Dad and my last journey together - over a few posts!

This isn't an easy post to write and I have been thinking about it for about two weeks now. It has been three weeks today since I sat with my Dad, stroking his head, watching as a mother does to a child, as he lay in a semi-comatosed state. Breathing which during the day had been more like gasping and distressing was now becoming easier, each breath a little shallower, further apart but with no effort. Dad was finally comfortable! And I knew that this would be the last time we would be together, just the two of us, and to make him comfortable was all I could do for him. I sat and talked to him trying to re-assure that I was there while he took his final breath.

Let me go back a little so that I can give value to a man who managed to touch so many lives... 

Many of you remember that earlier this year, during my morning run, I tripped and broke my wrist. This was at the same time as Dad was in hospital having had radiation treatment to a couple of tumors on his brain. We decided that if he was up to it then we would takeoff to visit the cousins down in Central New South Wales. That proved to be a fantastic journey which if I hadn't had my fall would never have happened, and that "road trip" to Mudgee with my father was one that gave us both the opportunity to re-kindle a bond both as father daughter and also as close friends.

 We had never spent time together at length as I have always been too busy raising 3 kids mostly as a single parent. Working as either a registered nurse with shocking shifts, or a poverty stricken aerobic instructor, and finally having my own business as a Remedial Therapist (and we all know the hours "on tools" when you own your own). The fall was a blessing in disguise as that week in April gave a bond that we both cherished and one that I will take to my grave. 

Well in my latest MRI we found a cyst on a bone in my wrist and cartilage still torn so I decided to sort it out for good! I went in for  surgery on the 27th of June to have an Ulna Osteotomy and tidy up. The next few weeks were supposed to be time to heal and allow my wrist to finally mend. What it turned out to be however was yet another journey with Dad, but this one locally in St Andrew's War Memorial Hospital and not with an ending that any of us expected!!! 

But more to come....