You always hope that the New Year will freshen things up, from New Year’s resolutions, to just generally cleaning up your act, getting fitter, working harder and doing those jobs that have been put off. Two years ago, the start of 2014 was undoubtedly the worst time of my life, with my elder daughter’s illness consuming the whole family, and almost living in Southampton hospital for weeks at a time.

You can read about that here

This year seems to have thrown us another dozy. As well as what I would describe as a major setback to what I hoped would be the ongoing recovery of my daughter from her rare illness, I’ve been admitted to hospital twice in a week for unexpected and unrelated reasons, as well as a sudden death in the family shattering everything around us. It’s been what can only be described as a living nightmare.

I was ordered to the ENT department by my GP late on a Friday morning at the start of February, as a medical emergency because of my continued sinus problems which have lasted over six years now. The concerned consultants there took one look at me and immediately admitted me to stay over for the entire weekend so that I could be pumped full of antibiotics.

Something of an unusual case for them, I gathered. On managing to escape from my hospital bed late on the Sunday, we as a family headed north for the funeral and all the preparations that entailed. Tuesday evening came around, just over 48 hours after being discharged from the ward in Salisbury, before the most amazing pain started to consume me. First a paramedic, and then an ambulance arrived, by which time I was diagnosed as having a kidney stone. I can’t tell you the pain I was in as I was carted off to hospital. The medical professionals were all fantastic, especially the nurses who seemed to be the only ones to be able to find one of my veins to put in a cannula so that I could have some pain relief. As you can see from the picture, the two short stays gave me something of the voodoo doll look. Apparently I have tricky veins…..no, I’m not joking. Not a pretty picture.

I managed to make the funeral; it was a close run thing, but one way or another I would have attended.

But with more scans planned for when I returned south, life by then had been well and truly turned upside down.

Sitting here I long for the return of normality, the humdrum routine of our everyday life, but currently it seems a million miles away. Odd that you could yearn for something so normal that you almost always take it for granted. Nothing special, head down, working hard, writing, looking after the kids, social media, household chores, DIY, etc, etc. It couldn’t ever really be classed as exciting, or even slightly satisfactory. But I miss it now more than I could have ever realised I would. Not weeks, more like months to get back to what I would regard as our family’s routine, that’s how I see it.

Disappointed doesn’t begin to cover it. We’ve managed to grab a handful of days out as a family since the year started, but they’ve been few and far between. For over a month I went without seeing the sea. I can’t tell you how much I didn’t like that. So there it is. Our continuing struggle with the New Year. I truly hope all of you are faring better.