I can't help it.

 I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was remember what we were going to do this evening two years ago. Tall was an avid fan of one particular football team and on 3rd May 2019 the were holding a Question of Sport type event with two teams of former players in aid of the club's charity foundation. Tall knew it would be his last chance to visit his beloved ground and his last to see players he admired and adored. 

The evening turned out better than he could ever have hoped. Whilst he was sitting there alone, I had gone to the bar to get myself a drink, the compere of the evening came across to talk to him. Tall it seems told him exactly what his situation was. He then arranged for some of the players to pop across during the interval to say hi. Tall was overjoyed, even more so as his number one hero actually stopped and talked to him the whole interval.  

I will be forever grateful to Bomber Brown for the immense kindness he showed Tall and to those other players who spent the time talking to us, without fear despite Tall explaining he had just weeks left to live. 

I am trying to make happier memories, today just isn't one of the happy days. 

Melancholy May

 I know there are still four days of April left, yet already May is casting its shadow. May has become a month where bad things happen. 

In May 2006 Tall caught chickenpox from my daughter. He happily stayed at home with her as he had had it as a child (so he believed). He sadly caught it again, and it made him really ill. The chickenpox lead to shingles and he spent over a month in bed. 

In May 2010 in the midst of chemotherapy Tall was admitted to hospital with slurred speech, a drooping face and difficulty swallowing. The swallowing problem wasn't a sore throat but an actual inability to swallow food without aspirating it (it went into his lungs and lead to pneumonia). His consultant was concerned. Was the chemo the cause of his problem? Had the myeloma spread into his spinal cord and onto his brain? They did an MRI, nuclear imaging and a lumber puncture. I remember being taken into the quiet room by one of the doctors who told me of their concerns. Tall was scared and so was I. It eventually turned out that he had had a massive sinus infection, something that we only found out from a different consultant months later. 

In May 2017 Tall had to go into hospital for a second SCT. It nearly killed him and he ended up in ITU / ICU will sepsis. We were told that as he had no working system of producing blood cells and had no kidney function that if his heart stopped or he struggled to breathe that they wouldn't be resuscitating him. I can remember him saying it was alright to me as I sobbed uncontrollably . Before he had been admitted we had agreed that I would visit him twice a week as it was a long journey from home and he'd only be in a few weeks judging by the previous SCT. I ended up visiting every day, leaving the house at ten in the morning and getting back at eight in the evening. I had calls in the middle of the night from him saying they were trying to kill him, telling me to call the police as he was being held hostage. After several weeks he was moved out of ITU, unable to walk, unable to eat, a mere shadow of himself. Eventually he discharged himself as he felt he was making no progress, and so he came home unable to walk.

He didn't remember the calls and he didn't remember the DNR he had agreed to. It was only by chance, months later, that his kidney consultant mentioned it in passing. Tall hit the roof and was furious with me for having agreed to it. I clearly remember it was him that told me he had agreed to it. 

That event in 2017 left him scarred. Tall's heart and lungs were damaged by the infection that very nearly killed him. His body had lost all its muscle due to prolonged inactivity and no matter how much he ate and how hard he tried to train at the gym that body mass never returned. It was that May which ultimately lead Tall to May 2019.

You all know what happened May 2019, how a very tired Tall, whose health had deteriorated since October 2018, finally gave up. 

This year I want May to be different. I want to make Merry May Memories. I am going to ask followers on Twitter, readers of the blog and friends on Facebook for ideas on how I can turn my frown into a smile.