News from Nelson - June 2017

Hi again,
I hope you are all well. Jan came through his second hip replacement surgery well, and appears to be completely on track with post-operative healing and mobility. This is excellent.

However, just when I thought that family was the gift that might stop giving, Uncle Norman had to be moved to a nursing home. My mother, Mike, Jan & I worked non-stop for about three weeks to pack up his whole flat, put all his gear in storage, and do our best to wind up his outside affairs as he would have liked them done, find him a rest home, and start getting into a routine of visiting him.

It has been pretty crazy. I am glad that I took most of May out of doing my PhD, else I think I would have been going spare now.

Uncle Norman's change in circumstances also coincided with NMIT end of semester reports coming in and me needing to moderate 50 students' project work and reflections. No pressure.

Then my mother got sick and had to go to hospital with breathlessness and a lung infection. Turns out she has a heart condition, which I found out about accidentally by turning up when her lung specialist was talking to her. Thank goodness I arrived in her room when I did.

All that was two weeks out from her 80th birthday party, which I was trying to organise in the remaining three minutes I had left this month... all while waiting for Jan to go under the knife for his last hip operation, and fighting the council to ensure that they put in all weather access to our valley as they were replacing our bridge (initially they hadn't been going to do ANYTHING about allowing us to get to our homes. Perhaps they were expecting us to fly?).

Though a local wag added an addendum to the bridge notice, as follows:

Collectively, all the happenings over the past four months led to three break-through migraines last week: the first patch I have had in a year. Not surprising really. But, by crikey, I hope that is IT for a while. I need six months of peace and quiet.

Of course, I am not going to get it. Next month I am off to Australia for a PhD induction and a planning session, I have two other research papers which need to be edited ready for publication, I start teaching a brand new paper in four weeks' time which I haven't even looked at yet, my sister tells me that the rest home my Uncle is in is poor, so he needs to be moved, my mother goes to the cardiologist in a fortnight and I need to go with her, and and and...

Deep breath.

We have concreted in part of the dog run under the gate, and bought and hung a new steel gate, as Boo has turned out to be an escapologist. So far she has not escaped since "project imprisonment" was completed. Bonnie has a malignant tumour on her hind leg, so is not likely to be with us for much longer.  However, we have not told her she is sick, so she doesn't know, and is carrying on as normal ;-D

And the world continues to give us visual gifts, as you can see:

 

Barb was back from the US this month, and came to stay in the last week, to help me organise the last bits and pieces for our Mother's 80th.

But more about that next month... and hopefully this time it is all good news.

Take care!

Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - May 2017

Hi everyone,
Another month has rolled around, and hopefully it will be less stressful than the last one.

We started with a bang: Jenny L came to visit - and stayed - which was great. Warren also stayed for a night with Erica. Warren helped Jan to get the pool table lights finished. Then Jan got one more spotlight to fit over the VERY last electric light wiring in our ceiling, and AT LAST the lights are complete: almost seven years after we moved in.

I decided that for this month I was not going to do any study or work other than that which was already booked: to give myself four weeks break. It was nice to have permission to play for a while.  Jan & I have taken the dogs for lots of walks, and I have been doing at least 11,000 steps per day.

My mother had booked a holiday before my father died: a two week bus tour of the far north. She decided that she would still take the time away, and enjoyed it. It gave her time to think, but also enough structure in her day to prevent brooding. A good balance.

While she had been away, she had all the carpets shampooed. We called around and helped her put her furniture back just after we dropped Warren off at the airport. My mother gave my father's stereo to Erica, who is now a real teen with her own music centre. Except for being ten years old!

I have rediscovered two crime writers: Louise Penny and Jo Nesbo. I now have pretty much all their books as talking books, and am working through them in order. It is proving quite restful. We also got a notification from the Tasman District Council library that the third series of the Danish programme "The Bridge" had come in on DVD. We picked it up and binge watched it.

Jan got access to John's Netflix account, and has been watching all kinds of things. We watched the Crown, which was quite fun. 

Jan, my Mother and I went to see the latest NSO Concert, The World’s Most Beautiful Melodies. It was a good concert, and the spinto soprano was very good in the Puccini ...except for her last two notes (which were screamed, as opposed to sung). Extremely enjoyable aside from just four seconds. There aren't many experiences you can say that about.

We went to visit Kathleen and Frits, taking with us a pair of Fluevogs - Investigators - that I was returning to Timeless Soles as they were too narrow for me. Kathleen got me to open them, saw them, tried them on, and bought them. They are gorgeous on her.

Barb is back in the US, spending time with Joe. She has been to visit the Fluevog shop in DC. I can't wait to see what she has on her feet at my Mother's 80th birthday party in July.

Justine came down for a visit for a few days. We spent some time talking about our experiences in having just lost one parent each, and how we are processing that. We went to small, out of the way places like the Macmillan Gallery and tried to call in on Vickie's Originals (but they were shut. Next time).

We had lunch with Sharon & Ian at the Moutere Tavern, eating inside this time. Another great menu and a relaxing afternoon. Sharon and Ian bought me a shrub to remember my father by, which was very nice of them.

Warren, who is up again to visit Erica, came for a visit in the afternoon with Erica, and we went for a walk down the hill with Ollie and Boo. Jan and Warren had a good chat, and Erica read quite happily. Jan has managed to get Netflix working on his tablet so he can download 50 episodes of Dr Who in preparation for his next hip operation in June.  

Donna suggested that we celebrate my Father's birthday somewhere he liked going, and everyone - aside from me - had a chocolate ice cream sundae in his honour:

Late in the month Uncle Norman had a couple of bad falls, and ended up in hospital with a fractured scapula and broken ribs. He is determined to get home, and is in the AT&R ward again already, undergoing rehabilitation to get him ready to return to his flat. However, when we went to visit him, he is floating in and out of reality: it doesn't seem to me like he can go home in a hurry.

I will be heading for Aussie in July for my doctoral induction, and to have a half-day planning session with my supervisors.

Take care - catch you all up next month.


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - April 2017

Hi everyone,
I hope you are all well, and that the year is treating you kindly.

We have had a big month again. I was just getting back into my PhD work during the study break, and following my illness last month, when my father took a turn for the worse. He went into the hospice before Easter for few days, as he was getting very breathless. They thought they would simply stabilise him, and he would go home again.

However, once he was in, they felt that he really needed to stay until after Easter because they were worried how my Mother would cope on her own with him. Then on Easter Saturday, they called me in the evening, and said that he was quite bad, and that I should come in. Jan & I drove in to the hospice, saw him, then called the family, and everyone came in. My sister was just back from the US, and she and Bella hopped in Bella's car and drove up from Christchurch. Tessa caught a flight down from Auckland. We spent the next five days camping out at the hospice, taking turns to sit with him, talk and share memories as he slowly slipped away.

Kim flew up from Dunedin to Christchurch, and drove from there with Aunty Diana. Aunty Jill came to visit. Graeme and Julie came to see him a few times. We have had lots of laughs, reflections, and shared stories. The family has probably spoken more about our impressions of past events in the past week than we ever have in the past. Various spectres have been laid to rest.

He died on 19 April, and, as he had chosen to donate his body to Otago Medical School for student learning, we had no funeral. Instead we held a memorial service at Club Waimea. Over eighty people attended. I MCed, and Barney Thomas arrived – serendipitously – and I asked him if he would do a karakea: which he did. It was just perfect. Mother spoke about father not giving in to his illness. I spoke about his desire for us all to learn. Barb spoke about lessons from hockey. Mike spoke about father calling him at aged 25 to ask if he had been 'playing' with his screwdrivers in the garden. Tessa did the housekeeping about the donations to the Hospice and St Johns, then told stories about how she would play Nana and Poppa off against each other, and how her son Izzy loved his Poppa. Diana told a story about her 'stink' money – she got 2-/6 per week for cleaning his sleepout. Kim talked about my father as being like a father to her. Various people spoke about his community work, his hockey and bowls dedication, his fundraising, and his work at MAF… it was really lovely.

Then Bonnie got diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer on her hind leg. We are simply going to leave it until the tumour gets too large, or she gets ill.

Jan went in for the first of his two hip replacements, and the surgery went very well. But it was still worrying. He is recovering very quickly, and is already in much less pain than he was in before the surgery. 

However, it is turning out to be a bit of a shitty year, to say the least.

I did get a bit of a birthday celebration, at The Grape Escape:

And I did buy myself a pair of shoes. Fluevogs, naturally:

More next month. Hopefully next month's news is a lot better.

Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - March 2017

Hi everyone,
I hope you and your families are all well.

However, this has been a tough month in a few ways for us through distance and illness. My sister got married in a private ceremony to Joe at Ocean City in Maryland, and, because my Father is not well, neither my Mother nor my Father were able to attend. I was teaching, so couldn't go either. However, they are both planning a public ceremony at a Renaissance Fair in a couple of years, which everyone is invited to. Hopefully that will line up with teaching, but even if it doesn't I will be there.

My Father had rheumatic fever at 15 which has now turned into congestive heart failure with a whole load of other complications. While he has been frail for some time, he's been fairly stable until this year. Since my last update he has deteriorated, and he isn't great.

The month ended with Justine's Mum dying in the Mary Potter hospice in Wellington. Justine came back to NZ and spent the last fortnight with her, but neither she nor Peter were expecting Betty to go so quickly. It is very, very sad.

And then on top of that, my workload has been pretty crushing. I am teaching four papers, and doing my PhD, which is pretty full on. I had expected 30 year 3 students in the capstone research project that I supervise, which in itself is a huge workload, to then turn up on the first day and find 55 students in my classroom. It took two weeks for NMIT to find three other supervisors, and in the meantime I had worked some pretty crazy hours to get these students up to speed and underway on their primary research projects (I had just spent four days grappling with admin, marking and pulling long hours. I didn’t eat properly. I wasn't sleeping well. My to do list was getting longer every day)... and I wigged out.

I completely lost the plot, having a “transient global amnesia” episode (TGA). My day went as usual until I had my 11.30 student appointment, then I appeared to lose what I was supposed to be doing next, what year it was, and my place in time. I was physically OK, but personally gone to la-la land.

One of my colleagues called my doctor, cancelled my classes, took me to my doctor's, called Jan, who came down from the hospital to see me at my Doctor's surgery.

They then took me to the emergency department, where I was for a few hours before being admitted overnight. They asked me lots of questions in the ED…  apparently I was quite blissed out. The ED department people were fascinated, because they had never seen anything like this before. I had very high blood pressure but was cheerful as all get out. I think I had put myself in a happy place, outside time, and therefore outside any additional pressure.

Apparently, my mother had a bout of TGA when my father broke 7 ribs and punctured a lung in 1980. I had completely forgotten that this had occurred for her... and this is apparently a condition which is more likely to happen for migraine sufferers (which she is too). Though nobody has any idea whether there will be any lasting effects, or whether it will happen again. But stress is known to be a trigger.

This was due to overload, I think: I was full to over-capacity. Because I'd lost my place in time, there was no pressure for anything. I'd created some "me" space. I spent a “long dark teatime of the soul” overnight in hospital examining my workload. I decided I would drop both my year 2 leadership papers. I was very clear in my own mind that I wanted to keep supervising the capstone research paper, but that I needed to free myself up for doing my Ph.D. study, which is really important to me.

However, my bout of TGA meant that we could not be at Brigitte's 75th Birthday celebration in Wellington. Which of course was two days after I went into hospital. It sounds like it was a great party.

I had a very frank conversation with my NMIT manager following all this. They seem quite willing for me to cut my hours and continue with a reduced workload, anyway. The whole thing has probably given them a bit of a fright. And it is a health and safety issue.

Now I am managing a team of four supervisors – they are great, all being supervisors on our postgraduate diploma in business enterprise – and have 16 students of my own to supervise. And by 16, I mean eight single semester students, and eight full year students (who are effectively a .5 each): so 12 full-time equivalents. Much easier than 55. Feels like a holiday!

Jan is still going to Men's yoga with Jan Cools: in fact, they are both pretty consistent in turning up. He is working on his pre-hab plan to prepare for his surgery, including work in the pool.

Later in the month my Father was able to get out and about a bit more again. My folks came out today to visit us, along with friends of theirs, Graham and Julie. They stayed chatting for two hours, then we all went down to the Riverside community for lunch and had a delicious lunch together.

Boo is settling in well, and Bonnie is enjoying the company - though Bonnie is spending quite a bit of time at John's little house in Waimea West, with Aniko, between bike tours.

 We have had a bit of early morning mist, which has made for some interesting photos in the mornings:

Jan had an NSO concert at Old St John's which went really well, called Transformations, and conducted by John Rimmer. This will be Jan's last concert for a while, as his hip surgery will knock him out of the next two concerts, and a musical that Nayland College is doing:

We visited Sue L in her little house in the Brook - which is lovely. Thanks very much to Tina who connected us when Sue transferred to Nelson.

And Tina has got engaged to Brad. We haven't heard anything about a wedding date, but hopefully they will make each other very happy. Jeremy is now considering work as a marriage celebrant, which is great.

More next month!

Sam (& Jan)