It's been a month since Les passed away, I am just not coping well at all,I have returned to Sydney from Perth where he died and brought his ashes back with me, am staying at my daughters place at the moment as I do not have a residence to return to,as we were renting before making the caravan our home. The problem is I have this overwhelming sadness all the time and anything and everything seems to bring me to tears, just a kind word from a stranger or a memory. By the same token I sometimes feel anger and resentment at Les for not doing what I asked and seeing a Doctor early in the piece when he first started having problems. I feel I cannot discuss this with my daughter at the moment as she is in the middle of planning a trip to the USA at the end of the month and also she and her partner are getting married in Las Vegas while they are there. I suppose she does not want to involve me in their plans wrongly thinking it may upset me that I and her father will not be there when I ask her about plans she shrugs them off as if it is not important and virtually has said it is their wedding and they will do it their way. Our son and partner were very supportive when I was over there, however having only met his partner once in the nine years they have been together I did not feel I could talk about my feelings with her and that is the reason I preferred to be back East with daughter and grandchildren. The lack of response from my husbands' family has not helped matters either I still have not had one word from any of them. I guess in a lot of ways it is my fault that there is this lack of communication in our family, but it is also a fear of not wanting people to be upset to try dealing with my grief, it is also a fault of mine that I never was one to express feelings a lot and tended to keep things to myself. Also there are now the grandchildren to cope with and keep on a happy face for. Maybe while they are all away at the end of the month and I am house sitting for them I will see things a little clearer and start to plan for the rest of my life, I have not been the type to wallow in self pity so all these feelings are completely alien to me. It will have been our 40th wedding anniversary in three weeks time so that will be another hurdle to overcome. I feel a little better for having sat down to write this and as it is now 4am in the morning I suppose I should try and get a little rest, at least I have something to do here at my daughters, ie: help with the kids and housework etc. so apologies to anyone that reads this for being so long winded. ... View more

To all you beautiful people out there that are suffering your own pain with loved ones, and still took the time to respond to my blogs, I thank you sincerely. You have all been a great comfort to me through this terrible time and I do hope that you will battle through your own grief and pain and at least find peace. I am still not coming to terms with what has happened and it still has not sunk in properly but that will come with time. I managed to buy a little 14 week puppy yesterday and Holly will share my journey back home to the East Coast and I will show her all the things my hubby Les wanted to see. Thank you again and I will check back every now and then to see how you are all doing. God Bless ... View more

Well that is the end of the journey for me..my lovely husband passed away in Fremantle hospital on May 1st.2012. He is at peace at last and out of that dreadful pain,it has been very hard going when we arrived here in Perth, I seem to know Armadale and Fremantle hospital like the back of my hand. He just got progressively weaker and sicker and I finally called an ambulance to take him to hospital when he was no longer feeling like eating and could no longer stand. They (Fremantle Hospital) tried putting a stent down into the oesphageaus to help him swallow, but it was unsucessful and kept moving around.After 14 days in hospital he was losing weight rapidly , on the day before his death I had spent the whole day at the hospital, cutting his nails, shaving him, bathing him etc. so deep down I suspect I knew that something was happening, the next day I decided for some unexplained reason to catch a train to the hospital and not drive, thank goodness I did as I don't think I could have driven home to our sons place again. I was about three stations from Fremantle when the hospital rang and said he was becoming unresponsive, I said I would be there shortly and prayed he would hold on, I immediately rang our son at work and told him and he said he was on the way.I ran like a mad woman through the street from the station and got to his room, I told him I was there and he squeezed my hand, I begged him to hold on till our son got there and I rang my daughter in Sydney and told her to say goodbye to her Dad, she was really distraught as she and the three grandkids were arriving in a couple of days to see her Dad and Pop. Our son arrived soon after and we both held either hand, the staff could not have been nicer and did all they could to ease his suffering, I finally said to him it was time to go and ease his pain, finally after a few more minutes he passed away. To this day 2 weeks later it is all very surreal, even though we have had the funeral and a lovely little memorial service where the grandkids wrote notes and threw flowers in the ocean I still cannot believe it is finished, I keep thinking "Oh I must get Les to fix that or Oh I must let Les know that" we were one month short of our 40th wedding anniversary and I have lost my best friend. The main hurtful part has been the lack of any communication with his family, a family I never thought I had any problem with, when my son rang Les's only sister, her reaction was "I can't afford to fly to Perth"..no one was asking them to fly anywhere, but we did not even have a chance to say when I return to the East coast maybe we could have a small memorial there. Well as far as I am concerned their brother and Uncle would have been devastated at their lack of compassion for myself and his children, however that is their problem not ours. I now have the unenviable task of towing the caravan and car back to the East coast, I am leaving in a week or two and that way I can be closer to my daughter and grand children, and then may be able to map out my own future. He was only 66 years young and we had so much to do and see it is just not right. ... View more

We have arrived in Perth Western Australia at long last, I wonder if anyone can recommend a Cancer Specialist we can be referred to here in Perth so we can get some PET scans done, we went to the local GP who gave us a referal to a Lab to get it done and they wanted $700 which we don't have because he was refered by a GP and not a Specialist, what a crock, so any help appreciated.. Now for the bit about the trip over here we made it to the Nullabor roadhouse, I asked him back in Ceduna if he wanted to go on as he was not feeling real good then, but he would not back down.. Well when we got to the Nullabor roadhouse he was really exhausted, by morning he was very confused and not real well at all,I rang the nurse at Eucla the nearest medical help around 200k's away, she said to keep him there and they would bring an ambulance and she would assess him when they got there, the Manager of the roadhouse was really great as were all the staff, he insisted that Les was to go into a motel room and keep the aircon on so he would be more comfortable till the ambulance arrived, well it took about 3 hours for them to arrive and as soon as the nurse saw Les she stated that they would transport him to Eucla and the Royal Flying Doctors would come and transport him to Kalgoorlie Hospital. She believed he was extremely dehydrated even though he had not stopped drinking hugh amounts of water and fluids for the past few days, she believed that the cancer had spread to the pancreas but would let the hospital assess him. Well off they went and I followed towing the van, well at Eucla the RFD arrived and off they flew. So then it was up to me to get the car and van a distance of 1182k's to Kalgoorlie. I arrived today after two overnight stops at roadhouse caravan stops, when I got to the hospital it turns out that all the cancer and shit has now also turned to diabetes, so he is on insulin tablets to get him to Perth.They discharged him from hospital with a presciption which I had filled before we left and he just wanted to get out of Kalgoorlie, so off we went. We stopped briefly at Coolgardie so I could get him some pain killers from the van, just as I was opening the van door I heard a sound and turned to find him sprawled out on the gravel road near the gutter, he said later he stood up from the passenger seat just to stretch his leg and all he can think of is that he may have stood too quickly and blacked out.Now he not only took all the skin off the old injury of a couple of weeks ago but has new scars, he of course refused to drive back to Kal to the hospital he just wants to get to Perth, so I cleaned him up a bit gave him pain killers and off we went, so tonight we are at a caravan park 200k's from Kal Southern Cross approx another 400k's to go tomorrow to get to Perth. I really will have to see if we can sell the van and car in Perth and try and get a van like a Kombi type because even though I manage the driving and van we have now ok it is very hard to get the sway bars on and off and I know now that I am afraid his driving days are nearly over as he would not manage the van and at least with an all in one type there would not be any setting up like there is now. I really believe we have done something wrong to someone somewhere as it is just not fair that he is suffering all this, and I wish I could have persuaded him not to go any further than South Australia, but he is extremely stubborn and very vunerable at the moment so I just need to fill his wishes, I would never let him know but I believe this is his last journey. It has cost a fortune in petrol and accomodation as you can imagine the cost of things out here are twice what they are in the towns, bloody $2.60 a litre for diesel..and also the fact that you have no means of communication for around 600 of those klms. as the roadhouses public phones are usually out of order. Tell bloody Julia to pull their finger out and get these people better infrastructure we are not living in a third world county. Anyway we are here and hope to get things started again he is sleeping most of the time now and is very weak in the legs so I suggested he use his cane all the time, I will have a look for a walking frame to see if that helps ... View more