Friday 6 December 2013

sleepwalking.

Today was the first time I've seen Stacey break down.

there's been tears over the last few months, lots of them, from everyone including Stacey. a lot of 'why me's which is understandable. since I live in Nottingham I miss the day to day struggles my mum, dad and obviously Stacey, go through. every time I see her she's so much better. I got home on Thursday evening after work and Stacey wasn't even home, which I found strange. her and Kierran strolled in half an hour after me, from being at the shops, and she looked healthier than I'd seen her in weeks.

I've mentioned before that she is always the one that comforts everyone else, whenever there's tears Stacey makes a joke out of it, 'not this again!'. tonight was different. there were tears, screaming and even the odd thing thrown around. for the last few weeks she has bottled it all up, put on a brave face to everyone around her and tonight she snapped. I think it could have something to do with the fact that earlier this week we found out that mum can't be a kidney donor. when I first found out i'll admit that I was relieved, only because I didn't want my mum and my sister to go through major surgery. when thinking more about it, it now means my sister has a longer wait for a transplant and could be on dialysis for years.
It upset all of us to think of it that way.

she refused to talk to my mum or dad, I suppose because they are here all the time, so I thought I'd give it a try. we've never been touchy feely close, i've never been one to give out hugs or tell her I love her, or talk to her much about anything at all but I couldn't just sit and listen to her sob.

she wants to give up.
she's fed up.
she's disabled.
she's stuck and has lost everything that she has worked so hard for.
she's lost her spark and her sense of humour.
she cannot do one thing for herself, even 'little' things like taking a bath or making a cup of tea she has to rely on my mum to help.
and the worst one- she's not normal anymore.

if you know Stacey then you know she was far from normal to begin with! but how do I tell her everything is going to be okay? how do I answer her when she asks me when she will go back to normal? how long til she feels okay again? why has this happened to her? why is this so hard? why should I have to fight my body every day? why am I blind?

my only advice was to believe. our granddad used to tell us that as long as we had faith in ourselves and believed, we could do anything we wanted. I told her that she just need to believe that there was a light at the end of all this pain and heartache. to believe that she will be back to her old self again eventually, no matter how long it takes. she has come so far in just 16 weeks, most people would struggle to get out of bed every day if they were in her situation but she is constantly on the move. I told her how proud I was of everything that she has achieved in these last few months, that she's come too far to give up now. I hope all she needed was a good cry, a hug and a hot bath. it wont fix her body but I hope it will soothe her emotions. she still has a battle ahead of her.




I haven't written a new post in over a month so there's a lot to be filled in. i'll get round to it. it's starting to get harder to remember things but I will try!

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family.

Our family. Stacey's 21st birthday 2012.

andsoitgoes.

17/10/13.


Today marks exactly 8 weeks since we took Stacey into hospital in Palma and exactly 9 weeks since she first started feeling ill.
amazingly after those long, awful weeks, she is home.
part of me thinks these last few weeks have flown by, it all happened so fast, yet reliving them feels like Stacey has been ill for months.

she is quite honestly the bravest person I’ve ever known.

instead of crying and lying in bed all day feeling sorry for herself she is constantly trying to ‘escape’ and walk around for herself, she is even talking about getting training into using a walking cane and a guide dog!

even in hospital in Palma she was always the one comforting us all. when I was first allowed to see her, lying in the hospital bed surrounded by monitors and tubes I burst into tears. i’ve never ever seen her look so little. she’s so lively, full of laughter and to be quite honest, boisterous. seeing her lying there was awful. she didn’t cry though, she hugged me and told me to stop being so silly, she was going to be fine. Stacey is still like that with everyone that cries around her.

we had to fly home on the Sunday, after we took her into hospital on the Thursday night. we were told that the dialysis that she was having wasn’t working and that she would have to have surgery. my mum came back to the hotel to help us pack and to get hers and Stacey’s bag ready.

when we found out that Stacey would need to be kept in the hospital in Palma for a few weeks, me and my dad had to organise the insurance for us to stay with her. the lady that worked for Jet2 was incredible, she was so helpful and really put our minds at ease. she practically sorted everything out for us. however, because we had separate insurance only one person would be covered under her name. so my mum was going to stay. we couldn’t just leave her on her own though, at that time my mum was a mess, cried every time someone talked to her, not eating or sleeping and nearly collapsed on me when she came back to our hotel. we were really worried. in the end, literally the night before we were due to leave my dad decided he was staying, he couldn’t leave them both.

he was incredible. he really kept my mum strong over the 3 weeks they were in Palma.

one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life was leaving my mum, dad and Stacey in a different country with her about to undergo surgery. Kierran was a mess too. I just kept thinking, what if that was the last time i was ever going to see her? what if i never get to tell her i love her again? the last goodbye we had wasn’t long enough. she told me I was the best sister she could ever have hoped for. I wish that was true.

we left the hotel early Sunday morning driving away from my dad, crying, to the airport.

holidayfromhell.

09/10/13.


we had been looking forward to our holiday for a year. it was the first one I had been on with my family for a few years so we talked about it quite a lot and were so excited. there were a few of us going: mum&dad, grandma&grandad, Stacey&kierran and me&dan.

we should really have known it was destined to be a failure, a few months ago my Grandad was diagnosed with lung cancer. he had an operation pretty much straight away to remove the tumours then had to wait a couple of weeks to find out if he was clear and if he needed further treatment. this meant he couldn't fly out on holiday with us.
luckily my grandma and granddad both got their money back under insurance, but we were all upset they couldn't join us on holiday.

it was an ongoing joke for months that my mum&dad would be on holiday for two weeks on their own for the first time in 30 years of being together but thankfully they had an amazing first week before we joined them.

I still look back on that night, when Stacey and Kierran drove up to us in Nottingham to go to the airport. should I have done more? told her she absolutely couldn't come on holiday still being blind and couldn't walk? would the hospital have caught it quicker if she had stayed in Coventry or dismissed her again?

Stacey spent the first few days in her hotel room, she was in so much pain but didn't want to ruin our holiday. she slept, we took her food and water, she slept some more. we had a pretty normal start to the holiday and it makes me feel guilty every day.

she was slowly dying from dehydration and kidney failure and we had no idea at all.

she had sickness and diarrhoea, she was barely eating anything and could still barely walk. by Wednesday Stacey was fed up of being in her room and asked us to hire her a wheelchair. we took her all over the place in it! go karting, the beach and the pub after dinner.

Thursday evening, after spending the day on the beach, we went to an Irish pub and had a few drinks, then back to the hotel for a few more. Kierran and my mum put Stacey to bed because she wasn't feeling very well. when my mum came back downstairs she looked really nervous and upset. Stacey had broken down and sobbed about the pain she was in, she had never felt pain like it. that's when we knew we had to do something more than just hydrate her.

we rang a taxi and my mum, Kierran and I bundled Stacey into it and took her to the local walk in centre. they told us to get her straight into the hospital. as soon as we arrived at the university hospital she was rushed straight in and put on a drip.

we were told if we had left her much longer she could have died. whatever liquids we were giving her were no where close to how much she was losing.

Kierran and I were in the waiting room for 5 hours before mum came out to see us. we assumed Stacey would be fine after being  on a drip, she just needed to be rehydrated and she would be fine.
the doctor told us that Stacey's kidney had failed, it was touch and go on whether she would be okay or not.

thestart.

06/10/13.


twentytwo years old.
blackbelt in mixed martial arts (which she studied for 7 years).
slim & healthy.
a student nurse (she took vitamins everyday).
never had anything more than a cold.

my Grandad (married into the family) is going through chemotherapy for lung cancer at the moment and i remember, when we got the diagnosis thinking 'were so lucky that nothing awful runs in our family'.

a week before we were due to go on holiday (12th august) my sister posted a picture on Facebook showing herself lying in bed with the caption 'poorly with a chest infection'. typical! a couple of days before we go on holiday, that we've been excited for for a year, and one of us is ill!

my mum&dad had flown out a week earlier and Stacey, Kierran, Dan and I were due to meet them in Palma Nova on the 18th August.

i got a Facebook message from Kierran on the Friday (we were due to fly on the Sunday) saying 'call me now ASAP' i was in the cinema watching Kickass 2 and immediately panicked thinking something had happened to Stacey, my mum or dad. i left the film and rang him, Stacey answered telling me not to panic and that she had  been rushed to hospital as the antibiotics she was on for her chest infection were too strong and she collapsed at the doctors. she was okay and they were sending her home.

Stacey was given more antibiotics to help the cramps and sickness and sent home. i called her on Saturday morning, she was staying with my Grandma to be looked after, and she was really poorly.

they were due to drive to my flat around half 10 that evening, however i got a phone call at half 9 from my Aunty telling me that sometime in the afternoon Stacey had gone blind. the doctors thought it was due to the antibiotics she was given and basically dismissed her. she was BLIND and having such SEVERE stomach cramps she had to be pushed out of hospital in a wheelchair.

they declared her fit to fly. they managed to drive to us just in time to leave for the airport at 4am
.


Ourmatchingtattoos.


03/03/2013.

it'sonlythebeginning.


06/10/13.

in all my life i can't remember a time when i have ever cried so much. people only have to look at me and i'm a mess. my mum is worse, she can talk about what's happening to Stacey over and over again, medical terms and everything, but when someone asks how SHE is she can't hold back tears.

i guess i needed an outlet. somewhere i can vent and tell our story even if nobody else reads it. kind of a diary for Stacey to look back on if she ever wants to.

my healthy, happy, beautiful, larger than life sister is currently in hospital and the doctors have no idea what is wrong with her.

apparently there are 5 stages of kidney failure and you go through each one before your kidneys give out, this would usually take months.

stacey's kidneys died in less than a week. they went from healthy to non existent in days.

i guess i'm starting her story.