Letter From The Other Side; from Cynthia. 'When The Doors Of Life Begin To Close'.

Dear Del,

It has been months since I wrote, I hope you have noticed my absence but will take it on the chin if time has passed by without you missing my letters.

Most of my life I have tried to see the humour and irony of our days but I have been sorely tested since Christmas morning when I found myself looking out the rear window of an ambulance at a sullen stormy Christmas morning sky.
At around 6 a.m I had walked into the kitchen to make our morning cup of tea. We were expecting family to arrive from down south so I was up bright and early and feeling very excited.

As I held the kettle of boiling water my hand began to shake and I was aware of a most peculiar sensation. I tried to speak to Teddy but the only noises I could emit sounded rather like baby gurgles.

The next few hours seemed to be a constant blue of faces asking me a stream of questions I found difficult to answer and tests in machines that bumped or clanked and others which would have looked right at home on a stage where a magician was going to do the old ‘saw the lady in half’ trick. I would have liked to share some of my thoughts with the people around me but didn’t have the energy.

The upshot if it all was that I was admitted to the hospital with a suspected stroke.
For the next few days I shared a ward with two ladies suffering dementia and a poor young woman who had been kicked in the face by a horse. The conversation was bizarre in a rather humorous way. It made up for the lack of Plum pudding and cake. I wasn’t feeling very festive anyway despite the nurses walking around in Christmas hats and various decorations not usually seen on the wards.

One lady was convinced I was sitting in her bed and I was making it all wet and repeatedly told me to get out of it. When she wasn’t abusing me she was trying to take her oxygen and drip lines out and tying them into knots. The nurses earned their money as they fought with this frail little piece of humanity to keep her from damaging herself.

Another lady, a large Dutch woman, told everyone off in her native language. I may have been misjudging her she could have been saying happy things, but they didn’t sound it. Unfortunately she kept her barrage up all night. One doesn’t go to hospital for a rest. The other lass was too swollen and in too much pain to say anything much at all. By comparison I felt quite well and after yet more tests, I was sent home two days later.

Well, I have had two more trips since then following similar episodes and further tests. Each one making me a little more fearful that I indeed had a problem.
The result of all this tedious activity has been one of those times in life when doors has been unceremoniously slammed in my face and the world has become an unfamiliar place. My days this year will be the beginning of a new and difficult faze.

Have I ever mentioned that because of an accident when I was a toddler I spent some of my childhood in a cervical brace? Well I did until I was sent to boarding school when well away from my parents reach and with no house mistress who would check my behaviour, I threw the brace into the school furnace. No teenage girl wants to be seen wearing something like grandma’s corsets or be teased by her dormitory mates.
I have spent the rest of my life exercising and being reasonably fit but with a constant ‘bad back’ which has become worse during the years. Something I put down to getting older. We put everything down to getting older don’t we?

The tests have shown up a few unexpected bad jokes.

It seems I have a few tumours on my spine and my ability to do many of the things I have spent enjoying doing all my life may be taken from me.
Now, the prospect of having almost all my avenues of enjoyment taken away is a daunting and frightening thing and I can’t claim to have taken the news passively.
My speech and memory have returned, for which I am grateful, although the mental exercises and the crosswords I have attempted have been full of some creative ways of spelling. In fact I managed to make the words I wanted fit the squares rather than trying to think of the right word.

I’m going to chronicle some of this journey with you because it may be interesting and helpful if you or anyone you know is coming face to face with doors that are shutting them into what seems to be an ever shrinking life and world.

Over the years my reading has included many biographies. Reading how others dealt with the highs and lows of their lives has been enlightening, very educational, thought filled and supportive at times. I’m now interested to see how I am going to face them. I think at least at this stage I am able to be subjective enough to be honest with myself and also with the reader.

Teddy saw my frustration as I realized sitting at the computer to write is almost beyond me and so trotted off down to the op-shop and found a small lightweight desk on wheels. He cut it down to size, welded up the bits again at a more comfortable height and brought it in for me to try. Now I am able to roll it around the house and put it in front of me wherever I am sitting. I need to move fairly frequently into a new place to change the position of my muscles to help prevent the painful spasms and also to get to the furthest end of the house from the maestro when he is practising his trumpet….. He can almost play ‘Blue Moon’. This feat is a testament to his tenacity and to the forbearance of our neighbours.

His ingenuity in converting the desk has broken one door down which I thought had been closed and I am immensely grateful. All those years of inventing and making strange things may at last be going to pay off.

While I wait to see if the neurosurgeon can cement up the holes made in my vertebra by the tumours, I will spend time recording all the many letters I have written to you over the years. The local library is interested in keeping them in the section of audio books and of course, I will add some to my blog.

As well as the compression fractures and tumours, I am missing a couple of disks between my vertebrae, which explains some of the pain I’ve had and also explains why I am turning into the shape of a capital C. The rate things are going; I suppose I could become a lower case c.

This year hasn’t started well for a few of our friends and for a couple, it didn’t start at all. Death came suddenly to them and one wonders, is that perhaps kinder?
If like us you are finding it difficult to see a rosy side to life, try and kick some of those damn doors that have slammed in your face open again or maybe find a few new ones and rattle their knobs. We really have no other choice do we?

Instead of sitting aimlessly on our veranda doing very little, it has given me an opportunity to watch the birds in our summer garden and take part in an internet site which helps record birds throughout the country. It records their numbers and their conditions, breeding etc. I have also found another site which records a wide variety of wildlife including frogs, lizards, snakes and wombats and because we live where we do, I can help with spotting eagles, possums and other shy animals that live away from the cities.

It is only a small thing, but it gives me the feeling I am doing something useful.
So there is one piece of self discovery I have made already. I know some people who are happy to play cards, go to clubs, play computer games, do jigsaws etc but unless I am able to find what I think of as useful things to occupy my days I know depression will be looking over my shoulder. I have read that older people make up one of the largest percentages of the depressed persons in our community.

I can no longer bend and have become very proficient at picking things I have dropped up with my toes or failing that, the barbeque tongs.

Walter our spaniel is a wonderful help when it come to cleaning up spills until Teddy can wipe them up a little more hygienically. Walter also bullies me up out of my chair to take my daily walk out to get the post.

I don’t know who invented them but I would like to say a big thankyou to whoever invented remote controls. So if you know the person, please pass my thanks onto them.
I have always heard that these times in life show up your true friends. How right that is and how grateful I am to have a few who have gone through life with me right from school days. Those people whose faces still shine out at me from behind the wrinkles and the fading hair.

Although this year has begun very differently for us, others are facing far worse such as devastating floods, war, killer cold weather and personal losses of every kind. The world goes on in its muddled way and so must we.


As the old song said, we will try and ‘Walk On The Sunny Side Of The Street’.
Cheers for now,
Cynthia
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