rubbish year

Blimey I can't believe I haven't posted since last Christmas, where did that time go?  It really has been a miserable year, with one thing and another.  In March my Nan had a fall at on the first day of her stay at her new nursing home, and ended up in hospital with a brain haemorrhage.  After a week the doctors called my parents in to say we were looking at days, possibly three, and thus started a hectic, chaotic, stressful and painful vigil.  Mum and I seemed to be backwards and forwards to the hospital, visiting several times a day, sometimes with Charlotte, sometimes at night…  I even had the day off work for it. Spent one night there on my own, one night there with Amy, the days blur into weeks, and finally, three weeks later, after a tearful conversation with the consultant I decided to head for home, and left Nan with Mum and Dad.  She peacefully passed away, and there ended one of the most difficult periods in my life.  Realising that Mum needed me - she couldn't manage the physical being at the hospital around the clock, and couldn't manage the planning of the next 'shift' - we were constantly having to make 'the plan' and adjust it according to what we were told.  We talked and talked, occasionally knitted, made plans, saw people, made friends with the staff.  There were many positives, but there were horrible lows, and it was so, so difficult.  The funeral enabled us all to draw a positive line under it all - and was 'as she would have wanted it' we think.  Then the clearing of the bungalow began in earnest and it is now on the market.

We've been on our annual holiday, this year to two different places, East Allington and Dittisham.  It coincided with a time when I was changing medication from the Venlafaxine I was on, to beta blockers (PropPranolol).  Stress has just continued for weeks, getting progressively worse as I went back to work, and as the teaching and preparation for Ofsted mounted…  so I'm now back to square one, on 50mg of Sertraline, and feeling utterly exhausted.