Life as always for me has been fraught and even more so over the past 12 months.
Monkey has had a great time - skiing with the Army Cadets in Italy in February, Canoe Cadet in May half term, Annual Camp in August, leaving his High School and moving onto a new school for the last 2 years of his schooling (although he should be staying on until the end of Year 13, he is still adamant that he wants to join the Army at the end of Year 11), has been made a Lance Corporal, laid the wreath for the Army Cadets at this years Remembrance Parade, become a fully qualified first aider as part of his cadet training and attended a training weekend at Yardley Chase where he has now almost completed his 2 star training. He did leave Explorers which was a sad time for me as he had been in Scouting for almost 9 years at that point but once he wasn't chosen for the World Jamboree to Japan he seemed to loose all interest in Scouting. All in all a good year for him. The only blot on his horizon was when taking part in his first contact training session of the year at a rugby team he had joined, he managed to dislocate his knee which meant that he was in plaster for almost 6 weeks and we are still rehabbing, at a point where he must not take part in any contact sports, can only gently jog (and that has only been in the past week) and he is to start a weekly knee rehab class the first week back in January - it will be a long and slow process but he needs to get it right to make sure that he can be as fit as possible for the Army.
My Dad's wife wrote to me in July to tell me that she basically cannot stand me and that she has no wish to have anything to do with me, hubby or Monkey in the future, but that she would not stand in my way if I wanted to see my Dad or brothers. How gracious of her!! As you know the feeling is mutual and that has make things easier from my point of view but its the way she can dismiss Monkey from her life so easily which makes it difficult for me to explain things to Monkey. I will keep her letter and let Monkey see that when he is older, maybe when my Dad has passed away and he wants to keep in contact with her, he will see that there really is no point at all.
My consultant at work was diagnosed with breast cancer in March this year and has been off work since. She has had 6 cycles of chemotherapy, followed by a wide local excision and axillary node clearance and then she went on to have 5 weeks of radiotherapy. She was 37 when she was diagnosed with no family history. She had recently split from her long term partner who she thought she would be marrying in the not too distant future but he had different ideas! She has now been given the all clear and is just waiting for things to be sorted for her phased return to work to be agreed and then how she will be working when she is back full time. I have missed her greatly and being totally selfish, I cannot wait for her to come back. I have seen her most weeks while she has been off and when we were at the Houses of Parliament for a meeting in November, we went on to see Les Miserable as a end of sickness treat - an amazing show if you ever get the chance to go.
I started my nurse prescribers course in September, and am really struggling with it - I am doing it at Master's level and really wish that I hadn't done it at that level now, but too late. I have about 5 weeks to go until I have to hand in my portfolio and hopefully that will be the major part of it done then, just the OSCE and the short answer paper to pass. I have however met some great people and am grateful for the support that they have been giving to me.
My Mum has been unwell once again. May saw her admitted to the local hospital with pneumonia where they also discovered a degree of heart failure. She recovered fairly well but it did take a couple of months for her to get back to her baseline. When she went to see a cardiologist in September for a follow-up appointment, they informed her that she had actually had a small heart attack and that she would need a cardiac angio to check the state of her heart. However, because of her kidney problems they would need to be cautious with the procedure. Luckily, Mum was due to see her renal doctor who on checking her kidney function said that she couldn't have the angio as it would knacker her kidneys completely. Anyway, things have bounced back and forth between the cardiologist and the renal doctor until it all came to a head last week when her renal doctor has said that she now needs to start dialysis ideally within the next month - to Mum this is a big shock - to me, not so. Having been a renal nurse for a large part of my life, I could see where it was going, but as my Mum usually thinks that I don't really know anything, I have kept quiet. Wrong of me? No, as even if I had warned her about anything, she would have just ignored it all. I do know that she likes her community renal nurse, so that's a bonus and she does listen to what she is saying. Mum thinks she would like to have PD - great, however, she does have bad eyesight and that will put her at risk of peritonitis. I have talked to her about this over the phone when she rang me to say that she would be staring dialysis soon, but she says that it will all be ok as she is going to do the dialysis overnight. Again, I don't think this is right for her as she has no room in her bedroom for the APD machine, and when I mentioned that she would need to clear out the small spare room to make way for all of the boxes and dialysis things that she would need, she said that she wasn't going to be doing that. I suggested at that point that she might like to have a chat with the community nurse to see what was going to be involved. I think I will be contacting my friend who still works in renal as a community nurse and asking for a crash refresher course in how to set up the APD machines!!!
Brownies continue to be a large part of my life. I am glad that I haven't been the District Commissioner for the past 12 months. I have stepped aside as a mentor and I am about to stop doing the DBS checks. I am now left with only the Brownie pack to run. I was planning on stepping aside from that in the summer but unfortunately, one of the other leaders chose the beginning of the summer term to tell me that she would be leaving which left me having to stay. I still want to leave, but at the moment we will be at 31 Brownies in January when we go back and that puts me in a difficult position! We only have 3 adults who attend on a regular basis, one of which is me every week and the other two do alternate weeks, so we do actually run on only 2 adults each week. I have Young Leaders (two of which are now 18 or will be when we return) but due to their A level commitments, they are not able to come every week and it all becomes a bit more of a nightmare as the 3 older Young Leaders will all take their A levels this year, and the 2 younger Young Leaders will be taking their GCES's this year, so the times that they will be able to come along will all reduce at about the same time! I have a great Brownie Helper who started with us in September and she has made a great difference to the help.
Then just as I was thinking that I was at last coming to the end of what has really been a bad year, a friend and fellow guider died suddenly and unexpectedly on the 12th December. She was a year younger than me, never appeared to be unhealthy (although I have since learnt that she did have some sort of heart condition which she had had since childhood) and was the local Rainbow Leader. I feel that I have had no right to be as upset as I was about her dying so suddenly, but thinking about things over the past couple of days, I think I have possibly reached my tipping point and this sent me over the edge into something I can only describe as devastated and depressed. I have tried to be the rock for everybody - being the previous District Commissioner and the new one only just being in post for a couple of months - people did seem to fall to me for advice and support. With my job, I am more than happy to provide the support, as I feel that sometimes group support is so much better for all involved but is has been hard coming on top of all of the other things that have happened this year. I have felt a fraud at times being so upset - I could be driving to the supermarket and just suddenly burst into tears. Her funeral was held on Christmas Eve. I sobbed all of the way to the church which was about a 20 minute drive. The church was packed and people were even just standing at the back due to their being no room to sit and it was a big church. There were about 20 past and present guiders there including the County and Regional Commissioners - it was good to see the people there. Her husband was stoic in church as were their twin 16 year old children. However, me and Kelloggsville went to the crematorium and here is where the tears really flowed. We then went back to the wake and spent a while talking with the twins and seeing that actually they were coping so much better than I thought they would. Her husband is a different matter - I'm not really sure how he is going to cope, but he does have many friends and family who will help him through this I know.
All in all, the year has been a busy one, with lots of sad times but good times too. Memories have been made and I am glad that I have had these too. I know that from now on, I need to live life to the full, grab what I want with both hands and never be afraid to tell someone that I love them as I never know what is around the corner.
This will be my motto for 2015 - Happy New Year one and all
Friday 26 December 2014
Saturday 8 March 2014
Families
I come from a broken home - my Dad left my Mum when I was 4 years old for another woman (many years down the line that woman took great pleasure in telling me that she had been having an affair with my Dad even before I was born!)
My Mum went on to meet a fantastic man who became all that I needed as father figure and his family took me in as the only granddaughter - they had two grandsons who were both older than me.
My Mum and step father have now been married 36 years (as has my Dad and the other woman).
I have never felt accepted by my Dad's second wife - I don't call her my step mum as she has never shown a maternal bone in her body towards me.
I have two half brothers - one of which was announced to me as a "there is a surprise waiting for you when we get home" the first time I ever went to stay with my Dad overnight after the divorce and remarriages had taken place.
I have always loved both of my brothers unconditionally and over the years even though I don't see them all very often, I feel that we are close. I am closer to my baby brother more than the middle brother but we all still have that connection.
My middle brother lives near Gatwick and so its not often we get to see each other and my baby brother lives just over an hour away from me so since he and his wife moved there we have seen a bit more of them.
My Dad announced about 3 years ago that he would be moving up to live near my baby brother when they could sell their house which I was really happy about as I have never lived this close to my Dad since he left us when I was 4.
My Dad's closet in age brother also lives near my baby brother so this was also a good idea as there are now only 2 of his 5 of his siblings alive with the other one living in Australia for the past 64 years.
For the past couple of years my Dad's wife has been off with me - I can't pin it down to a specific thing but she goes out of her way to avoid speaking to me and generally makes me feel like I am dog shit on the bottom of her shoe.
My Dad is Dad, I think he is completely oblivious to it all and I won't highlight it to him as I don't want to make any more problems - Dad is 13 years older than her and not really in the best of health any more.
They finally managed to sell their house last summer and moved up to the area about 2 weeks before Monkey's birthday in September.
Monkey and I visited the new house just before Christmas to drop off Christmas presents - no invite to come and visit before that had been offered and I made the call and said that we would be down to exchange presents one afternoon while Monkey was recovering from his head injury.
While we were there, I had a phone call I needed to take in a different room, so made my way into the lounge for some privacy and found the Christmas tree all set up with enough presents under it to be given out to a whole primary school which were for my middle brother's 2 children. They are 6 and 3 years old. I was flabbergasted at the amount of presents there. Monkey being the oldest grandchild (he's 14 now) has never had more than one present. I appreciate that he isn't her grandchild but he has always called her nanny which she was happy with up until the arrival of my brother's first child.
My middle brother then sent me a message via Facebook a few days after Christmas saying that he had our Christmas presents still as we had not visited Dad's over the holiday - I replied and told him that his mum had never invited us down so that was why we did not visit.
Things came to head on my birthday when I had a random card which could have been sent to anybody with just "love Dad and Lyn" on it. No phone call to wish me happy birthday or to say that they had a present for me the next time I visited. Now I'm not materialistic, but I do make sure that my closet family has a present from both me and hubby and one from the Monkey for birthdays and Christmas and that if we can't see them around the time of the event, then we make sure that they know that we have something. I will be honest with you - I was devastated. Now I don't cry very often, but that day - which should have been a happy day spent with my husband - the first two hours were spent sobbing. Hubby had no idea what to do with me - he understands how I have been feeling but his response is "fuck them" we are happy enough without them and if they upset me that much then I need to stay away from them. He ripped up the card and threw it out as he knew that it had upset me so much.
Dad finally rang the following day and said that he rang my work phone and even though it said on the answerphone message that I was not at work until the following week, he didn't know where to ring.
We have a cousin who lives in Australia who is visiting the UK for the first time in a few weeks. He arrives the day that I am in Leeds with my Centenary Camp friends. We have arranged for me to visit him a couple of days after his arrival (the Monday) at Dad's as he is staying there for the start of the visit. Hubby is on a day off and so the plan is for us to collect Monkey from school and travel down to arrive late afternoon.
When we got home from an afternoon out last Sunday there was a missed call from Dad. When I rang back, she answered the phone and despite me saying "hello, how are you?", she just said "I'll get your Dad."
Dad was asking if we had heard from our cousin and what we had arranged for visiting. I told him the plan and he said that was great as everyone else was going on the Sunday - both brothers and wives and children, my Uncle with his daughter and her family. I mentioned that I was in Leeds on the Sunday but could leave early, drive home, collect the boys and then come and join everyone so that we could all see each other as we haven't been together as a family for a long time. When my Dad mentioned this to her she said no as it was a full house and there would be too many people there - they have moved into a 5 bedroomed house with 3 reception rooms as well as a large kitchen diner!
So I just said yes ok when I really wanted to say no - we will come on the Sunday and just squeeze in! I want to see everybody too.
When I told hubby, he said that we just won't bother going and to be honest I agree - I don't think I can visit and feel relaxed. I know that I will miss out on meeting my cousin and his family, but I think I will just break down in tears and that's not something I want to do in front of my family.
I've decided to just step away from them all for now - if they invite us to something I will think long and hard before accepting. To be honest, I've even said that once Dad is no longer with us, at that point I will walk away and have absolutely nothing to do with any of them - I'm sure they won't miss me!!
My Mum went on to meet a fantastic man who became all that I needed as father figure and his family took me in as the only granddaughter - they had two grandsons who were both older than me.
My Mum and step father have now been married 36 years (as has my Dad and the other woman).
I have never felt accepted by my Dad's second wife - I don't call her my step mum as she has never shown a maternal bone in her body towards me.
I have two half brothers - one of which was announced to me as a "there is a surprise waiting for you when we get home" the first time I ever went to stay with my Dad overnight after the divorce and remarriages had taken place.
I have always loved both of my brothers unconditionally and over the years even though I don't see them all very often, I feel that we are close. I am closer to my baby brother more than the middle brother but we all still have that connection.
My middle brother lives near Gatwick and so its not often we get to see each other and my baby brother lives just over an hour away from me so since he and his wife moved there we have seen a bit more of them.
My Dad announced about 3 years ago that he would be moving up to live near my baby brother when they could sell their house which I was really happy about as I have never lived this close to my Dad since he left us when I was 4.
My Dad's closet in age brother also lives near my baby brother so this was also a good idea as there are now only 2 of his 5 of his siblings alive with the other one living in Australia for the past 64 years.
For the past couple of years my Dad's wife has been off with me - I can't pin it down to a specific thing but she goes out of her way to avoid speaking to me and generally makes me feel like I am dog shit on the bottom of her shoe.
My Dad is Dad, I think he is completely oblivious to it all and I won't highlight it to him as I don't want to make any more problems - Dad is 13 years older than her and not really in the best of health any more.
They finally managed to sell their house last summer and moved up to the area about 2 weeks before Monkey's birthday in September.
Monkey and I visited the new house just before Christmas to drop off Christmas presents - no invite to come and visit before that had been offered and I made the call and said that we would be down to exchange presents one afternoon while Monkey was recovering from his head injury.
While we were there, I had a phone call I needed to take in a different room, so made my way into the lounge for some privacy and found the Christmas tree all set up with enough presents under it to be given out to a whole primary school which were for my middle brother's 2 children. They are 6 and 3 years old. I was flabbergasted at the amount of presents there. Monkey being the oldest grandchild (he's 14 now) has never had more than one present. I appreciate that he isn't her grandchild but he has always called her nanny which she was happy with up until the arrival of my brother's first child.
My middle brother then sent me a message via Facebook a few days after Christmas saying that he had our Christmas presents still as we had not visited Dad's over the holiday - I replied and told him that his mum had never invited us down so that was why we did not visit.
Things came to head on my birthday when I had a random card which could have been sent to anybody with just "love Dad and Lyn" on it. No phone call to wish me happy birthday or to say that they had a present for me the next time I visited. Now I'm not materialistic, but I do make sure that my closet family has a present from both me and hubby and one from the Monkey for birthdays and Christmas and that if we can't see them around the time of the event, then we make sure that they know that we have something. I will be honest with you - I was devastated. Now I don't cry very often, but that day - which should have been a happy day spent with my husband - the first two hours were spent sobbing. Hubby had no idea what to do with me - he understands how I have been feeling but his response is "fuck them" we are happy enough without them and if they upset me that much then I need to stay away from them. He ripped up the card and threw it out as he knew that it had upset me so much.
Dad finally rang the following day and said that he rang my work phone and even though it said on the answerphone message that I was not at work until the following week, he didn't know where to ring.
We have a cousin who lives in Australia who is visiting the UK for the first time in a few weeks. He arrives the day that I am in Leeds with my Centenary Camp friends. We have arranged for me to visit him a couple of days after his arrival (the Monday) at Dad's as he is staying there for the start of the visit. Hubby is on a day off and so the plan is for us to collect Monkey from school and travel down to arrive late afternoon.
When we got home from an afternoon out last Sunday there was a missed call from Dad. When I rang back, she answered the phone and despite me saying "hello, how are you?", she just said "I'll get your Dad."
Dad was asking if we had heard from our cousin and what we had arranged for visiting. I told him the plan and he said that was great as everyone else was going on the Sunday - both brothers and wives and children, my Uncle with his daughter and her family. I mentioned that I was in Leeds on the Sunday but could leave early, drive home, collect the boys and then come and join everyone so that we could all see each other as we haven't been together as a family for a long time. When my Dad mentioned this to her she said no as it was a full house and there would be too many people there - they have moved into a 5 bedroomed house with 3 reception rooms as well as a large kitchen diner!
So I just said yes ok when I really wanted to say no - we will come on the Sunday and just squeeze in! I want to see everybody too.
When I told hubby, he said that we just won't bother going and to be honest I agree - I don't think I can visit and feel relaxed. I know that I will miss out on meeting my cousin and his family, but I think I will just break down in tears and that's not something I want to do in front of my family.
I've decided to just step away from them all for now - if they invite us to something I will think long and hard before accepting. To be honest, I've even said that once Dad is no longer with us, at that point I will walk away and have absolutely nothing to do with any of them - I'm sure they won't miss me!!
Saturday 22 February 2014
Life Sucks
Life has been pretty hectic recently - well what's new??
Monkey had a bad head injury while playing rugby in the middle of December at school - this resulted in him being admitted to hospital overnight with talk at the start of him being transferred to the local neurological centre if things didn't improve - being a nurse in A&E and listening to what they weren't saying was scary. Luckily, he was much better the following day, but we are 2 and a half months down the road and he still gets headaches and takes analgesia each day.
I resigned from the role of District commissioner - I was actually very disappointed by my County Commissioner's reply to my resignation. The two Guide companies which initiated my resignation are still being allowed to run in a way which is not appropriate but I will say that after the Treasurer from the Scout and Guide Hut rang County HQ and made the situation very clear from his point of view and the fact that the rent for the current year (£1000) for the two units has still not been paid and that there has been no effort by them to pay the £1800 still owed from previous years in a half hour conversation with them, things have finally moved forward. The two leaders have been given ultimatums which should have been completed by this coming Monday. Although I don't have the right to know what is going on, the person who is going to take on the challenge of being DC had stated that she would not take on the role unless the Guide units have been sorted, is keen to keep me up to date, so hopefully I will know what has happened - I will be honest, it's killing me not knowing!!
Work has been hard - so much to do, not enough hours in the day to do it all, humiliation by a consultant via a global email (mind you my boss was great and soon slapped them down!!), a new job description which has me banded to a higher grade but it just reflects everything I am currently doing.
Last week, I was in Edinburgh studying haemophilia - all part of my new job description - and had my phone stolen from my bag while waiting at the bus stop. I have never felt so cut off from things before - Monkey is in Italy skiing with the Army and it was the only contact number they had for me if anything happened! Things were soon sorted, but I don't want to go back there in a hurry I can tell you!
We have Pack Holiday planned for 3 weeks time - I'm not prepared at all. I can't seem to get my head around anything outside of work at the moment and things will only get worse as I need to complete my independent nurse prescribers course which I have been told will take over my life completely for 6 months - I am worried.
I am the only leader who attends every week - the others attend every other week at the most but then don't turn up until after the meeting time starts so often leaving me with just the girls and the young leaders, which is not good from a safe guarding point of view.
I feel that I don't have a handle on anything at the moment and that I am going to loose the plot at some point and that may be very soon the way things are going!
Good things have happened too though - my best friend and I have reconnected recently, although she has shocked me more than ever with some of her antics, but there's nothing new in that! We have met up for afternoon tea a couple of times and now have a fixed date once a month to do it which will give me some "me" time.
I'm also meeting up with my friends from Centenary Camp in 2010. We have all met up quite a bit in the past 12 months but since we left Leeds in 2010, we have never all been together at the same time. So at the beginning of April all of us will be meeting up and staying together in Leeds. That is something I am really looking forward to it.
I'm sure things will sort themselves out and get better - they always do. I just wish I could miss out the crap bit once in a while and just have a good journey instead :)
Monkey had a bad head injury while playing rugby in the middle of December at school - this resulted in him being admitted to hospital overnight with talk at the start of him being transferred to the local neurological centre if things didn't improve - being a nurse in A&E and listening to what they weren't saying was scary. Luckily, he was much better the following day, but we are 2 and a half months down the road and he still gets headaches and takes analgesia each day.
I resigned from the role of District commissioner - I was actually very disappointed by my County Commissioner's reply to my resignation. The two Guide companies which initiated my resignation are still being allowed to run in a way which is not appropriate but I will say that after the Treasurer from the Scout and Guide Hut rang County HQ and made the situation very clear from his point of view and the fact that the rent for the current year (£1000) for the two units has still not been paid and that there has been no effort by them to pay the £1800 still owed from previous years in a half hour conversation with them, things have finally moved forward. The two leaders have been given ultimatums which should have been completed by this coming Monday. Although I don't have the right to know what is going on, the person who is going to take on the challenge of being DC had stated that she would not take on the role unless the Guide units have been sorted, is keen to keep me up to date, so hopefully I will know what has happened - I will be honest, it's killing me not knowing!!
Work has been hard - so much to do, not enough hours in the day to do it all, humiliation by a consultant via a global email (mind you my boss was great and soon slapped them down!!), a new job description which has me banded to a higher grade but it just reflects everything I am currently doing.
Last week, I was in Edinburgh studying haemophilia - all part of my new job description - and had my phone stolen from my bag while waiting at the bus stop. I have never felt so cut off from things before - Monkey is in Italy skiing with the Army and it was the only contact number they had for me if anything happened! Things were soon sorted, but I don't want to go back there in a hurry I can tell you!
We have Pack Holiday planned for 3 weeks time - I'm not prepared at all. I can't seem to get my head around anything outside of work at the moment and things will only get worse as I need to complete my independent nurse prescribers course which I have been told will take over my life completely for 6 months - I am worried.
I am the only leader who attends every week - the others attend every other week at the most but then don't turn up until after the meeting time starts so often leaving me with just the girls and the young leaders, which is not good from a safe guarding point of view.
I feel that I don't have a handle on anything at the moment and that I am going to loose the plot at some point and that may be very soon the way things are going!
Good things have happened too though - my best friend and I have reconnected recently, although she has shocked me more than ever with some of her antics, but there's nothing new in that! We have met up for afternoon tea a couple of times and now have a fixed date once a month to do it which will give me some "me" time.
I'm also meeting up with my friends from Centenary Camp in 2010. We have all met up quite a bit in the past 12 months but since we left Leeds in 2010, we have never all been together at the same time. So at the beginning of April all of us will be meeting up and staying together in Leeds. That is something I am really looking forward to it.
I'm sure things will sort themselves out and get better - they always do. I just wish I could miss out the crap bit once in a while and just have a good journey instead :)
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