

Spoken from the heart of a seven year-old

We are all going to visit the park if our nine year-old granddaughter's installation is anything to go by.

It was so strange today not to make the daily pilgrimage to the hospital. It's really good to have our lives back.

Can we start the year again please?

Woody Allen once said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”  I recalled the quote last week as I was making my daily pilgrimage by train to the hospital.  This was not supposed to happen. 

Late last year Tony, who is trim and fit for his age, decided that he should take a cardiac stress test just to be on the safe side.  To our great surprise, he did indeed have a problem which required triple bypass surgery.  The operation was performed on 20 January and he made a remarkable recovery, returning home six days later on Australia Day.

Less than four days after his return he was rushed back to hospital by ambulance with a suspected heart attack.  Thankfully the heart was fine, but it took about three days to discover the real problem, as he had no typical symptoms.  It was a staphylococcal infection contracted during the bypass surgery.  To cap it off, the enormous amount of drugs administered during the time he was re-admitted all but shut down his kidneys. 

I'll spare you the details, but it has been a horrendous time for us all as Tony underwent more surgery on 3, 4, 6, 10 and 17 of this month.  Not what we had planned at all.  Our 44th Anniversary came and went on 3rd, and there were family birthdays on 15th, 16th and 18th.  This was supposed to be a fun month. 

I remember being with our daughters in the ICU after the first and most serious surgery on 3 February and the surgeon (after wishing me a happy anniversary) explained that there was only a 1 in 100 chance of this happening after bypass surgery.  We almost said in unison, "Noooo ... don't say it!"  You see, where percentages are concerned, Tony has a history of taking it for the team.  There was the time he had leg surgery which required him to be immobile for a couple of weeks.  That produced a blood clot which collapsed his lung. The odds of this happening were 1 in 300.  But by far his best effort was 15,000 to 1 that he would get hepatitis from a certain drug prescribed after a sinus operation - he is particularly proud of that one.

Today things are finally looking brighter.  Most of the tubes have been removed and he is looking a little less pale after the unit of blood he was given yesterday (and I don't want to hear the statistics on that procedure going wrong thank you).  They keep pushing his release date further along and it looks as though he will be in hospital for another couple of weeks.  

Thank goodness for our incredible family and friends who have kept us both sane throughout the whole process.  The medical staff are wonderful and I think Tony knows about 200 of them on a first name basis.  But now all I want to do is get him home and give him a good feed.  If you could see the hospital food (which is shipped in from an interstate destination once every three days) you would no doubt understand.  

2014 - can I please press the rewind button?

Hello Eccles

Are you a glass half empty or glass half full sort of a person?  I guess we fall under the second category.  Or in our case yesterday, it was more of cake tin half full.

I wish you could have seen the cake tin in its full condition, but the contents disappeared for a good cause.  You see, Mr Fudge underwent a particularly nasty surgical procedure to remove some skin cancers from his face on Tuesday.  We left at 7.00 in the morning for the drive to the hospital and didn't return home until 3.30 that afternoon - a very long and stressful day.

Yesterday morning the outer bandages were able to be removed, revealing a nasty black eye and even more surgical dressings underneath.  However, the prognosis is good and in a week or so it should be possible for the spouse to once again walk the streets without scaring the horses or children.

Later in the day the apartment buzzer sounded, announcing the arrival of our daughter with three children in tow, each of them holding a get well card for Granddad and daughter holding a cake tin with freshly baked Eccles Cakes, Mr Fudge's all time favourites.  They were wrapped in a tea towel featuring a Queensland steam locomotive, such a lovely thought, knowing how much the patient loves his steam trains.  There was also a tub of scrummy, decadent ice cream to accompany the cakes and some chocolates to carry us through to the next morning.

Here they are in their half-full glory.

I'm so glad we are of the half full variety, but after tonight there will be no avoiding the Cake Tin Empty syndrome.  As I say, all in a good cause.