The Facebook Memories thing is a blessing and a curse sometimes. This current period in time brings back some rough memories but reminders of wonderful blessings.
On Saturday it popped up. "Dave is not well".
And then it dawned on me that's it's the end of the year.
This time 4 years ago my husband was in hospital very, very ill.
A scratch. A small, insignificant, get-one-any-time scratch. On his knee from the trailer while he was renovating and building the house we now live in.
It got seriously infected and he went into septic shock.
I had no freaking idea what was happening. He was sick, shivering, fevers, pain killers weren't working. I was going to wait to take him to the doctor the next day.
I'm glad I didn't.
I rang my brother, who is a GP. I was expecting a "give him this and book him in to see the doc", but I got halfway through describing the symptoms and he told me to run next door, grab the neighbours to look after the kids and high-tail it to the hospital and gave me a list of things to tell the triage nurse.
At the hospital I didn't even get partway through the list before the nurse had someone grab my husband (who was just about to fall over) and rush him straight through. They already had an IV in him and pumping him full of AB's before I even finished filling out the forms.
He was in there for 10 days. The first few were a living nightmare. They couldn't find the right mix of antibiotics, it was getting worse and spreading, he couldn't walk and was in immense pain. They cleared out the ward in case it was infectious and he got his own infectious diseases specialist to look after him. They even had lecturers bringing in phd students to study him lol
My life was get up, get kids to school, go to the hospital. Get instructions on what to do - we were finishing up renovations and preparing to move house. It was nearly Christmas. I had school Christmas plays to attend, the kids had parties, Christmas cards, activities. My husband missed our son's first Christmas Chapel performance. Run around doing errands, throw things in boxes, move them to the new house, pick up kids, go to the hospital and see Daddy, go home, feed them whatever I could manage (there were a lot of ham sandwiches lol), pack some more and then try to sleep.
It well and truly sucked.
But we got through it.
Eventually, the drugs started to work, and things got better.
My brother came to visit towards the end and asked if he could look at the charts.
His initial comment was something along the lines of "F*&%".
My husband had been on the second strongest antibiotics you could get, the kind reserved for tropical infectious diseases. If I had waited until the next day... the best case scenario is he would have lost a limb. I prefer not to think about the worst case.
But our lives changed a bit through that. We see things a little differently now. He still drives me completely up the wall some days, but I'm glad I have him still here.
Not long afterwards, I decided I needed to get fitter. I could barely walk up the stairs without getting winded. I needed to be able to handle whatever life threw at me. And I knew it still had some curveballs up it's sleeve (and still does). If anything were to happen to my husband... well, I'm it. And I will protect those kids and my husband to the end with whatever abilities I have.
But the moral to this story is, don't take things for granted. And don't get stuck in the rut of day-to-day life too much. Do the things that are important to you with those you love. If you like going out and exploring, do that. If you like creating things, do that. Do the most with what you've got NOW while you've still got it. Don't wait for the 'perfect' future. Don't put your life on hold.
And if you get a scratch or cut, for goodness sake, PLEASE, clean it up properly and get it checked if it gets infected.
