Tag Archives: birthday

Tuesday Thoughts: Hip-Op

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(I chose this title because my sister wanted to create a WhatsApp group after my hip replacement called “Hip-Op,” to keep everyone close to us informed of my progress. “Get it? it’s like hip-hop only it’s “hip-op” instead.” I gave her a withering stare. The group was never created.)

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned: it’s been six months since my last blog post. And what an exhausting six months it’s been.

My birthday, my forty-second birthday was a bit different this year. Traditionally, my friends and I go out for dinner, but instead I decided a bit of surgery was in order. Come on now, lots of women in their forties opt for surgery – a tuck here, a lift there! But no such luck for me. As I mentioned in my last blog, my life had become miniscule. By February, I could no longer bear weight through my right leg. I was prescribed bupromorphine patches, and was considering using them when I read that I’d have to wean off them before hip replacement surgery. It was becoming clear that surgery was going to be my only choice.

In March, I found out that my urgent surgery was scheduled for Friday, 24 April. I was terrified, but what terrified me more was the prospect of continuing as I was indefinitely. Two hours’ sleep per night, tilted in my wheelchair. Losing the ability to stand for any length of time. Constant pain, even when taking the maximum dosage of painkillers. Deep depression, caused by a sense of uselessness and failure. By this stage, I had been in chronic pain for nearly six years, not taking it seriously enough because I’d been told that it was a side effect of my depression, or aging with Cerebral Palsy. Trying to push through it all in the belief that it was my own fault.

When D-Day came, I wasn’t scared. I’d spent so much time, night after sleepless night googling the surgery, looking up the restrictions, aftercare instructions, exercises and possible complications that I couldn’t have been more prepared. We checked in and I rushed to the toilet, determined not to piss myself in the middle of surgery. Of course, I’d forgotten that I’d need to give a urine sample before surgery. Lads, I was drier than the Sahara. I’d only drank small amounts the night before as per pre-surgical instructions, and I had nothing to give. Legally, the hospital had to make sure I wasn’t pregnant before they could proceed.

“Oh, is that the reason?” I clasped my hands together. “I’m definitely not. My hip is so fecked that hanky panky is the last thing on my mind.” The staff thought it was hilarious, but no dice. I missed my original surgery slot. While I was waiting, I was instructed to lie flat on a bed. The pain in my hip was so severe that I couldn’t lie straight. They had to give me pain meds which did nothing; you could hear my screams across the town. The nurses were shocked by how bad the pain was. They’d ordered an ultrasound, but thankfully I was finally able to produce some precious pee before it came to that, and ascertain that there were no little Fitzgeralds waiting to be discovered.

Many disabled people might tell you that their childhoods have been largely dominated by surgeries, but this wasn’t my experience. Apart from my c-section in 2012, I’d never gone under the knife, and I was s-h-one-t’ing myself. I was brought down to surgery and put into a little room with five or six doctors. They sat me up and bent me forward so that my boobs were pressed against my knees. The pain- which was the hip pain – was unbearable. Then they successfully administered the epidural, and all sensation in my legs floated away. For the first time in six years, I couldn’t feel any pain whatsoever, and I remember not caring in that moment about anything, even the possibility of dying on the table. Before entering the operating theatre, I closed my eyes and asked my mum (now deceased seventeen years) to look after Alison if the unthinkable should happen to me. The staff probably thought I was mad.

I was given a needle through my arm. Next thing I remember is waking up in recovery. I’d gone in at half one; it was now a quarter to four. As I opened my eyes, the nurses were chatting about their weekend plans and smiled as they clocked me earwigging. Then it was up to the ward. I don’t remember much about that evening. My phone was buzzing with endless notifications but I barely had the energy to hold it.

The next morning, the surgeon came by and told me that the operation was a success. He also told me that my old hip had shattered in his hands as he was taking it out of me. In other words, I really could not have gone on much longer.

I can’t say that I was instantly pain-free, but it was a different kind of pain, manageable with drugs and ice. The staff ensured that I was drugged up, and I was introduced to Oxy, which I stayed on for three weeks. I was spoiled in the hospital with a steady flow of daily visitors, to whom I will always be eternally grateful. John Paul was amazing. He kept things ticking over at home and took over with Alison, ensuring that her routine was as normal as possible, and was with me in the hospital every hour that he wasn’t occupied. He also took great care of me when I came home, ensuring I didn’t have to worry about anything. He still won’t let me do certain chores, much to my frustration, but I suppose after six years of being in pain, some things aren’t worth the risk of dislocation at the moment.

My sisters also both deserve a shout out for their efforts during this time. Laura came up from Cork and stocked my freezer with food and medicine cabinet with vitamins. Alex became a live-in nursemaid when I came home from hospital, helping me shower, toilet and even stayed overnight several times a week. Were it not for these kindnesses, I might have had to consider alternative recuperation arrangements, and everyone who knows me knows of my deep and somewhat irrational fear of being institutionalised. I’m also blessed with good friends who brought me out of the house and helped me to embrace the world again after hiding from it for so long.

Before I had the hip replacement, I was told by so many people that I wouldn’t know myself, that it would be worth it, and that I would get my life back. For the first month after the surgery, I was stiff and sore and thought I’d made a mistake, but almost five months since the operation, I can confirm that if you are in as much pain as I was, a replacement is certainly worth it – PROVIDED (sorry for shouting, screen-reader-users) you do your walking and your physio. In my experience, the physio and walking has to be done, otherwise you can seize up quite quickly. I always said I’d be happy not to return to full-time walking as long as the replacement took the pain away. And for safety reasons, a return to walking full time would be ill-advised for me. I used to fall all the time and think nothing of it, but now a single fall could dislocate the prosthesis, so there’s more at stake.

It’s hard work, but slowly, I feel I’m getting my life back. The biggest obstacle I have right now is tiredness, but I think a lot of that is down to me weaving more activity into my life. I’m back batch cooking, something I haven’t had the energy for in years. I’m back trying to do at least two hours’ writing a day, and I try to do three twenty minute walks from one end of my house to the other (I’m not confident about walking outside the house yet, but I know it will come). Considering that I’d reached a point where I couldn’t even bear weight through my right leg at all prior to the operation, I must admit I’m pleased with my progress.

The cause of my hip woes was discovered to be a condition called hip dysplasia. I’m not sure how long I’ve had it, but in my case the dysplasia involved the femur (thigh bone) being pushed right up into the hip socket, and the head of the femur grinding against the hip socket. Who knew that a case of sciatica could turn out to be something completely different? Hip dysplasia is typically diagnosed in infants, but adults can also be diagnosed later in life, having not developed pain or other symptoms until their thirties and forties, which is what happened in my case. That said, given our gait and muscle tone, it’s not unusual for us wobbly CPers to have hip dysplasia. I admit I do look back sometimes and wonder if I overlooked some obvious symptoms. I’d always get a stitch in my right side after walking. If I fell, it would always be the right leg that buckled first. And it would explain why, despite all the physio I’ve done over the last few years, I never felt that the right leg was getting stronger. That’s the biggest change I’ve noticed in these last twenty-two weeks: my leg finally feels the benefit of the physio.

Operation “Sort My Life Out” is now in full swing, as much as my energy will allow. I’m back writing godawful blogs. I’m actively looking for work  – I’m registering with Employability, who help disabled people find work, as well as doing a jobseeking course online. Every day I make a small step towards progress. And I really hope this doesn’t sound arrogant, but I’m proud of myself. Proud that I found what was causing the pain all these years. Proud that I was brave enough to risk a complex operation. And I would urge anyone reading this who is experiencing chronic pain not to give looking for answers. I shudder to think what my future would look like now if I had.

Memories on a Birthday

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Alison’s first birthday. Not pictured: me blubbering like a baby

 

At 11.52am on Thursday 9 February 2017, Alison will be five years old. I can’t believe that my not-so-little girl will be five today. I also cannot believe that I, a total dummy when it comes to kids, have been a mummy for the last five years.

Every year since Alison’s first birthday, I’ve always used the ninth of February to look at the year gone by, to marvel at how Ali has grown and what she’s learned. This year has been a particularly busy year in Ali’s life. She started primary school in September and is currently excelling in Irish and reading. In the evening she sits down the minute she comes home from school, anxious to get her homework done. She then spends the rest of the evening churning out some ever-impressive artwork at her desk, each picture better than the last. It makes me so proud to be her mummy.

In truth, it’s only really in the last two years that I’ve started to believe that I deserve to be her mummy.

When the words ‘disability’ and ‘care’ are thrown into a sentence together, it’s often wrongly assumed that the disabled person is the one being cared for. If you google ‘disabled parenting’ there is very little support or advice out there for disabled parents. On top of that, there is a narrative that disabled parents are inadequate, that their children are more susceptible to abuse and neglect, and that they cannot be trusted to make sensible decisions regarding their children’s welfare. Just this week I had a lady write on my Facebook page that she had no idea that people as disabled as I am were capable of raising children and admired my bravery in sharing my story. (She had seen the documentary I did a few years ago, Somebody to Love). Undoubtedly she meant well but it was a stark reminder of how hard our family has had to work to be accepted as part of the fabric of our community.

I find Alison’s birthday hard for many reasons. Firstly, because the sense of gratitude I feel is overwhelming: there are so many women out there who would love children and yet I, the absolute baby dummy, was blessed with the most beautiful daughter. Secondly, because I don’t really want her to get any older and lose all the wonderful innocence she has now. But mostly because it’s been such a struggle to achieve the relative normality that we enjoy now. And thankfully, she has no comprehension of how this family has struggled.

Every year, I’ve always cried as Alison blows out her birthday candles. This is because at Alison’s first birthday party, she grabbed the flame with her little hand, only crying for a split second with pain. She had faced danger, and overcome it. I had faced doubts and ongoing criticism for the first year of Alison’s life from so-called ‘professionals’, and I was not brave enough to challenge them. Instead, I stayed quiet, pandering to whatever I was told in the belief that if I didn’t, my child would be taken from me. I believed I was useless. I believed that I was a danger to my own child. I believed I was not the mother she deserved.

 

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Alison with her daddy on her third birthday blowing out her candles. Not pictured: me blubbering like a baby.

 

But in spite of myself, the years have flown by and I have managed to get her to five reasonably happy and healthy. I’ve managed to gain credibility as a semi-respectable parent in my hometown and in Alison’s school. And Alison is so intelligent, witty, kind and beautiful that I feel honoured to be her parent. She makes both JP and I proud every day, and for the most part we don’t take for granted the richness she’s brought to our lives. Our world revolves around her, as it should. We just love her so much.

 

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Alison on her fourth birthday – you all right in the corner there mummy?! So embarrassing….

 

I’ve no doubt that Alison will have a lovely birthday, and all that I can hope is that the emotional scars continue to fade. But please don’t judge me if you see me sniffling over her birthday cake again. This girl is the centre of our world, and by God, we’ve fought so hard to keep our little family together. And, without doubt, it’s been a struggle, but so worth it.

Mastering the Art of Loss

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Losing someone you love isn’t a one-time lesson, it’s a process that one must endure for the rest of their lives.

‘The art of losing isn’t hard to master’ Elizabeth Bishop, ‘One Art’.

 

No-one will argue with the statement that in 2016, we’ve lost a lot of people from the celebrity world. People who had such an impact on our lives, even though we never knew them. People who we looked up to, maybe idolised. Some people that we felt we knew personally. There’s no sugar-coating it: bereavement is cruel. Nothing can prepare you for that sudden void that it creates, and nothing ever fills that void, even if you try to.

Grief doesn’t believe in having a timespan, either. This will be our eighth Christmas without our beloved mother (and today is her fifty-ninth birthday) and I’ve already spent four weeks steeling myself mentally against crying like a sap every time I hear ‘Fairytale of New York’ because it was her favourite Christmas song. And this year particularly I’ve felt her slip further and further from me, because I’ve had to grieve for her repeatedly over the last twelve months. My brain frantically clutches onto fragments of memories I have of her like a man overboard clutching onto an inflatable raft.

First, there was David Bowie, on the tenth of January. I’m not a diehard Bowie fan, but Mum was. She used to tell stories of how she styled her hair like his, and there’s photos of her wearing a cross around her neck as he did. According to Mum, Bowie dictated what Mum wore in her late teens/early twenties, one outfit (if I remember correctly) was an orange top with yellow trousers  (which she got caught wearing by one of the Sisters in the hospital in which she was working at the time). Bowie’s death brought those memories back instantly and that day I mourned for time that couldn’t be recalled.

Four days later, Alan Rickman died and it brought back memories of a family tradition long forgotten: the four of us ‘kids’ meeting on St. Stephen’s Day in Mum’s house, eating crap and watching Harry Potter. Some years that would be the only day that we were all together. Alan Rickman was also in Love Actually, where he plays a love rat. I watched that film with Mum and there’s a scene where Rickman’s wife (played by Emma Thompson) has discovered her husband is having an affair (she discovered some jewellery in his pocket but she was given a Joni Mitchell CD for Christmas instead). In this scene, she listens to Both Sides Now, one of mum’s old favourites and even now, even though I’m expecting it, this scene breaks my heart.

In between the deaths of two absolute comedy legends (Frank Kelly’s on the 28 February, my husband’s birthday, and Victoria Woods’ on 20 April), another absolute comic genius, Ronnie Corbett, died. Every Christmas my mother snuggled on the couch and tittered at the antics of The Two Ronnies reruns. She’d probably seen every episode before, but she still laughed until she cried at them.  And after she died, whenever I saw Ronnie Corbett, I saw her and the big smile plastered across her face.

More recently, the passing of Leonard Cohen (11 November) suddenly reignited that sense of loss that each day, I try to keep buried inside me, along with a sense of panic. I explained in last year’s instalment of Mum’s Birthday Blogs that my way of dealing with particularly stressful things is to push them into a black hole and pretend they’re not happening. Thanks to the nervous breakdown I had two years ago, I now deal with what I’m feeling as it comes, though I must admit old habits die hard. And this year, what I’ve been wondering is how much I actually remember. How much of it is real, and how much I’ve fabricated.

For example, her voicemail message which I rang incessantly for a year after she died. What was it exactly? Was it ‘Sorry I can’t take your call?’ Was it ‘Sorry I missed your call?’ Not important, I know, but you’d think I’d remember that much. Her favourite singer as far as I’m concerned was Joni Mitchell but it might have been Alison Krauss, Elaine Paige, Mary Chapin Carpenter. I’ve no idea what her favourite dinner was because she cooked so many. Every year, as the sense of loss heightens, my memory of who she was becomes entangled with who I would need her to be today.

Of course, there are things I remember. Silly, insignificant things. Like the way we used to stop at KFC in Newry every time we went to Belfast (there was no KFC in Tullamore at the time). The time she bought a collection of Harrods Beanie Babies in the pound shop in Athlone. How she used to paint her pictures slowly, using bold primary colours, giving them thought, time and care. How you weren’t allowed to talk during Casualty or Holby City (we didn’t have Sky+). How glamorous she looked after putting on makeup and how she was the envy of so many women in town. How she had a brooch to go with every outfit, even in the noughties.

And today, on her fifty-ninth birthday, I remember thinking how she was invincible, how she’d be around forever, how I couldn’t see my life without her in it nagging me. And yet, here I am, fielding questions from her almost five-year-old grandchild who would’ve loved her Nana Una.

‘Mummy, was Nana Una pretty?’

‘Yes she was honey, very pretty.’

‘Was she a good cooker like you?’

‘A brilliant cook, she did lovely stews, lasagnes and roast dinners.’

‘Did Nana Una like art?’

‘Yes, she did, and she did lots of paintings and drawings like you do.’

‘I bet you miss her very much.’

My dear Alison, you have no idea how much.

Happy birthday Mum. I was never going to be able to stop you slipping away from this world, but you will never slip away from our hearts. And I know that even if all the other memories fade, we will always be left with love.

Mama Mia!

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Since writing my last blog post, I feel somewhat lighter, happier, as if I have been freed from a horrible prison. And now I have the confidence to say that there are days when I, an amateur mummy, worry that I’m doing the wrong thing. Have I allowed Ali to eat too much chocolate today? Is that glue toxic? Where did she pick up  on that phrase?  and so on.

I was never under the illusion that motherhood was easy. In fact, I imagined it to be so much worse than it is. Until I had Ali, I didn’t ‘do’ kids. They were dirty, nosey, smelly creatures who pervaded every area of your life. However, no words could describe the love I felt when the nurse placed her in my arms. Suddenly, it felt as if I had changed. I was not Sarah any more, I was Alison’s mummy. And my own mummy was not there to tell me what to do or how to cope with this shift in identity.

It’s almost obligatory at Christmas to think of loved ones who have passed away. In my case, the feeling of loss is intensified by the fact that Mum’s birthday is this Monday 15th December. She would’ve been 57, only a ‘young wan’. It doesn’t help that her favourite Christmas song is ‘Fairytale of New York’ which so happens to be played everywhere about fifty times a day in the run up to Christmas. People look at me in shock when I don’t squeal in delight when it starts. Well, now you know why.

Becoming a mummy myself has been the greatest privilege of my life, but constantly wondering if I’m doing the right thing can sometimes be draining and isolating. Torturing myself by saying ‘I can’t even ask my mum’ doesn’t really help, all that does is send me into a self-pity fest. I find myself wondering how she did it with four; when sometimes I struggle with one, bearing in mind that I have Cerebral Palsy and wasn’t always the self-sufficient being I am now.

There was many a time when I truly resented my mum. Like all the times she made me attend physiotherapy and speech therapy after school when I really wanted to be at home writing poetry. Like the times she made me type out my homework on an old Sirius computer with an eerie green and black screen, when I wanted to write in my copybook like my classmates (to me it’s all the better if the teachers can’t read it). The final straw was when she sent me to the National Rehabilitation Hospital when I was sixteen, for intensive physio, speech and occupational therapy. I was livid because I was missing school, and the auditions for the class play (which I had written). Surely I, living with the disability day in, day out, know best what I need? Mum didn’t seem to see it this way.

Mum pushed me hard, often to the disgust of other parents. ‘Keep that foot straight’, ‘Speak slower’, ‘Look at what you’re doing’, she would bark at me. I would give her the doe-eyed look, the one that said, ‘You heartless bitch’. She seemed to find this hilarious. She revelled in this bitchiness. Often she and I would be about town and somebody would come up to her and say something like, ‘I feel sorry for the poor creatur.’ To which mum would respond, something along the  lines of, ‘You feel sorry for her? What about me, I have to put up with her all the time!’ or ‘My daughter doesn’t need your pity. She has more brains than the two of us put together!’

My mum was not just a mother. She was Una, a sister, a friend and a nurse to half of Tullamore at some stage. When I was pregnant, all of the nurses in the outpatients department had stories to tell about her, which usually ended in ‘well, I will never forget how your mother helped that man/woman that day.’ Mum used to tell me that nursing broke her heart. She listened to so many stories and carried them with her to the grave; to this day I couldn’t tell you any of them, but I know that some of them affected her deeply because she told me so.

Mum was elegant, witty and caring; she could also be forgetful and embarrassingly inappropriate. She spoke her mind at all times, which often had hilarious consequences. She wasn’t perfect by any means, but I couldn’t have asked for a better mother. She is the reason I am who I am today, and if I can do half a good a job with Ali as she did with me, then I would be a very happy camper.

So happy Christmas, I love ya baby, I can think of a better time, when all our dreams come true.

Happy birthday Mum. You may not be twenty-nine and a bit, but you will never have to use the purple rinse either. Thank God for small mercies.