We have a large badger hole in our front garden...
Last year, we all fell into it.
Unlike Alice, when she fell down the rabbit hole and ended up in wonderland...
We arrived in Hades.
Last Autumn (2021) we were preparing our home for the usual Autumnal celebrations.
We like to feel the changes in the weather and welcome in the seasons.
Then the Shadow of Death decided to come and play too...
The Troll (Steve) was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.
He was rushed into hospital and the plan was to remove the growth and a section of the colon.
The surgeon cut him open and found that the 'aggressive' cancer had spread into his small intestine and so he could not cut the tumor out.
He gave him an ileostomy instead.
Steve was very weak and in agony.
None of us could visit him at any time because of the covid rules.
While all of this was happening, our water tank had stopped filling up from our stream.
We had no water, none to drink, bath, wash clothes, nothing.
We also now had no transport.
Steve was the only one here who can drive.
(We would not be able to visit him even if we were allowed.)
Living up a mountain with no transport is like being in another world.
A world of Nightmares.
After a few weeks he came home and started to adapt to his life with a stoma.
He hated it.
When he had gained a little weight and started to feel a little stronger, he started Chemotherapy.
This is when our loving, kind, gentle, soft-hearted Troll turned into a monster.
The medicines he was given turned him into a very aggressive character.
He was not our Troll any more, he was a Troll from a story book.
I had no idea that chemo could affect a person in this way.
It was hard enough trying to cope with our grief without having to live in the world of Grimm.
When each course of chemo would end, he would come back to us.
He would return to being our big, daft Troll.
I have to be honest here and say, I am ashamed of the feelings I had during these times, the steroids he was given made me hate this stranger who was living in our home.
Then he would say goodnight to me in his normal voice and I would hear my Troll again.
The one I loved.
My children (two of the three) live here too.
The levels of anxiety we experienced during his hospital stay were unbelievable.
We did not know if Steve would ever come home or if he would die in the hospital, alone.
My son has asthma and anxiety and added to this, he was worried about trying to get a job, to help support us.
There are no jobs here, at all.
My daughter became the official rock and boulder mover.
Helping sort out the overgrown garden.
Steve could barely lift himself out of a chair.
Anxiety seemed to become a layered cake.
Each worry added another layer to the tower.
Each new problem became a filling holding up the concoction.
I take this cake up the stairs to bed with me.
It lays on my chest all night.
It stops me from sleeping.
Or breathing.
My blood glucose levels became another worry.
Trying to keep level and not stressed is so hard in these situations, for anyone.
When you have Type 1 Diabetes it can become life threatening.
The story of my T1 diagnosis can be found in this
post.
Money is another issue.
Steve is the breadwinner.
How will we pay our mortgages without him?
How will we pay anything?
We have no savings at all.
Another layer added to that Alice in Wonderland cake.
As I write this, we are waiting for Steve to come home from the hospital again.
He was taken to A&E last week after he vomited so much gunk he screamed and howled.
He had fallen ill again...on my daughter's birthday and spent the day in the local cottage hospital.
Turns out, the chemo horrors he went through, did nothing.
His tumor has grown into his small intestine so much, it has caused a blockage.
Nothing he was eating could get past it, so he was ready to burst.
He cannot eat but he can drink.
He was told that there is nothing they can do now about the tumor.
No operations, no chemo.
He wants to come home.
We are now just waiting for our Troll to come back up the mountains to us...
Update...
Our Troll died at the end of April...
