Day +5: Thankful, Humbled & Speechless

I cry a lot these days. Today was no exception.

Usually, they are tears of sadness. Gone are the days of tears of disbelief, bewilderment, and confusion. The tears that fall are mainly tears of shattered dreams, anger, frustration, and sorrow. Sometimes, they are tears of fatigue. But today, there were tears of gratitude too.

I had a meltdown around mid morning, resulting in tears of frustration spilling over the most frivolous and trivial thing. I use an app on my iPhone called Instagram to edit photos and upload them to Facebook and Twitter to share with family and friends. Since Facebook decided that, come what may, everyone's profile pages would be switched from one layout to a new one called Timeline, I wanted to make sure that my new profile page appeared exactly how I wanted. It took me ages to get all the settings just so after the last layout change, and it was taking me ages to do the same to this new layout.

Anyway, I somehow managed to disable something on my Facebook page that meant I wasn't able to publish my Instagram photos. During my fiddling, I clicked on something that stopped anyone and everyone from seeing my Instagram photos on my profile page. Nothing I was doing was taking me to a settings page of some description, and I grew more and more frustrated. I was all but throwing a tantrum when Jonathan asked me what I was trying to do. When I bemoaned my troubles, he said "Well, stop using Facebook then."

Jonathan had meant to make light of the situation. He could see I was getting frustrated, but he didn't know how to help, so he thought he'd make a joke and hoped I'd laugh and snap out of my mood. His "nonchalance" was that final straw. I burst into tears and Jonathan quickly jumped up and rush to give me a cuddle.

I was tired, and really frustrated with change. What should have been something that was easy to fix was doing my head in. I had a sook and a little cry, and felt a little bit better afterwards. And incidentally, yes, it was something that was easy to fix - after my little sook, it took me 5 minutes to work it out.

Sean was asleep through my hissy fit. For this, I was grateful.

We had 2 visitors today. Grace came by in the morning, just as Sean was waking from his nap. She was totally laden down with bags of food, and once she was in the room, we looked through the bags to see what she had brought us. There was a box of tuscan beef stew with rice, and some gourmet pasta, and a delicious tub of chocolate mousse, all from Pasta Pantry. Grace also brought us some KFC - YUM!!! Even though there was a KFC within walking distance from the hospital, it was still nice to have it brought to us.

Grace stayed for a while, and Sean took ages to wake up from his nap and warm to Grace. But once he did, he had a great time playing with Grace, and gave her warm clingy cuddles. We gave Grace the full update on how Sean was doing, and before long, she had to leave to head home to her brood. Grace said she'd be back on Wednesday before she and her family fly out of Sydney to Hong Kong on Good Friday.

Our second visitor was Lissy, and if we thought Grace was laden with food, then we ain't seen nothing yet. Lissy brought the supermarket with her - she had a few shopping bags in one hand, and a huge duffel bag over her shoulder, all packed with food. There were ready-made meals that needed a few minutes in the microwave to reheat, and there were salads, and frozen meals, and cold cuts, and sandwich fillers. There were bread rolls, and muffins, and store bought cookies, and crackers. And jelly beans, and homemade cookies. There was so much food, we weren't able to fit it all in to our fridge!!!

We felt really bad about the amount of food Lissy had bought for us, and tried to give her some money towards the groceries. Lissy vehemently shook her head, and pulled out an envelope for me. Inside the envelope was a Get Well Card from Lissy and Dave, Biagio, Megan A, Mitch & Anna, Anna, Ivo & Aryn, and Cathy & KE, and a gigantic wad of cash to go towards more groceries and petrol and car parking vouchers.

Speechless.

Absolutely gobsmacked.

For about 5 seconds.

Then the tears came. Great big sobs. Big fat heavy tears. Nothing was going to stop those babies from falling down my face.

It was a bit overwhelming, to see how much our friends care for us and love our little man, and how they all desperately wish him to get better. After many people started expressing a wish to help Sean, Lissy sent out an email to our friends noting that the best way was to help ease some of the financial burden associated with our expenses while Sean was in hospital; expenses such as petrol for our rather large car, food and takeaway meals, as well as car parking fees at the hospital. With Jonathan driving over 350km per week to and from the hospital, the car was drinking about a tank of petrol a week. Even though we had a full sized kitchen here at the hospital, it was just too hard to try and cook meals for us, so Jonathan and I had been resorting to getting takeaway meals from the restaurants and food outlets near the hospital. And as the car park at the hospital was privately owned and operated, and even with the subsidised parking passes, the cost to park in the car park on a daily basis was adding up.

We NEVER, EVER, EVER, in a million years, expected our friends to give us anything. We wanted our friends to keep us in their thoughts, and for those who prayed, to pray for us, especially Sean, during this whole journey. To receive messages of support from all over the world made us feel so loved and blessed, and carried us through some low times. To then receive this extraordinarily, exceptionally generous gift of cash from our friends was just too much.

Thankful is one word. Humbled is another. Blessed. Overwhelmed. Loved.

We don't have the right word to completely justify how thankful we are and how loved we feel. So until someone teaches us that word, the only thing we can say is THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

♥ ♥ ♥ THANK YOU!!! ♥ ♥ ♥

Lissy stayed for a few hours and kept us company. We had a good catch up while Sean slept the afternoon away.

Sean was a bit out of kilter today. With daylight saving ending this morning at 3am, we "gained" an hour, which threw everything out of whack a bit for Sean. Breakfast was a bit later than usual, as was lunch. Today was the day Sean started becoming quite unsettled, as his body tried to allow the new cells to find their way to their rightful places, without any white cells of his own to keep away all the little bugs and germs that are otherwise innocuous to us.

While Sean was happy enough to play with Grace while she was here, he became quite clingy and upset after she left. Sean felt quite warm when we tried to feed him some lunch, and after only a few mouthfuls, he pushed the spoon away, lost interest, and began to get really upset. We stopped feeding him and gave him cuddles, and eventually, he calmed down, just as Lissy walked through the door.

For most of the afternoon, Sean drifted in and out of sleep. Sean became quite febrile at one stage, and spiked a fever too. He got as high as 39.3°C (just under 103°F), which was the warmest he had been during our stay to date. Poor little man was very unsettled for most of the afternoon, and as he was so grizzly, we didn't try to feed him any more solids.

Having slept the afternoon away, I didn't think Sean would fall asleep till quite late. Yet, about 10 minutes after Jonathan left the hospital, the little man was fast asleep. After such an unsettled day, I was expecting Sean to have some trouble sleeping during the night, and hoped very very much that the night nurse would be quiet and creep about, just like Rita the "Night Ninja Nurse".

No such luck. Clare barged into the room at 10pm to do what she needed to do, and completely upset Sean, to the point of Sean crying hysterically. I tried to soothe Sean while he was lying in the bed, but it was clear to me that the only way I would be able to calm Sean down was by picking him up and giving him cuddles. It took me 20 minutes to resettle Sean, and he's now back in the cot, asleep, albeit quite lightly.

If that damn nurse Clare continues to be as noisy as she was just now, I am going to be having some stern words with her. After a day filled with love and blessings, this woman sure knows how to put a huge dampener on it!