Exhaustion

Exhausted. Just exhausted. The morning was characterised by some phenomenal dream that had me thrashing about. I have no memory of the dream itself, but did wake to find my pillows perpendicular to each other and items from my bedside table flung unceremoniously across the floor. I wonder what it was that had me so agitated?

I went to bed irritated and don't doubt for a second that that was what triggered the dreams, but the actual content of the dreams completely eludes me. Whatever it was, it had me flailing like I was fending off some monstrous beast.

Sleep has once again become an issue. It had been controlled for a while with the advent of regular swimming, but it's been nearly two weeks since I last swam any laps and I'm climbing the walls. Motivation is hard to find and lethargy curls its sinewy fingers throughout the day. My eyelids grow heavy and my brain grows dull. I hear the buzzing return of tinnitus and know that there's some low-level infection working its sinister magic on my immune system.

It's a vicious cycle this exercise and sleep business. I exercise, I sleep well and wake with energy. I don't exercise, I sleep poorly and fitfully and wake exhausted to my very bones, unable to muster enough interest or ability to complete even simple tasks.

My day has consisted of completing online forms and sending emails. Another contributing factor to the lethargy. Instead of revitalising me, it has made me long to curl up and sleep. My head feels filled with cotton wool and I cannot wade through the viscosity of it. I know there are tasks to complete, but have no will to summon. I suspect the weighty burden of all that needs to be done is also adding to my paralysis. I find myself near catatonia every time I consider the enormity of what remains to be done.

I'm sure there's a solution. I daresay it's a simple one - perhaps a reversion to my trusty lists is what will snap me out of this. The cotton wool in my head makes thinking clearly seem like trying to swim my way through a swimming pool filled with treacle. Every time I think I'm making progress, the sticky, gooey morass of impending deadlines and tasks yet to be done drag me inexorably to the bottom.

Still, to quote my favourite southern belle, "tomorrow is another day".

Another day in Paradise...

So, today I've escorted a random, but super friendly, neighbourhood dog off the property, only to then  break up the ensuing dog fight between random-dog, dog across the road and Shadow the wonder dog. Polly from across the road and Shadow both decided that random-dog had no business visiting us.

That was quickly followed up by having the drains professionally unblocked of tree roots... again... and now there's an unholy stink outside but I can't figure out whether it's from the drain-unblocking or the major road works going on. Oh yes, and we've had the window-shaking rumble of heavy machinery all day as the road we live on is systematically dug up and widened.

Now it's suddenly gone dark and cold and is pouring with rain, so all the washing I've done has to go in the dryer. Sigh. This is not quite how I envisaged spending school holidays.

C is for ... Cardiac and for Cancer

Towards the end of 2011 events conspired and I was tested for my mettle. A number of trials appeared at once at my door and I had to find the reserves to cope and carry on. Just as I thought it was all over, my brother was suddenly and dramatically hospitalised. He's diabetic. He'd been managing this illness through diet and exercise and we'd all thought he had a handle on it. Even he thought so. But it is inherently human to become complacent, I think. Just as things begin to go well in our lives, we pay them less attention. And so it was with him. He paid less attention to what he was consuming, though still keeping a careful eye on his weight and continuing to exercise well. The result, however, was that he was whisked off to the emergency department suffering from congestive heart failure.

A dramatic, worrisome and tiring three weeks followed as he was treated and prepped for a quadruple bypass. My mother was teetering on the brink of going out of her mind with concern - seeing your child (whatever the age) in hospital, near death, is never an easy thing. As she said when told of his predicament, it was supposed to be her in hospital with her children hovering around the bedside not the other way around. We trouped through those weeks, emotions running high, energy running low. Visits to hospital blurred into one another and I fell into bed exhausted most nights. Coping with the sudden mortality of my brother, negotiating my own life around taking my mother to and from the hospital every day because I was concerned she shouldn't be driving in her emotional state, all took its toll. Eventually the surgery was conducted and he came through it. Not well. His recovery was slow. Much slower than it should have been. He spent longer than anticipated in the ICU. And he didn't bounce back to reasonable health as predicted. Instead he declined. He lost more weight, looked more frail and began to feel more despondent as his own mortality and the-things-not-done in his life came into stark reality. And we all became intimately, if unwillingly, familiar with medical euphemisms and language.

Shortly before Christmas he was hospitalised again. Nobody knew why he wasn't recovering on schedule and to the enormous credit of the doctors at that public hospital, they were not satisfied with simply letting him go home and cope. A litany of tests, and they truly were testing of him, were run. He was anaemic and nobody could work out why. There didn't appear to be any firm source of bleeding and every procedure to account for his blood counts came up negative. In the meantime, he became more and more frail and less and less hopeful. His talk soon turned to the possibility of no recovery, of leaving his family, his wife and young sons, without him. His mind went to dark places and struggled to see any light or hope.

Then Life played its trump card. He was diagnosed with cancer. Not any run-of-the-mill, relatively-easy-to-treat cancer, but a variety that was aggressive, insidious and rarely seen in this country. Again the various doctors swung into a flurry of action and he was quickly put onto surgical lists, treated as best as possible for his anaemia and readied for the inevitable extirpation of the tumour. Remember this is not ancient history. This is not told from the perspective of temporal distance. This is recent, nascent and unfolding. The day before his surgery, he sounded more calm, less breathless and better than he had for months. He was comparatively upbeat and appeared to have made a crucial decision in his own wellness. And I do mean "wellness" not illness or health. He underwent his surgery two days ago. Shortly after surgery, he was awake, sitting up, chatting and finally looking like he should have two months ago. He appears to have turned a corner. The road ahead on this particular journey is both long and arduous. Recovery will be slow and pot-holed, but his new-found positive attitude will, I believe, help to smooth the way.

I feel like I finally have back the brother I lost through life, circumstance and finally terrible, testing illness. I'm hopeful that he'll seize this opportunity at life and do all that he wants. And I'm intensely grateful for the lessons it has taught me.

This is Australia

I drove around the corner on my way to pick up B2 from school when a large collection of animals in the paddock caught my attention. It was sufficiently unusual for me to slow down and pull off the road. I'm pretty used to seeing various animals in paddocks around where I live. There are sheep, horses, dogs, birds, small groups of kangaroos and even a couple of alpacas. But the sheer number of creatures is what stopped me in my tracks.

I drove up a lane that skirts the boundary of said paddock and there they were - masses of kangaroos. There must have been nearly 30 of them, lounging in the sun, munching on the grass and generally doing what kangaroos do best.

It's nice to be reminded that nature still abounds despite the creep of development. There's certainly very little that's more pan-Australian than a mob of kangaroos.

There has been plentiful rainfall and it's heartening to see the local wildlife flourishing. There are birds aplenty visiting the garden (including some finches I've not seen this far north before) and we continue to have breeding pairs of bobtail lizards around the house. All in all, it's shaping up to be a glorious Spring.