continued on my path.....

Hi World,

Hope your day is going well. Today i woke feeling a little lighter, maybe it is due to being able to write all my up's and downs in blog form now....who knows??!!!

So just to allow you a little more insight into my nightmare 2009 year. The 3 yrs before this year i was studying at uni, bachelors of health science - Nursing. During the study years i had a very ill son who got a serious reaction to a MENZ B immunisation and has had several thousand tests and ops since then as well as long stints in Starship childrens hospital....long story short my uni marks were not good and i dropped out to concentrate on my son's health and maybe my own mental health, due to the stress i had been under with full time study, part time work and living in and out of hospital with an ill son.
Something i should mention at this time is i am a solo parent to a fantastic son. I love him always and forever. I also should mention just how close my family are, i have 2 older sisters and an older brother and 3 nephews (my sisters boys). My mum and dad are still married and we all now live within a 15 minute drive from each other. So family support is 100% in my life!!!......ok back on topic.....
No one ever tells you as a parent you go into this amazing place of coping. By this for me coping was a hard place!! I became disconnected in way, truely unplugged from me and became robot mum. I never allowed my son see me distressed, upset by what was happening. I felt like a shell of person and everytime my son got admitted to hospital i felt like i lost a little piece of me. The coping robot me done the usual smile and welcomed family and friends to visit and very rarely letting anyone see me really upset, distressed by what my poor son was living through. Maybe people may have seen me as a stone mum or an un-nurturing mother or maybe just maybe someone saw through my disguise "cloak of strength" as saw how fragile i really was....who knows.....all i know was that i thought i coped well......that is until i was at uni talking to a friend when she bought up the topic of grief and the stages of grief. I was like grief....he didnt die, i havent lost him....her answer was no you didnt..but what about the grief that comes with illnes...What are you on about was my response. Slowly she explained how she felt i was in a continuious battle with the greiving of illness. Suddenly i got it.......how true....it was a continuious battle with the grief cycle...Kurtis got sick and off to hospital for a few months then he got well and off home only to be back in hospital 4-6 months later this went on from 2005 thru till 2008 (the time i was talking with my uni friend). *
Just to let you know he still suffers from this illness, just the meds mean less hospital stays, usually only specialist visits and the occasion lumbar puncture in day stay , these days thank god!!!!
* Who knew that people actually grieve illness......apparently a few people did.....lol. So knowing that i let go of robot mum and started to go through the grieving process for my son illness.....Then BANG March 2009, while i decided to do a few mental health papers at uni, my dad breaks the news to me that my beautiful sister has been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. OH no now i have to grieve two at once...at least i was aware of my feelings and body this time!!!....
So the Breast Cancer journey started for our family. We were all shocked, why her, what about poor alex (my sister' son, she is a solo parent also). Whats the plan to get through this type of illness, the surgery, the meds, the coping stratigies the distancing she done so she could cope....It is all a journey highs lows and the in between.......
At first i was upset she never came to me to talk about it...i thought we talk about everything why would she shut me out.... then it dawned on me....it was just too real for me and she didnt want to distress me after all i had been coping with with kurts illness!!..........
Once she had her surgery and was at home in recovery mode...another bombshell came to the famliy...hence why 2009 was a black year for me... My dad gets diagnosed with prostate.....to be continued must pop off to work xoxoxoxoxlove and blessings to you all xoxoxoxox

My journey thats started with my sisters Breast Cancer.....

I have decided to start this blog stuff again.....as a way of therepy for myself!! Maybe just maybe hoping it helps me and maybe even someone else that maybe going through the same journey in their lives!!!So here goes......Where to start... if i start at the beginning you may fal asleep...so i will start from the time i felt the world around me crumble.....just a few words in a sentence started it......Your sister has breast cancer.......My sister is my rock, always has been and always will be!! My first words ripped through me shards of broken glass.....What about Alex (her 11 yr old son)...the the next was this aint fucken fair (excuse the language) she is only 39 yrs old.... I had recently quit smoking, though i went for my emergency stash of ciggies, everything else around me felt like a blur...next thing i noticed me sitting in a mess of tears with a glass of wine (i never drank alone) & calling her...my rock.....my beautiful sister Ali, my idol, my strength through all my ruff days when my son was incredibly ill....now i can return the favour....or so i thought......All she wanted to do is hide from the world...her family included...to process i expect....to this day i still cant ask her as it upsets us both thinking back to then!! ...So we all coped through the tuff stuff, the op's and the wake of the op's!! Life we all realised would never be the same in our family!!......How true was that...6 Weeks after my sister was diagnosed, my father, the families rock, a tower of strength yet a gentle lion, was diagnosed with prostate cancer.........OMG what the heck was happening to us....what the hell had we done to recieve this run of bad luck........yes i went through these questions many times recently....i always looked towards an old friend of mine who was now coming to the final weeks of her life and found a strength within me that i never knew existed.....until then, May 2009....when i found my spiritual side......no not religion...but my connection to spirit and loved ones!!!!.....my journey starts there....