This week... we have a horrible few weeks (From Basingstoke Gazette)

This week... we have a horrible few weeks

12:01pm Thursday 31st May 2012 in My World By Joanne Mace

HAVE you ever had one of those weeks? Or even two of them?

I cannot remember now what was the first thing that happened, but it might have been the husband’s lump in his finger.

Luckily for him, he has private health insurance through his work, so it took a mere few weeks for him to be referred to specialists who concluded that it was indeed a tumour, hopefully benign, but a tumour nonetheless.

Then the company he works for started yet another 30-day redundancy consultation. This is the third or fourth time that he has been through this in the last year, so by now, our response is along the lines of que sera sera.

I refuse to panic until confronted with something definite, having wasted many sleepless nights over the issue previously.

Next, my back kicked up a mighty stink, refusing to operate at all for a couple of days, and then playing up dramatically for a few others.

If it hadn’t been for the mum chum who let me take up refuge in her house for five hours while my daughter ran round causing havoc while I sat, crooked and useless in a chair, I honestly do not know how I would have coped.

And then my hospital appointment with the man – the boss at the pain clinic – whose ability to help me I have been dreaming about, was cancelled at the last minute due to his having to conduct an emergency surgery.

Having hobbled there, bent to one side thanks to my accursed discs, only to be told that I would once again have to rejoin the NHS waiting list, was too much. Once again, I dissolved.

Lastly, and possibly worst of all, my father’s new pedigree spaniel pup Fudge, a breed of dog he’s wanted all his life, started to become ill, unable to keep any food or water down. As she grew more and more unwell and ended up in the vets in isolation on a drip, we tried to keep telling ourselves that she’d surely pull through.

But, last Sunday at 4am, she died, the third of my parents’ pets to pass away in the last three months.

Sometimes, life is cruel. We know this, but are still helpless but to surrender to our own feelings.

My retired dad, who’d been like a new father with Fudge, constantly texting pictures and video of her, is absolutely crushed. Even though he is our strength, he has been unable to stem his own tears, blaming himself and not the virus which robbed her of a long and happy dog’s life.

I, for once, have no words.