Is very exhausting.

I can't tell you how tiring it is to be funny all day. I do tend to see the funny side of life, especially when not much is actually funny. I hear things that make me laugh, see things that make me snigger and imagine things that make me hoot outloud.
The more important, serious, worrying or sedate the occasion, the more I will find to laugh about....see your sister leaving to have a hole drilled in her head ? Crack a joke.
The more sad I am the funnier I can be....how bizarre is that? So the past few days have had me finding humour in all kinds of ways. We were sitting with Leah yesterday when the young girl came around to ask about menu choices. Now, you have to visited the west country to know what I mean when I speak about the Plymouth ( Plymothian?) accent . It is out there on it's own. I love it, in a train crash kind of way, could listen to it endlessly, prayed my children would NEVER develop it. They have their own words even and add words where you don't need them. They go UP at the end of a sentence everything sounds like a question? They say things like " where's it to?" ( where is it?) and " I'm going up over Asda" ( I'm going to the supermarket) a favourite is " You going.. or no?" " you want that....or no?"
I wish beyond wishes that I could let you hear this accent, I do it well, my sister does it well and we have had endless conversations in this accent and to this day we never faail to make each other actually wee with laughter at the things we say and recall hearing.
Yesterday this young girl came around and asked all 4 ladies in Leahs room, what they would like for dinner. Beef bolognese? Soup? Sandwich? Cauliflower cheese? Decisions were made and boxes were ticked and then
" What choo want for afters? Em, yoghurt, chocolate pudding, ice cream or fruit? "
I couldn't help it........the devil made me do it, lucklily after she had gone out....
I looked up and said " Bleddy 'ell! I am 'eard no-one ask about afters since I lived here! D'you 'ave afters up your 'ome or no? We have dessert up 'ome......what choo ave up your 'ome?"
It won't sound funny to you because you won't have heard that accent ( except for Gemma, who reads this but NEVER comments, who lived there and did have that accent but doesn't now!) but it made us laugh and mum and I have snorted about it at least 3 times today, in the 7 hours we waited at the hospital to see Leah for 8 minutes. I write about it because in 5 years time, when I read it again, I will laugh again, you had to be there.
It has been one of those infuriating days that gets you no-where, trying to see her and missing her as didn't go to the operating room, waiting for doctors to finish doing rounds, trying to stay out of the way, getting back to her room just as she WAS leaving to have a hole drilled in her skull......waiting another 2 hours for her to come back and when she did get back having to leave to get back here before the boys went to bed.


Sore head, machine that peeps and flashes a number that tells us the pressure in her head -1. 2. 3. 7. -2. -4. dear Lord stop me looking at that number, I don't know what that number means, why am I staring at the number......ho hum, in come nurses having a chat about machine and number......blah blah, wavy line, numbers, nothing to worry about, if the number ever gets to 15 I want to know, it won't but should it....tell me.......blah blah......
Leah. little moan, am OK, no doesn't hurt....groan, ow, no I am fine.....-2. -1. 0 Ow 4...3 -1 -1 ow ow 4. 6. 9. 12. 13 ...........uh oh nearly at 15.....

Me.... agh....um.....
WALK quickly.....excuse me number is 13.....she says her head hurts ( can I go home and pretend none of this is happening please?)
She is fine. She will be more fine and perhaps won't even need a shunt.
As I walked out to get the car I felt such panic, not because of Leah because we are so sure she is alright and will be home soon, feeling better than she has for months, even years.
What happened is a remembrance of how I had to be brave when I was so ill. Stupid first husbands who left when I had gaping holes in my body, having to leave tiny children while I had to keep going in and having minor surgeries, having to send my baby girl to mum for months while I tried to get well.....having to cope with stupid husband leaving 2 days after another surgery, learning my boys had been abducted and abused......and still having gaping wounds and infections and never being able to just lie in bed and have flowers brought to me, not a bloody grape or magazine, just fear and pain and such sadness that my heart breaks NOW to think about it, when it was all happening I couldn't think, I just 'did'.
18 years later and a rogue memory brought it all flooding back with such clarity it took my breath away. Minds are incredible things, the way they take these things that are so sad, so hard, so unbearable and store them away, hide them, bury them until the day that you CAN cope.
Sometimes I wonder what is still in my head that my heart can't cope with. Every time I think it's done, finished, dealt with....something like today happens and what do you know? Here we go again.
I do know though, that when these things come back to me they don't destroy me. They come back, I feel what I should have felt at the time, allow myself to feel sad and move on. I think I am better. Than I was. Very good then.

Tomorrow you may be in for a treat. I am not going to the hospital, I need to be here, because........because my baby, last fruit of my loins, has to don his uniform ( aged 3-4 black smart trousers, aged 3 polo shirt and ExS, that'll be extra small, sweatshirt and smart shoes) pick up his book bag and spend an entire morning in BIG SCHOOL, real life BIG SCHOOL, with teachers and story mats and all things BIG BOY, he will be going every thursday until we leave for our holiday ( in 3 weeks, TODAY, 21 days or 20 days because today is over) and then when we come home, he will go EVERY single day for the next 11 years at least.........a treat because I will take pictures. I think though that my womb may cry a little and contract in a way that might make me wish I could start all over again ( yeah right....we're going the grandbaby route thankyou!) and my arms will ache a bit, my eyes may even be a little leaky because he still lisps and sucks his thumb, he STILL needs a nap every day. He still says 'tan I doe?' instead of 'can I go?' He is still such a baby, in so many ways, my baby.


When he steps through those doors tomorrow it is the beginning of my having to share a huge part of his life with the world. I think I mind that, more than I will admit.

My sister Leah.

So, Leah. Leah is 29 and is glorious. When she was born, well that in itself was a miracle because the doctors said she would never live, they said her head was so large that her brain could not possibly have survived damage, they said her body was so twisted she would never walk, or sit or do anything.
She was born, she had a teeny little head with a swollen forehead and a boy so straight and perfect it was hard to stop staring at her.
She had hydrocephalus, which 29 years ago was a bigger deal than it appears to be today and at days old she had a shunt fitted.
She was the most delicious and insane baby and toddler you can imagine, she climbed bell towers, jumped from scaffolding, ran away endlessly to have adventures......this teeny tiny little scrap of person, with the most enormous personality you ever would encounter.
So, many miracles have happened with Leah and if she had her own blog, maybe she would tell them. Last week, she had the most horrific pain in her head, she is used to headaches and she has retinitis pigmentosa, which means that she can't see well. Her balance is a bit iffy and she falls over and bangs into things a lot . She lives with mum and has always been a home body, she loves being at home, she adores mum and was dad's best friend. Mum and Leah are pretty much inseparable and it was only when we had to take her into hospital today, to stay...that it occurred to us that Leah has never spent a night away from mum. Maybe twice, when she was the littlest person.
This may sound shocking and it would be if it were because she was afraid, or because mum was controlling, what it means is that everyone is just happy that this is how it has been.
Leah has way too much fluid around her brain and so she had to go in today, in order to have a new shunt fitted. She was so afraid, so terrified, not so much about the operation but because she would have to stay away from home.
Mum and I stayed with her while a slew of tests were done and we waited for the doctor to come around and sign consent forms etc.
Now I am a bit of a down to earth gal, no nonsense, get on with it type of person.
Leah's doctor came to see her and, well..........it would appear that a 45 year old woman, mother of 6, happily married to delicious olive skinned man , who says things like " Man! I was kissin' you like were weren't married" ( he is divine and being kissed like your not married? Highly recommended, especially by the man you are married to, yehaw.) anyway it would appear that that woman can turn to a stupid heap of grinning adolescence when faced with this.......



And YES, I took a picture because the BEST thing about being 45 and married and having kids not much younger than edible young doctor people is that you can SAY " Oh my heavens, you are too beautiful and please let me take your picture and put it on the internet!" because they grin a lot and let you do pretty much anything. It is fantastic being a nearly Nana because you can just about say or do anything to whomsoever you choose, and they let you. Bloody hell.

Should I admit that when I saw this......

I was a bit sad because look at the left hand, ring finger, gold band oh darn it.
I think I wanted him to marry Sophie or Leah or just anyone that lived near me so I could look at him a lot and maybe stroke him sometimes. Not to ever kiss him as though we weren't married however because.....for heavens sake, I am OLD and H does such a good job of the whole kissing thing and I don't even get embarrassed, which is marvellous.
SO, anyway, Andy...which is the doctors name and I can use it and everything, explained that the plans have changed, what is going to happen now is that tomorrow, they will drill a hole in Leah's head ( there was mention of local anaesthetic, briefly until they saw the look on all of our faces and then they said ' or light general' which YES!! I should bloody well think so young man!) and then they are going to put in a wire and attach it to a pressure monitor, 48 hours of monitoring will tell us whether the pressure in her head is high enough that she needs the shunt, it could be that the amount of fluid in Leah's head is OK for her....she hasn't had a single procedure since she was 4, extraordinary. If they put a shunt in even if her pressure is OK then the headache won't change anyway, it will have been for nothing.
She isn't happy about a possible 2 extra nights in hospital but this is a good thing, she will know for sure what is going on in her head and that they have done the right thing.Also.....2 extra days of seeing Andy the beautiful, how can she possibly mind that???