Hello, how are you? I hope you’re doing well! Sitting down to write this feels a little strange, it’s been over a month since I last posted and I think that’s the longest time I have gone without blogging without planning to. Let me start by saying July was an EXPERIENCE. It was definitely the hardest month of 2020 so far for me. I wanted to document some of what has happened to help me process it better.
The first few days of July started off well considering I had my second bout of tonsillitis for the year and was waiting for the result of my Covid swab. (It was negative by the way, don’t worry. I was advised to get swabbed as a result of my sore throat but the doctor and I were confident it would be negative). I was also talking to a guy and had been for the previous four months, pre-Covid and pre-lockdown. I’m very much a one person at a time girl and I was proud of myself for managing to keep this exchange going for that amount of time. I did have the occasional wobble and think am I boring this guy but then I told myself he wouldn’t message almost everyday for four months if he didn’t enjoy the conversation. We’d mentioned meeting in person more than once and obviously the first two months we chatted people couldn’t go out and socialise so I figured once the levels dropped it would happen. I get a little nervous when it comes to making plans because so many times they haven’t ended up happening or guys flake out and disappear off the face of the earth.
I had a Friday off work coming up and found out this guy finished work early on a Friday so I suggested we meet the following week to grab some food to which he agreed. The new week arrives and I don’t hear anything for a couple of days but I’m not someone who is always on my phone and understand life gets busy so I didn’t worry. On Thursday of that week my mum starts getting chills and feeling really cold and a few hours later her breathing starts going down. My mum is a severe asthmatic and any little niggle sets it off. The next day her breathing was continuing to decline and I mentioned seeing the doctor but I know how much they scare her. If I can keep her calm we can manage but the following day (Saturday) she called an ambulance and was admitted to hospital. This began two and a half weeks of struggles for both of us, I knew she was in the best place to get help but she wasn’t getting the help she needed. There were a number of mistakes made and things that didn’t need to happen that did.
The first week we saw progress and I managed to go to work and visit in the afternoons but things changed when a doctor prescribed her morphine. I still don’t understand why it was prescribed because she wasn’t complaining about pain. The drug didn’t fully affect her for a few days and then I started to notice strange behaviour. Mum seemed paranoid/scared, angry, not interested in talking to me, confused and was hallucinating and seeing things in her room that weren’t there. It was frightening to watch and she wasn’t aware she was acting that way which was more concerning. This was week two and I was barely at work, I wasn’t coming home in the evenings like the previous week because I was scared to leave her and she was scared when I wasn’t there. I basically lived at the hospital. I requested the doctors stop giving morphine and they did but the comedown was hard. The worst day was Thursday, July 23rd. I phoned my brother and urged him to come down as up until that point I was doing everything on my own and I hadn’t slept and eaten properly for days. I also phoned my boss in a state and she was so kind and understanding and later that day a work colleague came up to see if I was alright and took me to get something to eat.
My brother arrived on Friday and on Friday mum had improved from the day before. The doctors came around to say she would be discharged and we could go home. Mum was so happy to come home after being in hospital for two weeks but around 12 hours after being discharged she was re-admitted with dehydration. Mum had been on a machine that was helping her to breathe but because it pumps warm air into your body she was sweating a lot and losing her fluids. Mum was put on a drip which is something I thought they would have done before the re-admission. A couple of days later she was discharged again and has been home since. We did have a third setback and she ended up needing a second course of antibiotics from her GP but fingers crossed we’re on the home stretch now.
This takes me back to the guy I was talking to. I haven’t heard from him since before mum went into hospital which is about a month ago now. I did think about messaging him occasionally but most days didn’t have time, things would change that often and were unpredictable. I was also curious if he’d check in with me and he didn’t so I had a feeling I was going to be ghosted. A couple of days before the end of July I messaged him and explained what had happened and didn’t get a response. I’m not completely cruel and don’t like to think bad of people and maybe there’s something else going on there that I didn’t know about or he has been hurt before but it still sucks if someone doesn’t have the balls to be honest and can’t give you an explanation. It might be uncomfortable at the time but in the long run it’s less painful. I am close to giving up on trying to find a relationship to be honest, it’s hard to give so much of yourself and get nothing back and to feel like you’ve given time to someone who is stringing you along is disheartening.
July was a real mix of emotions and despite the crappy hand I was dealt there were also good moments. Ellie Goulding released a new album, Delta Goodrem announced shows in New Zealand for next April and I learnt yet more life lessons about people and who to trust. As twisted as it sounds the bad can sometimes lead to the good. Let’s hope the rest of the year is calmer and better things are around the corner.
Let me know what you’ve been up to in the last month?
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