Monday 9 January 2023

Resilience and Me

 I have started blogging about being resilient, which I feel has come out in my memoir 'Endocarditis – My Journey' (available as an ebook from all good eretailers and paperback from Amazon or my website). Much of what has made me resilient is documented in there but there are other factors which aren't, namely what happened to me last year. Here are the main things I believe have made me more resilient in life over the last few years.

2020 – The year I had endocarditis and didn't know it. I just knew something was wrong with me.

2021 – My mum was ill herself, then I had to go into hospital to be treated, followed by surgery and recovery. Following my discharge and start of recovery at home, Mum came out of hospital herself and it became clear that she was changed. She had become bed bound and developed dementia. Although she had carers to help her, I became her main carer. This along with recovering mentally and physically from what I had been through, attending hospital appointments, and learning to cope with a loved one with dementia, was tough. With my Asperger's I did find it hard to deal with the carers at times.

2022 – Mum's dementia had got bad with her being nasty to me at times. Mum had an unusual stroke and went into hospital for three weeks. When she came out she had changed again to a more subdued person. So sad. Five weeks after she had come home, she caught sepsis and went back to hospital. The treatment for that cured her but caused another medical problem. The ongoing treatment and monitoring proved too much for her already frail body and she sadly passed away in August 2022. I had to cope with dealing with arranging the funeral and all the other things that go with a death in the family (but thankfully I had support from my brother and my best friend). I am now living on my own. Christmas was hard as it was the first one without her.

2023 – A new year, a different life being on my own. I plan to blog and talk about resilience in a medical capacity from this year on, based on my memoir and what happened to me.

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