Thursday 18 February 2010

A month is no time at all ...

A month ago yesterday Dr B was taken to hospital. It's been a long time since then and it's been no time at all. He is still gradually getting better but he won't be back at work just yet. We'll just have to see how it goes.
A month seems like such a long time when you're thinking about holidays or deadlines but it's no time at all when you're involved in the full time occupation of trying to get better. Things take time to heal.
I'm not very good at being the carer, so it's just as well my patient is fairly self-sufficient and able to look after himself. Even if at the moment this still mainly involves him ruling the world from the sofa with his Nokia! Having my partner sick has also made me realise just how much he normally does for me in all sorts of little ways - like making early morning tea and dealing with my computer problems and carrying more than the fair share of the shopping home. I've learnt I can still do all of that myself and that we can organize our lives differently. But over these past weeks I've also realised that one of the subtexts to how we have come to interact over the past ten years has been that I'm the one who deserves a bit more concern or consideration because of my MS. It's easy to lazily slip into the role of the one who is a bit more "in need", to assume that the other one will be there solid as a rock. Now I know very differently. I also know that bearing the concern and worry of being the "carer" has certainly not been easy on him all this time.
Really though I have no great insights as a result of the dramatic health emergency we lived through, other than total, tearful thankfulness. I feel lucky and grateful and very, very emotional. A month really is no time at all to deal with all those powerful emotions, maybe sometime later in the year I'll start coming up for air.

0 Comments: