Just Panic

There never seems to be enough said about the nurses that work on these wards and how amazing they are. I loved every one of them, which is lucky as you are in essence trusting them to look after your poorly little baby when you are not there!
I watched one particular nurse, Ruth, take Georgia’s feeding tube from her nose and insert a new one with such care that she didn’t even wake her up!
Georgia had so much fluid on her lungs that they constantly had to suction it for her too, I was starting to wonder how on earth I was going to cope at home without them being there.
They trained me on how to give her feeds to her down the tube involving aspirating (pulling back on the syringe) to check on litmus paper (acid checking) if the tube was still in her tummy before I put the milk down. I then had to clean the tube through with water. All this had been calculated by them too, as she was fluid restricted. I was trained on how to give her medications, also down the tube.
My thoughts at this point were in complete chaos. What if the tube comes out? What if she vomits and I don’t know how much milk she has had, or medication? Panic started to set in.
In the middle of all this panic Josh was back at home after my mum dropped him off. It was so good to see him, we had both really missed him, but that was the first of many breakdowns for me!
At the time my uncle Matt was tiling our bathroom for us, mum had just brought Josh in and I was unpacking his things in his room. I remember how I felt but its very hard to describe. I try very hard to look on the bright side of things but this really only makes me bottle things up, I hadn’t realised I was doing that, I started to get annoyed trying to get this bloody stair gate up and all of a sudden just sat in the middle of the floor and burst into tears. I felt Matt sit next to me and just hug me until I stopped crying. I mainly remember Matt saying ‘Kate, you are allowed to cry’. He was right of course.
I am not sure how we managed really. Rob had to stay at home and look after Josh and I spent everyday travelling over to be with Georgia. They do have accommodation for you to stay in over in Southampton but there are so many patients that come from all over the UK, we lived relatively close compared to most.
Although we lived close the lack of work for Rob and the travelling for me cost us dearly in the end, this was the start of a very long journey financially. Our mortgage was with Northern Rock (boo hiss) and they had just had their big downfall, therefore in fact as the company was publicly owned then, we owned it! Still not once did they offer us any help, I applied to their ‘Special Case Team’ and was promptly called back by them to be told that because Georgia was not terminally ill they cant help us. How did they know it wouldn’t be terminal? I suppose if Georgia had died we would still be allowed to keep our house, but then what is the point if all the smiles have gone from it?
So it’s safe to say that I think Northern Rock deserve to lose the public backing!
I am sure there are thousands of people out there that this has happened to but it shouldn’t be allowed. We didn’t lose our house for a long time after Georgia’s first surgery but every step was hard, it is horrible worrying every time the phone rings or when someone knocks at the door. We were tied into our mortgage so tightly that even if we had been repossessed we would still owe them 36 thousand pounds.
So I went to pick up Georgia from the hospital with Matt, totally petrified that I couldn’t cope with it all. Little did I know that the hardest part of our lives was just about to begin and that it would lead us to more wonderful people.