Cry me a river...

I started being allowed to go 'home', to my ex-husband Peter's house for a night, then for the weekend, so, I thought it was just getting me used to being away from the Rehab centre, not that I would be sent to another nursing home! I cried when I realised that no one had been thinking of me 'going home', I was getting ready to be transferred and the first place that Peter took me to in my wheelchair, was the Roads and Transport Authority to get a mobility pass, which everyone needed to take me around to various doctors etc.


After about 6 months, I moved to Newcastle to stay with my sister Maria and her husband Milton. Peter and my two lovely girls drove me up to Newcastle but the closer we got the more I cried, because I didn't know how long it would be before I saw my little ones again. 


I was settled in to my new room at my sister's house and my girls and their father took their leave from me, I was heartbroken as well as broken this time. I found myself sitting outside looking in at them and not even being able to be apart of my daughter's year 11 formal. I was desperate to learn about their lives now, even though it didn't include me - I was inconsolable.


Maria tried to make my life and my room as inviting as she could, with lovely pink curtains and a gorgeous silk duvet cover and lots of pillows and photos of the girls and my friends from Sydney but the fact that my children were living without me and the fact that I would never be the same again, I realised that I was severely depressed and even though I knew that part of that was the fact that I had had a stroke, part of it was also finally realising that my life as I had known it was gone, finished and buried.


The next couple of months were taken up with rehabilitation at the Rankin Park centre in Newcastle at the John Hunter Hospital. Once again the fabulous people at this centre took it upon themselves to be the whipping boys of the broken people like me.


I started to take the hospital bus to Rankin Park most days when I had to be there, to let Milt and Maria get back to their lives as much as possible. The OT's, Physios, Speech Therapy, hydrotherapy sessions and counsellor's were of the same ilk as their counterparts at Royal Rehabilitation Centre Sydney and they helped me as much as I would let them.


I was mutinous and not very nice to be around because I was certain that I was 'different' and that all the other people were 'different to me' and 'I wasn't one of them', well, it took several months for me to realise that guess what??? I certainly was one of them! I didn't wake up in the morning, able to walk again, as if from a bad dream, I couldn't speak like I used to all you could hear or understand from me, was blah, blah, blah!!! And I wouldn't be driving home again after that bad dream, cause guess what again.....I CERTAINLY WAS ONE OF THEM!!!


One thing that really got to me, was the fact that food tasted dreadful! I longed for something anything that tasted good or tasted like it should, but when I had something ordered for me, without a doubt it was something totally different from what I remembered or still tasted wrong. Maria laughed a lot about me trying out food and after one bite I would usually turn my nose up at it, shake my head and say 'NO'.


My birthday was just around the corner and even though I couldn't have cared less about celebrating anything, two things happened to make me smile again, if only for a day! My wonderful friends came to visit me from Sydney and I had a fantastic time with my girlfriends, in particular Leanne, who had made me a 'Recovery Quilt', a beautiful patchwork quilt that she sewed especially for me and worked a square to say that she had made it with love.


The next day my children came up for the day and instead of crying with sorrow I was so happy that my life was worth living again that it made me cry with happiness.