ICU

The next morning on 6 September at breakfast-time we got a call from the hospital to say that Greg had been transferred to the Intensive Care Unit. He had developed a chest infection and they were also worried about his neurological state, so they wanted to monitor him more closely. We couldn't understand where this had suddenly come from. The night before we had left him reasonably fine, apart from being unable to walk and withdrawing from alcohol. Kay and I visited him straight away. He was not a pretty sight. He was in a single bed bay with a nurse specifically assigned to him watching over him 24-hours round the clock. His chest was heaving visibly and he was obviously having difficulty breathing. He had an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. There were lines and tubes going in to him for antibiotics, glucose, insulin and saline. He had ECG pads all over him attached to a heart/blood pressure monitor. He was catheterised. None of that particularly phased Kay or me.....we are made of strong stuff and have always had an interest in things medical anyway.

However, what was more distressing was his state of mind. He was clearly very agitated. He seemed to know who we were, because he called me by name to come over to him, while I was still trying to discuss with the nurse the reasoning behind moving him to ICU. He was convinced there was a television in the room and wanted me to turn it off. Despite us telling him there was no television, he became very agitated and insisted I hand him the remote control. There was nothing in the room that resembled a television, except a window on the dividing wall between his bay and the neighbouring patient's bay, so the nurse went and closed the Venetian blinds to that window, hoping that would satisfy him. But still he insisted there was a television there that he needed to turn off. It became very evident he was hallucinating and such was his distress that he tried to get out of bed to turn it off himself, tugging the lines and tubes that he was attached to. In the end, after several failed attempts to reason with him, either assuring him there was no television there, or humouring him by pretending to switch an invisible one off, the nurse gave him a sedative and he slumped instantly into restful sleep.

Shortly thereafter a team of doctors passed by and I was told by a senior-looking doctor that they were monitoring his neurological state. His apparent agitation might be to do with the drugs he was on, or the fact that patients often get distressed in hospital, particularly in ICU, or it may be to do with the alcohol withdrawal. Time would tell. Meanwhile they were giving him antibiotics for the chest infection. I had assumed he had bronchitis, as he had had it often before, being a smoker. Nobody corrected me otherwise.

I visited him in ICU for a whole week thereafter. For most of that time, he seemed sedated. He barely opened his eyes, when I used to arrive. He would manage a few words, but his speech was very slurred, then he would drift into sleep again. He always had an oxygen mask on too, though his breathing seemed more relaxed and regular. It was only after he had been in ICU for a week and then been transferred to one of the medical wards that I discovered he had been suffering from aspiration pneumonia - a type of pneumonia contracted by inhaling liquid, such as when a drink or vomit goes down the wrong way, ends up in the lungs and attracts bacteria. It transpired he had vomited that first night in hospital before he was transferred to ICU and that had caused the pneumonia. The pneumonia had made him very ill indeed. After all, some people die from it and, before antibiotics, that was generally the outcome. Greg was very weak anyway from the alcohol damage and, it would seem, he was now fighting for his life.

angioplasty/emergency

On 5 September 2008, Greg was due to have the angiogram and angioplasty. We were told to report to the hospital at 7.30 am, so that they could prepare him and wean him off the alcohol for a few hours before the actual procedure was done in the afternoon. I had briefed Greg the night before that he should make an attempt to wash himself, perhaps have a shower and do his hair and body all in one go. Very drunk, as usual, he had shouted at me to leave him alone, so I was not hopeful that he would do anything at all. I also asked him to be awake by 6am so that we could eat, dress and be ready to leave the house at 6.50 am for the drive to the hospital. He had nodded his assent to that.

6 am When I came down for breakfast that morning, he was lying asleep on the kitchen floor with the dining chair lying on top of him, as if he and the chair had fallen over in one combined piece. I removed the chair, shook him gently to wake him and told him it was time to get up. He mumbled at me to leave him alone as he wanted to carry on sleeping. His feet were black, the toes still bleeding through the bandages, his clothes were stained and he smelled. It was evident he had not had a wash the night before and we were far too short of time to do anything major now. Still talking to him to make him wake up, I hastily filled a bowl with water and grabbed a cloth and tried to wash his top half down, as I knew that would be where the angioplasty entry-point would be.... I was keen to sanitise that area at the very least. He was still in a drowsy state and kept fighting me off. I tried to take off one set of clothes to replace them with clean ones, but again he fought me off saying he was cold.

6.40am. The clock was ticking away and I could see we were only about 10 minutes off our scheduled departure time, but he was still not dressed, nor had he had anything to eat. (The procedure notes had strictly advised a light breakfast beforehand. Not that Greg ever eats breakfast. He hardly has anything for lunch or supper either.) I managed to persuade him to consider a boiled egg and toasted soldiers before we left and to my surprise he agreed, but when I set it on the table, he still lay on the floor dozing in his old clothes. By now my blood pressure was rising.

6.50 am The time we should be leaving the house. The egg lay uneaten on the table and he still lay unclothed and asleep on the floor. By some superhuman effort, I managed to pull him up, dress him like some lanky overgrown baby and with the help of Kay, who had now appeared in the kitchen, we managed to get him up onto a dining chair. I was still rushing back and forth making sure we had the hospital appointment letter and all the other things he would need for the procedure to go ahead. I felt like a character in a zany cartoon film.

7.10 am. The minute-hand of the clock edged towards 7.10am and we were late. I knew the drive to the hospital and the almost manic hunt for one of the £2-per-hour hospital parking places would make it impossible for us to make the 7.30am deadline. There are only about 30 parking spaces for the entire hospital in a tiny courtyard and they are always full. After that there is meter-parking around the busy side streets, but they would be too far away for Greg to stagger to the hospital. I was getting frantic. Kay helped me to stand Greg up from the dining chair and slowly walk him to the stairs for the climb to the front door (our kitchen is in the basement). His balance was not good and he seemed unable to support himself. He was confused and had to be reminded where we were going. He seemed to have completely forgotten that he was even having the angioplasty. At the foot of the stairs he went to raise his foot onto the first step and could not find the strength to pull his weight up. I tried to push, Kay tried to pull, but he could not put his weight on his foot. He collapsed on the step and could move no further.

7.15 am. I tried to phone the hospital to say we might be a bit late (understatement of the year), but the appointment letter only had a general number for the office which of course would not be open till 9am. Hurriedly opening the telephone directory, I could not see the small print for the hospital switchboard number without my glasses, which of course were nowhere to be seen.

At this point I was tearing my hair out. I decided to ring the Emergency Services and ask for an ambulance as there was no way we could move Greg in any direction now....like a rag doll, there was no strength in his legs and we could still not manoeuvre him up or down the stairs. I checked with the 999 service to see whether I was wasting their time, but they seemed genuine about the fact that we deserved an emergency call-out. Kay meanwhile headed for school on the bus, as I knew she would be better off at school. She looked relieved that she did not have to stay with me.The ambulance crew arrived pretty quickly soon after that and agreed to take Greg to A & E at the hospital we needed to be at. They wrapped him up in a blanket, carried him up the stairs in a chair-trolley and out into the ambulance. They did all the necessary emergency checks in the ambulance and then we set off for the hospital, with me leaving about 5 minutes ahead of them to get a parking space.

7.55am. Greg arrived at the hospital in the ambulance, just after I had parked the car and had found the entrance to A&E. The casualty staff looked generally perplexed, when they examined him. The sight of his toenails seemed to put even the strongest of them off. It amused me how these people can deal with all the blood and guts of A&E, yet still get their stomach wrenched at the sight of a torn toenail. As for his legs and general state, they did all sorts of tests. He did not seem to respond to any of the usual reflex tests and could often not feel anything at all as they asked him whether he could feel them twiddling his toes up and down. He did not jerk when they banged his knees. In short, he seemed dead from the waist down. Shortly after arrival, I had sprinted up to the ward where he was going to have his procedure done to tell them why we were delayed and that he was in A&E. The lady doctor who was about to perform the angiogram/angioplasty visited him shortly thereafter in A&E to say she would in the circumstances delay the procedure for another week to give him time to recuperate from whatever was wrong with him. Blood tests were done. More waiting for the results. A&E were on the verge of sending him home, but I pointed out that our house has lots of stairs and that, if he could not walk, there might be a slight problem with that. Fortunately a team of physiotherapists and social workers called by and eventually decided to admit him to a ward and keep him there while they did tests on his legs to see if he had something called peripheral neuropathy - nerve damage to the extremities caused by diabetes and alcohol consumption.

12.30pm. I saw him settled into a ward. He was insisting that he wanted to go home, but I was firm and told him there was no way I could cope with him at home if he was unable to stand or walk. His reply was that "we would manage".
"Yes", I thought, "and by we you mean me!"

1.00 pm Having spent 5 hours altogether at the hospital, I left in a frazzled state for home. In all that time I had not even had a chance to have a coffee. My head felt as if it had been whizzing around in a spin-drier. I was also concerned about Snoopy, who hates being left for even an hour let alone five, so I imagined I would be going to home to chewed matchwood instead of furniture. Fortunately Snoopy decided to support me by being good that day.

6.00pm. I then visited again with Kay. I felt as if I had been at the hospital all day. The parking ticket meter once again greedily devoured more money - that day I spent over £15 in all on hospital parking. Greg was even more desperate to get home, as, you may remember, he hates hospitals with a passion. He was agitated but at the same time, barely acknowledged we were there. Kay and I didn't hang around that evening. We were so thankful to get rid of him for a while and get a bit of peace and quiet. We walked out into the fresh air and sighed a deep sigh. What a day, that had been !!

On the floor

We are now coming very close to the point in my story, when I shall eventually catch up with the present day.....

August 2008 - Once I had taken my mother back home again and returned to London, Kay and I fell back into our routine. Kay had various things to do in preparation for her return to school and I was getting the house back to normal after a summer spent mostly away from it or with house guests. Greg carried on as usual in his own little world. But I was beginning to notice he was getting quite confused. For instance, before Kay had returned from her trip, he had been convinced he had seen her going upstairs to her room. On another occasion, he had rung his sister in the night at 2am, thinking it was 2pm. She was not best pleased to be roused from a deep sleep. The most vivid example of his confusion was when he had told me a friend had phoned and was coming to stay but could not remember when. When I asked him to ring the friend back and confirm the date and time of arrival, so I could make a bed up and buy enough food in, the friend said they had not even phoned him recently, let alone said they would be visiting. This was concerning me, but I put it down to the alcohol. A small part of me wondered whether he was showing signs of early dementia. His grandfather had had senile dementia in his seventies, but Greg is only 59, so I hoped he was too young for that yet. As the time for his angioplasty drew nearer, I just hoped and prayed that when it came to it, the hospital would keep him in afterwards. They were aware of his drink problem, but were still prepared to go ahead with the angioplasty, as he physically needed it to be done. But I wondered what would happen if he was forced to abstain from drinking for a few hours while they did the procedure and whether he would start to get withdrawal symptoms while he was there. The whole reason for continuing the drinking was because Greg was terrified of the withdrawal symptoms. In which case, I felt sure the hospital would then step in to do something.

Meanwhile, I began increasingly to find Greg sleeping on the kitchen or lounge floor, when I came down for breakfast in the morning. He was now hardly making it as far as the bedroom at all. He would be lying there on the hard floor, fully dressed but with no covers over him at all. Sometimes his head would be on the dog's day bed in the kitchen; at other times he would have no support for his head save for something hard like the floor or a shoe. When he did move about, he stumbled or fell against furniture. He was covered in bruises.

On 4 September, the day before the angioplasty, I came down to find him lying on the lounge floor. I was getting used to discovering him like this in the mornings. I tried to wake him and get him to at least lie on the sofa, but he became angry and refused to move. So I left him there, while I went out for my monthly meeting at the Alcoholic Advisory Centre (AAC). I was away from home for about three hours in all, but when I got home, Greg was still asleep on the lounge floor, exactly where I had left him. I briefly checked on him and then made myself a sandwich for lunch, putting on the TV in the kitchen to watch the News. After a few minutes I heard Greg rousing in the lounge , making a move followed by a thud and a shout of frustration as he fell. I rushed into the lounge and found him sprawled in a heap on the floor. He ordered me to help him up. As I did so, I noticed he had torn off two very long toenails and they were hanging on by a thread with blood gushing everywhere. I helped him onto the sofa, but he was totally unaware of what he had done to his toenails, until I pointed them out to him. He asked me to pull the nails off, as it was impossible to leave them flapping about. I was not sure whether that was the best thing to do, so warned him that it would hurt, but he insisted, so shutting my eyes tightly and gingerly feeling for the nails, I yanked them off quickly, expecting him to scream the place down. He was so drunk and devoid of any feeling that he did not even murmur. I ran about gathering antiseptic as well as suitable bandages to bind his toes up. Within minutes of doing that, Greg fell instantly into a drunken sleep again on the sofa, leaving me shaking with the enormity of what had just happened.

My Dad

A lot of Kay's friends are turning 18 at the moment and she has been busy several evenings this week making birthday cakes to take into school for them the next day. She has decorated them herself too and made a wonderful job of customising each one for their recipient. Her classmates have been very impressed and have commented how good she is. Which is all rather appropriate because we reckon her grandfather (my father) must have been watching over her and guiding her.

My dear old Dad would have been 85 today, if leukaemia had not struck him down suddenly nearly eight years ago. He had a reasonable innings, I suppose, and considerably more than he would have had, if the nasty Mr Hitler had had his way. My Dad was born in Berlin on 16 October 1923. Because of the post 1914-18 Depression in Germany, my pregnant grandmother had been unable to maintain a nutritious diet. So my father was born with rickets and could not walk until he was six years old. My grandfather came from good old Prussian stock and was a Lutheran, a protestant faith into which my father and his older (by three years) brother were christened and confirmed. But my grandmother came from Jewish parents, who did not want to force Judaism on their children, so much so that my grandmother never even set foot in a synagogue. Maybe my great-grandparents saw which way the wind was blowing. Who knows? But sadly, when it came to Mr Hitler's cleansing programme, any hint of Judaism in the family going back, I believe, six generations meant you were branded a Jew, whether you practised it or not. For my father and his older brother, despite being christened and confirmed, it meant not being able to join the Hitler Youth. Not that they wanted to, mind you, but not to join made you stand out, because everyone was rushing like lemmings to be a part of it. My father was singled out at school when he did not wear the Hitler Youth uniform on special celebration days. It did not however exclude him from being made to write euphoric school essays about Hitler on the Fuehrer's birthday or when he made his big speeches at Nuremberg.

One day in 1938, my father, aged 15, was away visiting one of his aunts, when the SS officers came to take him away. As he was not at home, they took my (then) 17-year-old uncle instead to a nearby concentration camp where he spent 3 months, was tattooed and watched all kinds of atrocities. My grandparents (for some reason the Gestapo did not take them as well) had the foresight to sell off all their possessions to free him again, as it was possible before WW2 to buy your freedom if you could prove that you had a definite passage out of Germany. The family managed to escape to Britain with the help of English Quakers, first the children with the Kindertransport in March and a few months later, my grandparents. Many of the aunts, uncles and cousins were less fortunate and shortly thereafter were taken to concentration camps, where no more was heard of them.

My father, now in England, was placed in digs on a farm (still at the tender age of 15 without his parents or brother anywhere close by) to help out with all manner of work, earning a few pence at the weekend by scrubbing out the stables or the farmhouse, so that he could afford to buy personal things like shaving cream or toothpaste. He could only speak a few words of English which didn't even amount to a sentence. Slowly he built up his vocabulary, after befriending a young man in the village who spoke a little German. After war with Germany broke out in 1939, he was then interned on the Isle of Man for six months while the British government went into his paperwork to check he was not a German spy. When he was given the all-clear, he worked for the Ministry of Agriculture clearing the land to feed the nation. That is how he met my mum, a Land Army girl, about three years later in 1942. My post on 26 July tells how he was pulling out trees with a chain and a tractor and she stumbled over the chain. He helped her up and they started dating. He loved opera and introduced my mother to a different opera showing in London each week with his hard-earned money. They were married in 1947. Times were hard and they had to live apart for the first three years, as they were unable to get even a room together, let alone a flat or house in post-war bombed-out London. Their work dictated that she live with her parents in South London during the week, while he lived with his parents (having meanwhile met up with them again) in North London. They got together at weekends, when they could. There were no such things as social benefits or hand-outs, particularly so, because he was an immigrant... .nowadays it is quite the reverse. So he worked hard for his living and managed to get on the housing ladder and save for a mortgage. He was naturalised as a British citizen and was always proud to be British. He wanted to do his best to settle down here and give thanks to Britain for saving his life.

A few years after the war, Dad took a course in food science and baking and ended up being a chef patissier or pastry chef. Looking at the prima donna celebrity chefs these days, I reckon he would have deserved to be up there with them (by that I do not mean he was a prima donna, but was the best at his job), but in his day, chefs were poorly paid and worked long hours and did not get the celebrity status they do now. He worked for some pretty big London hotels and finally ended up being the patisserie manager of a very high-class grocery establishment in London well-known all over the world as THE Grocer to the Royal Household. In 1960, he made one of the many wedding cakes for the marriage of Princess Margaret to Anthony Armstrong-Jones. He was often asked to send out pastries to the Queen Mother. He later went on to make the desserts for all kinds of high government functions, including those where the Queen and other Heads of State were present. He even once had to go to 10 Downing Street and go through that famous door to make desserts for a function there and regularly worked in the kitchens at Hampton Court, where Prime Minister Harold Wilson insisted on holding his state functions. When he took early retirement aged 62 because of a heart condition, he was still in great demand and would still often do the odd bit of work for friends and family, such as making wedding or birthday cakes.

At one point in his life he had also taught cake-making and decorating at evening school and had many appreciative students - mainly women. They adored him, though he never strayed away from home and always stayed faithful to my mum, and to this day we still receive fan mail from these women at Christmas. Because of his continental upbringing, he would always wear a jacket, collar and tie, even when the temperature was 80 degrees Fahrenheit and over. He was a sort of Captain von Trappe figure - always very reserved, courteous, well-turned out and charming. I never saw him drunk. He might have had the occasional Guinness at Christmas, but even that was a rare sight. He was the sort of guy who had many friends, but yearned for a quiet life at home. The Nazi era had affected him badly. He was not keen to give details of his past to anyone and he refused to take any compensation from the German government for what they had done to him and his family, when he later had the opportunity to claim it. He saw it as blood money. He was terrified of fire, because he had grown up seeing books and synagogues burned, and always made a point of unplugging any electrical appliances before he went to bed. He was happy so long as he was safe in his home, with his wife and child, and much later he was happy to spend time with his one and only grandchild, whom he spoiled rotten. He excelled at (and won prizes for) everything he turned his hands to - be it ploughing or bread-making. An Austrian princess who visited that famous grocery store once told him his Viennese Sachertorte was better than the ones she could buy in Vienna. In latter years, as a hobby, he made the most beautiful, intricate dolls-house furniture for Kay . .. tiny inlaid marquetry tables or cabinets with drawers and glass-doors or even a miniscule television with knobs and dials.

Sadly in 1997 he was diagnosed with chronic lymphatic leukaemia (CLL), but it was a type that was relatively kind and would not snuff him out. He bore the regular blood transfusions and bone marrow tests with fortitude and I never heard him complain. Then at Christmas 2000 he suddenly started to feel very ill indeed and could not even manage to eat the festive meal without feeling sick. He struggled on for a few weeks until mid-January when he was due to see his consultant haematologist. Further tests were done and it was found that he had developed the more aggressive form - acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) - in addition to the CLL . We were told it was so rare to have two different forms of leukaemia at the same time. He was told he was too ill for chemotherapy and had a matter of weeks or months to live. In fact he died a mere ten days later on 1 February 2001. We were devastated.

My mother has still not got over it after nearly eight years. She misses him dreadfully and still cries for him. They were so in love and were two perfect halves of a whole. As an only child, I adored him and put him on a pedestal. He was loving and loveable. I miss him dreadfully. Today he would have been 85 years old. So when I saw Kay this week icing those beautiful birthday cakes so perfectly for her friends, I believe he must have been watching over her and guiding her hand. Maybe he was sitting on a cloud hoping there was a cake for him today. I would give anything for him to be here to eat it.

Happy Birthday Dad.

While Kay was away

The run-up to Kay's expedition to Central America in July 2008 totally passed Greg by. He showed no interest whatsoever in anything we needed to do to prepare for the trip .....not the inoculations, the foreign exchange, the kit list, the travel advice. He stayed in his cocoon, watching TV, drinking, smoking and sleeping, while we shopped, scoured websites and packed. Even on her day of departure it was all he could do to turn his head in her direction to say goodbye. Not, I think, because he was disinterested in her. More, that everything was turned in on him. It was all he could do to exist. In the past he had been a wonderful father........ changing nappies; rocking her back to sleep in the middle of the night when she cried out; reading stories to her; taking her regularly to the cinema; or even once taking her single-handedly on a trip to Disneyland Paris, while I stayed behind to visit my dying father. Nowadays he was too self-absorbed to notice what she was doing.

Kay left for her expedition with a tearful farewell, leaving Greg and me truly on our own for the first time in ages. But far from it being a romantic time to be alone with one another, I could not bear to even be there. He was in the kitchen/diner, permanently drunk. I was in the lounge, watching TV on my own or in a separate bedroom sleeping on my own. Just like landlady and lodger. There was no hope in hell of behaving like two excited parents on their own without the kids for a while.

A few days later, Greg had an appointment to see a vascular consultant. This was a follow-up appointment from his previous hospitalisation in 2006 when they had decided the blood-flow to his legs was not good. They were monitoring it to see whether they needed to do some sort of surgery, but they had asked Greg to give up smoking first . The appointments were at annual intervals to see if he had achieved that. Of course he had not, but this time the consultant could see the blood supply in his legs was very bad. Apart from the fact his feet looked purple most of the time, he was now having extreme difficulty walking any short distance at all. It was decided he would need to have to have an angiogram to see where there were blockages in the leg arteries and possibly an angioplasty to widen the arteries with stents. A date of 5 September was booked for the procedure to be done.

Meanwhile, I was beginning to see clearly what life would be like next year once Kay leaves home for university. I have always known what it would be like, but without Kay physically here for a month, it brought it home even more. I knew I would not be able to continue living with him. I told him out loud what I had been thinking for ages, partly hoping that the realisation of what his drinking was doing to us all would somehow make him stop. But he kept saying that I was being over-dramatic and he refused to believe we would split up. He said we went back a long way and we could not throw that away. I told him in no uncertain terms that once Kay had left for university, I would be off too, as I could not take much more of his drinking.

I had had Kay at the age of 40. I had had an executive career beforehand, but gave it all up willingly when Kay was born, as I wanted to enjoy being with her - after all I had waited so long for her. But it meant I was now financially dependent on Greg. Without any personal income, I could not find alternative accommodation until Kay had left the nest. Once that had happened, I would be able to move sixty miles or so away to live with my ailing mother, who was more than pleased at the idea of me moving in, as she is getting very frail. To push home the point, I told Greg I had decided I would spend a couple of the following weeks with my mother, helping her with some of her big household chores, such as hacking back the undergrowth in her garden and washing curtains. He would need to get used to the idea and my being away would be good practice.

When I left to visit my mother, I hid 15 bottles of whisky and 400 cigarettes all over the house, making a list for myself of where they were hidden so I could remember to tell him each day where to find the next bottle and packet of cigarettes. I also made up or bought freezer-packs of ready meals so that he could take one out and microwave it. But of course, I was forgetting one thing.... Greg 's appetite had gone to nothing again. He only had the appetite for whisky and nothing else. After two heavenly weeks away, I returned home together with my mother. I wanted her to be with us when Kay returned from her big trip and to hear all the tales Kay had to tell. Mum's birthday was also on the day before Kay's return, so I did not want her to be on her own for that either. She was visibly shocked at Greg's appearance. He had gone downhill even more during that fortnight. He looked so thin. If he wandered around with hardly any clothes on, his skin hung on his frame in pleats. He looked like a little old man. He had not eaten a single meal I had left in the freezer for him but all 15 bottles of the whisky were empty and all cigarettes gone. On my first day back home, I had to buy more of both, as he was always desperate not to go into withdrawal at any cost.

He was now taking to sleeping a lot of the time. Either on the sofa or sometimes on the floor - in the kitchen or the lounge. It seemed like he could not be bothered even to climb the stairs to bed. He was not washing; his hair was long and unkempt; he was not shaving and his beard was dishevelled; his clothes were the same old ones, covered in stains and creases. He stank. The soles of his feet were black and his toenails so long. He really was a sight. I had to take him for a pre-surgical assessment at the hospital in preparation for the angioplasty in two weeks' time. I felt so embarrassed to walk alongside him. He clung on to me for support as he could not walk unaided from the car to the main entrance. Once inside, he then demanded that I find a wheelchair to take him to the relevant department, as he could barely stagger.

When Kay returned in mid-August from her expedition, she was naturally pleased to see us all, though disappointed that Greg had not changed. I think in her absence she had hoped for a miracle. Although she was jet-lagged and had also gone without a decent sleep the night before, she was bursting to tell us her stories. My mother and I listened enthralled by her tales, but Greg just dozed on the sofa and would occasionally open one eye to focus on her and then doze off again. She also showed us her digital photos on the computer - all 600 of them- but Greg declined to have a look, saying he would look at them later. In the middle of all this, Kay also opened the envelope containing her AS results which was waiting unopened for her return. She was pleased to have got As in all of them with the exception of Chemistry, for which she had got a C. She was disappointed, as the universities insist on an A-grade for the course she wants, but she stoically accepted that she would need to resit Chemistry at a later date.

To this day, Greg has not seen the photos, nor heard her account of the trip, nor taken on board her AS results. Kay said she was not bothered, but I could see it hurt her. She chose to shut herself off from him. I did too. It was the best way to cope with the inevitable disappointment, when he showed no interest.

Workout

This morning I have just done a three-hour work-out and am now collapsing in front of the computer to have a bit of a breather. There was much arm-bending, touching the floor, weight-lifting and stretching. I had a quick 10-minute coffee break in the middle and then resumed arm-bending, touching the floor, lifting and stretching. It is good to have the occasional work-out, though I fear now my back is protesting slightly, but the garden looks a lot better for it. The shrubs are now neatly clipped into shape, the beds are looking clean and leaf-free (for the moment until the trees finish shedding their load next month) and the paths clear of debris. My work-out will continue after lunch when I heave heavy bags of garden waste off to the local tip for it to be placed on the giant compost heap. But despite all this I feel great. There's nothing more therapeutic than tidying up the garden for winter in the warm October sunshine which we have enjoyed in London today.

Counselling for me

Around about this time in May, the Alcoholic Advisory Centre (AAC), where Greg went for counselling, contacted me. They were considering starting sessions for people like me who live with alcoholics and wondered if I might like to come along to an introductory meeting to plan what people wanted from these meetings and when/ how often to hold them etc. Various people in my circle of friends and relatives had suggested I should attend Al-Anon to help me, but I had not had the opportunity or time to attend Al-Anon meetings. I had felt a bit guilty about this and had decided that, as I already knew the AAC and had taken Greg there frequently for his counselling, I might try there first. Also things at home were becoming difficult to control or manage and I needed some advice. Ironically, at this same time, Greg had stopped going there because his one-to-one counsellor was leaving the AAC to live abroad and the AAC suggested, as they were cutting back on resources, that Greg attend group meetings instead, which of course did not appeal to Greg in the slightest.

My first meeting with the AAC was in June 2008. There were about six different people there including myself, plus the organisers. It became quite clear from an early point in the meeting that I was different from all the others. The alcoholics in their families were their children....twenty-somethings who still lived at home but went out on the town at weekends and rolled home drunk on an irregular basis. The advice from the AAC was to be firm and set boundaries such as not to allow the drunk back in the home until they sobered up. The parents should maintain that it was the parent's home and their sons or daughters must observe their rules and their standards. This meant tough love and sending their sons and daughters away from the front door, when they were drunk....even if it meant them sleeping rough overnight. When I told my story, it was evident that this advice could not apply. For a start it was my husband who was the alcoholic and therefore I could not ban him from his own home. Secondly he was already in the home all day every day. Drunk all the time. Not just occasionally at weekends. Nor was there any time of the day when he was sober and I could reason with him. There was no advice for that. The organisers conceded it was a difficult case to handle. All I could do, they said, was to persuade him to come to the AAC for his own counselling meetings, which, as I mentioned above, he would not do, now that his one-to-one counselling had stopped.

Together with the other families, I helped to shape up further meetings to decide how often we should meet (once a month), on what day (first Thursday of the month), what time, how long, and the sort of topics we would like to cover (visits from GPs or doctors at hospitals; experts from carers' organisations; talks on rehab and what it entails; advice on how to deal with given situations etc). There was even a suggestion that they might arrange day-trips to the seaside or theatre visits to give us a bit of social respite. Since then, there have been three meetings at the AAC and sadly the numbers have dwindled to such an extent that last week I was the only one there. It was a bit embarrassing really. The organisers have decided to stop these meetings now, because they do not really have the resources (and I suspect because the uptake has been poor).

I have only recently also started to attend Al-Anon. I am not entirely certain it is my cup of tea. I was told by the very nice Al-Anon meeting leader, the minute I walked through the door, that not everyone takes to Al-Anon and I should give it at least six meetings before I decide. I think I had made my mind up within the first twenty minutes that it was not for me, but I shall persevere, just in case. To be honest I was looking for practical help and advice - what to do when in a middle of a nightmare situation, when an emergency call-out doctor cannot even be bothered to open his mouth let alone help me, or when a desperate visit to a hospital results in them sending Greg home again without addressing the problem. My impression is that Al-Anon seems to be more a cross between a battered wives' refuge (they were ALL tired-looking women at my particular group meeting) and a bible study group (lots of ten-commandment-like mantras and prayers to a "higher power"). There is no advice or practical help. One by one the women - all partners of an alcoholic - sit around telling their stories, while the rest of us sit in silence and are not allowed to comment. All the stories are very sad and make me want to cry but at other times, I get the overwhelming feeling that I am taking part in a French and Saunders sitcom and want to laugh out loud. A lot of the women have been coming for years and seem to find it helps them tremendously but, to be honest, I feel I get just as much relief from writing my blog. Everyone has their own unique way of relieving the pressure. I shall persevere, but at present I feel my time is better used elsewhere and my blog is more cathartic.

Telling the school

I was very nervous. I was not comfortable about sharing my private life with the school, particularly to tell them that Kay's father was an alcoholic. It was quite something for me to think it privately: a whole different ballgame to admit it to others. It meant it was real; not a figment of my imagination. Not a nightmare, even. I wondered whether it would make things better for Kay, if the teachers knew, or worse. Would they laugh at her? Pick on her? Pity her? The overriding factor here was surely that THEY thought Kay was not putting in the hours for her A-level work and I wanted to put them straight about why. Not Kay's fault at all. Far from it. I must not lose sight of that. That is what gave me the courage to walk up the entrance steps to the reception and ask to see Mrs Richards, the Head of Sixth Form, with whom I had an appointment. When she appeared, she led me up to her office, chatting as she did so about the fact that the exam season had just started and the school was extra-quiet. Her demeanour also suggested she was not quite sure what my visit was about, as I had not mentioned it in my request for a meeting . Her body language seemed to suggest I might be there to complain about something. I was so nervous, I suppose my body language was saying that I was not looking forward to speaking to her at all. Once inside her office, we sat down and she looked quizzically at me to begin.

I blurted it all out. I had made notes (I'm a great one for lists - I am renowned for them) and I worked my way through the points I had listed. I quickly gave her the background to the last few years. I said I was worried about the effect of Greg's behaviour on Kay's work, about the wrong impression Kay's performance might give the teachers and how it might affect her chances of doing the course she wanted at university. Kay had only ever wanted to do one thing as a career since she was very small and Greg stood in the way of that. I could not forgive him or myself for standing by and doing nothing to stop him, if Kay was not given a fair chance to achieve her dream. My voice ended up getting a bit wobbly and I inevitably ended up crying. I tried not to, but certain bits of my story always set me off. Mrs Richards was very sympathetic. She reassured me I was not the first parent or probably the last to have come to her over this sort of thing. She said she would mention the problem to the teachers who taught Kay and make sure they took this into consideration. She would also mention it to the Head who ought to be kept informed in case she somehow unwittingly put her foot in things when talking to Kay. She also suggested that Kay talk to a counsellor who comes to the school once a week, as this would surely help her.

All in all, as we ended the meeting and returned to the reception some 45 minutes after I had arrived, I felt a lot better about what I had done. In fact, I almost wished I had done it much sooner in the school year, so that the staff would have had more of an inkling. But I also felt very guilty. About betraying Greg. About what he would say, if he knew what I had done. Not that I was going to tell him yet. Not until after Kay's exams, at least, as I did not want to make things even worse until they were out of the way.

That afternoon, I met Kay from school and we went to the park and sat on the grass. She had known I was going to see Mrs Richards and wanted to know how I had got on. When I had relayed how the meeting went, Kay lay back on the grass and visibly relaxed. Both she and I were pleased that our secret was out in the open now. We felt a great weight had been lifted from our shoulders.We didn't have to pretend any more or watch what we said. Kay now vowed to tell her close circle of friends that evening, as they were meeting up for a girlie night out at a restaurant. I knew that she needed to open up and confide in them, because bottling things up had not been good for her either. Up to now I had always asked her to keep it secret, as people might not understand and because I felt it would betray Greg or destroy our privacy. But things had gone beyond that now. It was about our self-preservation.

Living the Nightmare

By May 2008, Greg was impossible to live with. He was back to all the old tricks again...not washing, dressing in clothes that were so shabby and unwashed. Sometimes he did not even bother to undress at night, but would fall into bed with his clothes on and then just get up and spend the next day or even the next week in the same old clothes, slopping food stains down the front as the week wore on. If I dared to say anything about his appearance, he just snapped at me. He walked in bare feet, out in the garden, around the house. The soles of his feet were as hard as shoe leather and black as soot. Although I had moved back into the marital bedroom after his detox, I moved back out again to the spare room. Again the dog voted to follow me. Once more, Greg spent the entire day on the dining chairs in the kitchen watching TV from breakfast till the early morning, falling in and out of sleep - whilst on the dining chair. He wanted me to administer his medicines, as he could not otherwise be bothered, yet he had diabetes, a heart condition, vascular problems in his legs, high blood pressure, ex-gastric ulcer and an increasingly ailing liver. His GP was disgusted with him and said he must try to reduce his alcohol intake or he would surely be dead soon at the rate he was going. He didn't seem to care. Nothing stopped him. Not the thought of leaving me a widow or Kay fatherless. Not even the thought of doing something with his life.

I contacted Matt at the Alcoholic Advisory Centre and asked what he could do to help. Basically his reply was not very helpful. Without Greg's agreement, they could not apply for another detox session and in any case, they could only fund one session per person per year. It seemed nobody really wanted to take control and help.

At this point Kay was beginning to prepare for her AS exams. She had already had a chemistry mock exam. The night before, Greg had been particularly difficult. He had been shouting and ranting all through the evening. No matter how much we appealed to him that Kay had an important test the next day, he shouted even louder. He had followed us from room to room, when we tried to get away from him, as he always wants the last word. It meant Kay had had no peace to study that evening and she had sat the test without having the opportunity to revise. Her grade was considerably lower than expected and the teacher had not been pleased with her. She came home really upset as Chemistry is very important to her future career choice and I could see that Greg's behaviour was not only impinging on our home life, but could adversely affect Kay's life and career forever. I could not allow that to happen.

A few days later, on a Saturday, he was again very agitated and shouted loudly. Very manic. His whole behaviour was totally unacceptable and Kay and I decided to leave the house mid-morning to get a bit of peace. We ended up going to the nearest shopping centre to do a bit of retail therapy. When we came home again after lunchtime, he picked up where he had left off, as if we had not been away. Our heads were spinning and our chests vibrating with the noise. I could stand it no longer. This was unreasonable behaviour. We could not be expected to put up with this on a continuing basis. People get divorces for "unreasonable behaviour", don't they? I reached for the phone and dialled the number for the emergency doctor. I explained the situation and said that I had reason to believe he was on the verge of insanity. The telephonist said the doctor would call me back. When he did, he asked me if my husband was aware I had phoned. If not, I should tell him, as it was only fair not to surprise him when the doctor arrived. Fair point. Except, when I told Greg, he flew off the handle even more at my "stupidity". How dare I call out a doctor. To make matters worse, the doctor took two hours to arrive, by which time Greg had deliberately sobered a little and had time to stew on what I had done. The doctor was a little man in stature and evidently not sure what to do. He came into the kitchen and sat at the dining table alongside Greg, while I sat opposite. Surprisingly he did not have much of an air of authority about him, but just sat quietly looking from one to the other of us, expecting us to lead the conversation. I began that I had called him out because my husband was an alcoholic and had been shouting and shrieking so much,my daughter was trying to study, we were unable to appeal to his good nature to be quiet, surely this was unreasonable etc etc. Greg discounted this, summoning up every ounce of sweet reason that he could. He said he was so sorry the poor doctor had been dragged into this. God only knows, doctors were so busy and their time so precious enough, without being called in to deal with a mere domestic disagreement. The doctor sat there without saying a word, obviously wishing he could be beamed up somewhere else. I have never felt so alone in a room of people before. I might just as well not have been there.

At the end of all this, the doctor rose from his seat and headed in haste for the front door. As he did so, he threw over his shoulder the only comment he was to make during his entire visit... namely that if I had any concerns I should speak to our GP on Monday. For the meantime, there was nothing he could do. He was out of the front door as fast as his little legs would carry him and away into his car. Greg of course then poured himself a stiff whisky and preceded to rant and rave at me for having stooped so low, as to call out a doctor. He went on and on, following Kay and me around the house, as we went from room to room to get away from him. After a couple of hours of this, Kay and I could stand it no more. We ran to the car, before Greg could catch up with us, and I drove to the park. We just walked and walked around the lake for a couple of hours until it grew darker and they were closing the park gates. We felt so downhearted. There seemed to be nowhere we could turn for help. When we got home again, Greg was asleep on the dining chair. The whisky bottle was empty.

It was then that I decided we had to do something to help Kay with her studying, particularly as it was coming up to exam-time. I was going to have to tell the school. I had tried to keep this whole nightmare under wraps. Nobody outside the immediate family or my best friends knew about it, but in fairness to Kay, I could not suppress it any more. The school would need to know. I also decided to turn to blogging to relieve some of the pressure building up within me. My blog was born.

Mother-in-law's Funeral

Greg was fine for the funeral. He had seen his mother an hour or so after her death and had come to terms with her passing. In many ways it had been a great relief for everyone as she had suffered for years with emphysema and had been marooned in the house for the last two. She had once been a very energetic woman holding lots of successful house parties, catering for forty or fifty people at a time and doing all the cooking herself. Her brain had been active to the last. She had even once stood as the local Liberal candidate for the council elections. But in her infirmity she had been relegated to a chair watching TV or doing crosswords and word games to keep her mind alive. Her last few days in particular had been painful to watch because she went downhill rapidly and could not move an inch from her bed. So everyone agreed it was better for her to go rather than to linger.

Greg had returned to London to collect Kay and me, taking us back in his car to his mother's cottage for the days leading up to the funeral. I felt confident that he was able to drive on the motorway all right, now that he had sobered up. His car had large scratches and gouges at each corner where in the past he had misjudged obstacles when parking it. Thankfully he had never hit anyone or another car but I had banned him in the last few years from making any trips in the car while under the influence. He had occasionally crept out and driven for more alcohol in the night when I was asleep, hence the mishaps to each corner of the car. Although he always maintained he was a better driver drunk than most people were sober. No comment!

Greg and his sister Jill were busy for a few days making the funeral arrangements, whilst I helped where I could with preparing the catering. The funeral day was successful (if you can call it that) and we spent a lovely day with all the relatives and friends who had travelled far and wide to be there. Over the following days, Greg and I went through his mother's things with Jill and made choices about what to take for ourselves or what to dispense with. We also made plans with Jill about selling the cottage. So there was plenty to keep us occupied. But already on the day of the funeral Greg had started to drink a glass or two of whisky. I was torn between saying anything or giving him some leeway - it was his mother's funeral after all. But I also knew that once an ex-alcoholic has ONE drink, they are on the path to ruin again.

Once we were back home in London, Greg did indeed start to slip back into drinking quite quickly. Within a week or two he was back to half a bottle of whisky per day; within a month he was back to a full bottle each day. When he came out of detox, I had told him I could not bear to go through another bout of his alcoholism. We had already twice had the opportunity to pick up the pieces, but three times he had let us down and put us through hell. He had promised things would NEVER get so bad again. He had categorically assured me he would never go back to drinking heavily again. But here we were yet again. His sobriety had lasted just six weeks. Here I was again, having to drive out each morning to get him his supply of whisky and cigarettes for the day. Not to do so, once he was on a full bottle a day, would have meant HE would drive instead to get it. I could not have that on my conscience. The credit bills were rising into several thousands of pounds and in addition we had two large loans to pay off....all of it going on whisky and cigarettes. Where was it all going to end?

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Who has not read the Ode to Autumn by John Keats? If not, you can access it here. I am always amazed that as soon as Kay ends her school summer holidays and starts yet another academic year, nature flicks a switch. The air turns crisper, the trees change colour and there is condensation on my windscreen when I get into the car first thing. Every year it surprises me. On 31 August it is summer, but come September - bang - Mother Nature has done it again.

Coping

For the next four weeks after detox, Greg managed remarkably well. I could see he was using coping mechanisms that he had learned at the clinic. He was also trying to rebuild his strength, had a huge appetite and insisted on walking the dog to improve the weakness in his legs and his general fitness. He even used to make it his purpose each day to walk down to the high street - about a two-mile round trip - stopping to have coffee and read a newspaper at a cafe halfway. Naturally I was suspicious that he might be stopping off at a pub on the way, because trust can never recover completely, but I would deliberately get up close to smell his breath and was convinced that it smelled of coffee and nothing else. I was quite impressed and began to allay my fears that he would go back to drinking. He wanted to be part of the family again and insisted on booking tickets for us to see a West End show. He got all dressed up in a suit and for the first time in ages looked very presentable indeed. Other people even commented on how well he was looking lately.

I tried to broach the subject of rehab - the second phase in which the alcoholic comes to terms with why the addiction first started and how to avoid returning to it. It would mean a six-month residential stay with no possibility of returning home for the first few months and then occasionally at weekends thereafter. But Greg was adamant that he would NEVER return to drinking heavily again. He had learned his lesson. He gave me his assurances. In any case, he did not much like the idea of being away from home for six months, cut off from the world, the news, the world wide web. Nor did he relish the idea of communal living with fellow addicts. He had put up with it for ten days but that was the end of it.

Then, at the end of those four weeks, we got a call from Jill, his sister, to say that their mother had taken a turn for the worse. For the best part of her life she had smoked heavily and had developed emphysema a few years earlier. She had spent the last two years not only house-bound but also chair-bound, as any effort, however small, such as getting washed and dressed, had exhausted her. For those two years, she had been literally tied to the end of an oxygen cylinder. But Jill now reported that her mother had overnight lost the use of her legs and was unable to stand. Much to Jill's despair,as she would have preferred to keep her mother close by in her own home, their mother would now need to go permanently into the nursing home she had stayed in for three weeks last year. Greg rushed there by car to see if he could do anything to help or at least be there for them. Kay and I remained in London, as Kay still had school to go to and I had the animals to look after.

Five days after my mother-in-law went into the nursing home, I got a call from an agitated Greg at breakfast-time. The nursing staff had gone into his mother's room to wake her up, only to find she had died in her sleep. Greg's words were punctuated with tears - he was clearly beside himself with grief and remorse.

Detox Clinic

The detox clinic was apparently run on a strict regime . Absolutely no visitors at all at any time... to avoid banned substances being smuggled in and to avoid any upset to the routine or to the state of calm. All luggage was searched on arrival before being returned to its owner in their designated room. Regular searches were made throughout Greg's stay to ensure drugs or alcohol had not somehow been smuggled in. He was not allowed a mobile phone in case it interfered with his rest and relaxation. All phone calls from me or from him had to be made through the central office phone, so they were never private. There were set mealtimes and all inmates had to wash their plates and cutlery afterwards. As the ten-day detox progressed, Greg's appetite went from non-existent to three courses each meal. They were wholesome and large to restore much needed nutrients. Lots of stodgy puddings for dessert with lashings of custard. There were set times too for the medicines to be dispensed. The alcohol withdrawal programme was based on a high dose of diazepam at the beginning which gradually reduced as the ten days passed.

In the mornings, there were sessions to discuss their addictions, triggers and ways of avoiding them. After lunch there were sessions to de-stress them such as Indian Head Massage or Yoga. In the evenings there were more soul-searching sessions and then leisure time to watch TV, or read in your room, or play pool. A hairdresser visited once a week too. Most of the inmates were hardened drinkers or drug addicts who had lost family or partners and were borderline down-and-outs. The programme gave them a chance to be pampered, empty their souls and relax. Greg made quite few friends in there. They all had one thing in common whatever their background and that was their addiction. They shared life stories; they supported one another when they broke down in the sessions; they smoked cigarettes in the yard together; they commiserated when any one of them had to leave to go home.

Back at Alcoholic Daze House, life was very peaceful. Kay and I were able to sleep soundly knowing that we were not going to wake up with flames from a fallen cigarette licking round us. We could relax without fear of hearing Greg stumble about, or without dread of him deliberately sabotaging our TV viewing or study with his drunken rantings. We were also smoke-free and could breathe. The ten days went by remarkably quickly and I found I actually enjoyed the independence and the calm. I was quite happy coping with single-living and was not so sure I wanted Greg to come back.

All too soon enough, the ten days were up and the time had come when I had to collect Greg from the Clinic and bring him home. As I drove through the sunny London streets, my heart got heavier and heavier. I wanted this to work so much, but the freedom I had just experienced made me realise I could cope alone, if I needed to. The whole experience had made me a stronger person. In the clinic car park, I waited for Greg to come through the security door. As he emerged, he waved and called to the friends he had made, as they leaned out of the upstairs windows. Enforced bosom buddies. He had told them things he had never shared with me.

As we drove out into the one-way streets with their bus lanes, speed cameras and screaming police cars, as they hared to yet another crime, Greg was already telling me which way I should head, which street I should turn into, forgetting that I had already made the journey there that morning perfectly well without him. I felt resentment. I bit my lip. I did not want to start a row so soon. But when he asked me to stop so he could buy a small bottle of whisky, my heart really sank. At first he said it had been discussed at the clinic that they should be left to make their own decisions and trusted to go carefully. He said I should give him that trust. The occasional glass would be allowed. Then later - when I refused to stop the car - he passed it off and said he had only been joking. When we got home, I felt I was walking on egg shells. I so did not want to upset things at this early, delicate stage, but my heart felt very heavy and I was full of dread.

Detox - at last

The detox was done in early February. Greg was in a really bad state by the time the date came. His personal appearance was more like that of a tramp, all hygiene abandoned. He talked a lot of gobbledegook most of the time and still resorted to shouting when anyone dared to say anything.

The car journey through London to the clinic was farcical. I had forgotten to get a congestion charge ticket beforehand, which we needed to drive into the centre of London, so I wanted to stop off at a shop that sold congestion tickets on the way. He kept telling me so long as I bought one before the day was out, that was OK, but I kept telling him, I preferred to get one upfront. Unfortunately I did not have enough cash on me and the first few shops I stopped at would not take a credit card. Every time I stopped, he would ask why I was stopping and again I would say I was getting a congestion ticket and every time he would reply that I could buy it later. In the end I was at screaming pitch -with him, with the situation, with not being able to find a shop that would accept credit. I was also driving in an unfamiliar part of London with bus lanes, speed cameras, one-way roads taking me away from where I needed to be, and many police cars whizzing past on call, so my concentration had to be at its best but was actually at its worst.

We arrived at the Detox Clinic in the late afternoon. There was no sign outside to say what the building was and I was not entirely sure we were at the right place, but as there was no parking on the road, I drove through an archway at the side of the building to a small car park at the rear of the building. Greg by now had quietened down and was fast asleep beside me. Just as I was pulling on the handbrake and looking around me, a man appeared at the passenger door and opened it. He introduced himself as the man we were due to meet and shook Greg's hand. Greg then stumbled - literally- out of the car and almost fell against the perimeter wall of the car park. The man managed to catch hold of him and steady him. I got out of the car and opened up the boot to get the luggage out. As all three of us walked across the car park to the reception entrance of the building, the man was very upbeat and jolly-jolly in his tone. Greg and I were still reeling from the fractious journey we had had. At the entrance the man took the case from me, told me I was not allowed into the building and said we must say our goodbyes straight away. Greg was too drunk to even bother, so I watched the two of them go into the building and the security door close tightly behind them. It was as if he were a prisoner being put inside to serve his time. I got back into the car and made my way back through the streets of London. I stopped off at Sainsburys on the way and ironically bought a big bottle of wine to take home. I felt I deserved it. I wanted to celebrate my temporary freedom and the peaceful ten days that stretched ahead of me. I also wanted to make a toast to better times ahead.

Upsetting everyone

My story continues.....

Eventually, in November 2007, Greg went to see Matt at the Alcohol Advisory Centre and agreed to detox. He felt so rough again and he knew he had to do it for his health. But he still baulked at the idea of rehab and said he would think about it later. Matt said there would be a wait of about 3-4 months for the detox, so we should not expect it to happen until well after the New Year -a full year after his detox in hospital. Now back on a full bottle of whisky a day, plus all his medication (which amounted to about 12 tablets a day and insulin injections), those three months dragged. The medication was for his heart trouble (high cholesterol and high blood pressure), gastric upsets (following on from the burst ulcer), diabetes and poor circulation in his legs (caused by the smoking).

All the former problems came back...food tasted funny, he had no appetite, he sat all day watching TV, smoking 40+ cigarettes a day, shouting and shrieking often until very late at night, hygiene falling by the wayside. He looked a mess. He still wore old clothes that were far too big for him and held them up with a belt. His hair grew long and bushy again. He did not wash or clean his teeth, so there was always an aura of whisky mixed with sweat about him. He wandered around in bare feet, even in the garden, so that the soles of his feet were the colour of a blackboard. He would climb into bed with those dirty feet sticking out of the duvet. His sleep was broken by mumblings and arm-waving. He used to complain vociferously when my alarm went off in the morning to get Kay off to school. It broke his chance to have a long sleep in the morning. Yet he could come to bed late at night, sometimes 2am or 3am, and clatter about, putting the light on, even smoking right next to me, and I was supposed to put up with that without a comment. The irritations on both sides were getting too much to cope with. I really felt I was sharing the house with a stranger and not the person I had married. I treated him like an unwelcome lodger. I began to let it show that my feelings for him had changed. I would shout back at him, when he shouted at me. I would even sometimes tell him that I wished he were dead. I told him what hell he was putting Kay and me through. If he was so intent on killing himself then he had better hurry up and get it over with. Because the waiting was unbearable. There were times, I am afraid to say, when I got so furious with him and my frustration got the better of me, that I would grab him by the hair and shake him or pin him against the wall and beat my hands against his chest. And then I would cry and run off. He never followed to come and find me. I would often come down later and find him asleep on the dining chair. A glass of whisky still there in front of him.


It got to the stage where I could no longer bear to be in the same bed as him and I decamped to the spare room. Even the dog did not want to sleep in the same room and chose to scratch at my bedroom door and lie on my floor alongside me rather than be in the marital bedroom with Greg. In fact every time Greg entered any room, Snoopy would dive off from wherever he was snoozing and run up or down stairs to get away, sensing a shouting-match would be about to start.


Kay was beginning to answer Greg back and say to me that she did not love him any more, because he showed so little interest in her. He had once been a wonderful father, taken her to places, helped her with so much. Now he more or less ignored her or shouted at her. He never asked her about important events in her day, when she got home from doing them. She hates him smoking and she would get even more irritated with the smoke than I do. Her teachers have even commented that she smells of smoke. Our GP said she could smell the smoke on me too. When you are a passive-smoker of 40-60 cigarettes a day, it is sometimes difficult to breathe!


When my mother came to stay with us occasionally, he would have no inhibitions and would bellow as much to me in front of her, as if she was not there. It upset her to see him treating me that way and the shouting really got to her. Naturally, I did not want her to feel lonely at times like Christmas or on her birthday, but she did not like to stay longer than necessary. She hates conflict and confrontations. If I tried to go away to spend time with my mother, I could not trust him to care for Kay. I was worried too about him falling asleep drunk with a burning cigarette and Kay being trapped at the top of the house in a fire. Yet my mother was getting older and frailer and needing more attention which I couldn't risk giving her.


You know that old vaudeville joke " I say, I say, I say. My wife and I have only had one argument in our entire marriage. It started the day we married and it's still going on now." Well, we had not argued much in the early part of our marriage , so we were not quite like that joke,, but we were arguing constantly now. Not just one row a week, not one a day, but several a day and most of the time in fact. The rows were over the silliest of things. Anything I said sparked one off. It could be something as harmless as asking what time an appointment was, when he wanted dinner, what he had done with a document. He would just shout at me to leave him alone and then I would stand my ground and we would be off. If I so much as said a peep over a TV programme he was watching (and he watched TV from morning til night) - even to say goodnight - he would rant and rave. It got to the stage where we were not making important household decisions, because we would inevitably end up rowing, with him shouting, and reaching no decision at all.


Whenever we saw his sister Jill, they would end up arguing over something silly too. They always made up but it did not stop it happening again. Greg's mother was ill with a chronic lung complaint and Jill usually looked after her, as they lived in the same village. But, on one occasion, as Jill was going away for a few weeks on holiday, his mother had to go into a nursing home and Greg offered to visit her there. His mother was embarrassed by Greg's appearance and made it clear to me that he should not come to visit her at the nursing home unless he made a great effort to spruce himself up. He did go to see her, but, as I have no influence over him and what he wears, he did embarrass her. It was not as if he even stayed a long time with her, as he hates small talk and hospital-like environments anyway. But we all knew he was staying in his mother's empty cottage drinking to his heart's content. How he made it there and back in his car on the motorway is a miracle.


All in all, every member of the family was suffering from his behaviour and couldn't wait long enough for the detox to come. When we finally got the call to say detox had been arranged for a date in early February 2008, our hopes were raised once more.

Manic

This week has been rather manic and I have been flitting about like a mosquito on heat. So much so that I have not had time to blog or read blogs. What with daily hospital visits, dealing with the household, walking the dog and having extra things thrown in - like having to find a special 18th birthday present for my nephew or arrange a day-trip to Leeds yesterday for another university open day- I have been chasing my tail. But I have been much buoyed up by the supportive comments from others on my blog and that has kept me going. I shall try to respond and write an update when I get a chance to surface for air. Meanwhile, bear with me. Suffice to say Greg was in intensive care up until Wednesday. It turns out he has had pneumonia and is still very weak, cannot walk and is very confused. He has aged ten years in a week. His liver count, I am told, should be between 20 and 80 and is currently 1600. He is a medical disaster.

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My thanks to those who have nominated me recently for awards. I have greedily pasted those awards onto this site, but have lacked the time to nominate others in turn. I hope I won't be turned into a pillar of salt for my sins. I hope it will be enough to say that all those on my blog list deserve an award (else they would not be on my list of favourites in the first place.) There are also quite a few not on my blog list but whom I follow regularly. I must get around to adding them some day soon.

Another emergency.

Yesterday the hospital transferred Greg to the Intensive Care Unit. It seems they were concerned for his neurological state and a chest infection he has developed. Kay and I rushed over yesterday morning to visit him. He was wired up from head to foot with monitors, tubes and lines. He also had an oxygen mask and was getting antibiotics through a line. He was obviously having difficulty breathing as his chest was heaving up and down, but what was more distressing than any of that was that he seems to be on the verge of dementia and was muttering and rambling gobbledegook and seeing things that were not there. Whether that is a direct cause of the alcohol withdrawal - he has not had a drop since Friday breakfast-time when the ambulance came for him - or whether he now has dementia to add to his ailments, I do not know. Only time will tell. They are giving him medication to cope with the alcohol withdrawal. He still cannot stand or walk and seems to have little feeling in his extremities. The hospital goes quiet over the weekend, but the doctors will all be back in on Monday and hopefully I will get a diagnosis then.

Changes

The chronology of my blog is all over the place at the moment, dipping back into the past to tell my story, yet writing in the present too when special things happen. Without wishing to make it too confusing, I have decided to write about the present in short paragraphs and then come back to them in detail one day in the future when the past finally catches up with the present in my story. I shall also write about the present for the moment in ordinary print and my story in bold. Hope that helps. I shall get round to changing the print for the previous posts when I get a chance.

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Yesterday I had to call an ambulance to take Greg to Accident and Emergency. He was due to go in to hospital for a day procedure to widen the arteries and blood-flow to his legs. But when I woke him from his slumber on the kitchen floor, where he had spent the night, he was unable to stand or walk, let alone get into my car. The hospital have admitted him to a ward, where he will stay for the next few days while they decide what to do with him. Kay and I are luxuriating in the peace we shall get.

Groundhog day/year

Kay is back to school for her final year and things are slowly going back to the normal daily routine. It is such a long time since I continued with my true story, that even I need reminding where I left off. I am sure anyone else will be confused too, so I thought a quick resume (with links to the posts) might be helpful.

1970 - 1999 The Early Years. Or the pre-drinking years. The first 29 years of our life together.

1999 - 2003 Booze Cruise. The problem drinking starts to escalate.

2003 Heart attack. Greg is in hospital and then convalescing at home.

2004 Early retirement. The drinking really spirals out of control.

From Bad to Worse 1.

From Bad to Worse 2

2006 Emergency. Greg has a gastric bleed and nearly dies.

Ebbing Away Greg has a detox while in hospital
On the Mend. Things get better again.

2007 Bursting the bubble. After the detox, things start to get worse again.



By autumn 2007, Greg was definitely back to drinking a full bottle of wine a day and beginning to start on the whisky again too. I was devastated. We were back to square one like Groundhog day. I cannot tell you what that did to me. Our finances were already strapped to the limit. We still had the mortgage to repay and all the other usual outgoings which were climbing in price beyond general inflation. Not content with one loan to cover the problem, Greg now took out a second and much larger loan which would commit us until 2013 to pay back on our small pension. The instalments were gobbling up all our available cash.

Greg was back to sleeping a lot of the time or drinking and shouting. Physically he was dishevelled and weak. One day he went to go down a flight of stairs, just swayed on the top step, then fell forwards, like in a cartoon. "Look, no hands". Kay and I heard the thud of his body as it hit each stair tread. We ran to the top of the staircase to find him uncurling himself on the floor at the bottom. We rushed down, helped him up and he was surprisingly not injured. Every time he stood at the top of a staircase after that, swaying around, Kay and I would have our hearts in our mouths and could not bear to watch.

I went to see the GP for help again, as I did not know what to do next. She said, yet again, that he must cut back gradually. The words I dread to hear. That made me feel so frustrated, as I know that Greg finds it almost impossible to cut back on his own, once it has a hold on him. The GP also said that I must contact Matt at the Alcohol Advisory Centre again and see whether a proper detox could be arranged (as opposed to the one that was done before in hospital as an emergency). When I contacted Matt, he said that he would need Greg's permission to apply for detox and again stressed that it should go in tandem with rehab. Both still had long waiting lists too, so nothing would be done for at least 6-8 months. That was assuming I could get Greg to agree to it. I felt so helpless. Nobody wanted to know. Meanwhile, Greg continued to see the counsellor at the Alcohol Advisory Clinic on a one-to-one basis, but, still the counsellor just listened and let Greg talk and talk. She didn't offer any practical advice, beyond the now familiar advice to cut down gradually.

I used to phone Greg's sister, Jill, to let her know of the latest developments and she too used to say she felt helpless and that there was little she could suggest for me to do. In all fairness, she lives over a hundred miles away, so I do not expect her to be able to help. But I really did feel at that point that I was alone in the world with the problem and nobody really appreciated fully what Kay and I were having to endure. I must confess - to be selfish for a moment -I also used to get upset that we could have had such a lovely retirement, having time together, while Kay was at school, maybe going out for countryside walks with the dog, maybe driving to the sea, ending up at a pretty pub for lunch or just doing things with friends. But that was out of the question. Not only would Greg not be able to stick at just a couple of drinks on a day out, but also we would not even have the money now to go in the first place. It was all going horribly pear-shaped. It felt like one of those nightmares where you are being chased by something or someone - a monster, or giant or villain - and your legs feel like concrete so that you just cannot run and are fixed to the spot.

Kay's adventures

My head is buzzing with all the photos (600 of them!!) and stories Kay has been regaling us with since her return from Central America. She has had a whale of a time and experienced such things she will remember for a lifetime. All those weeks of worry (on my part) have dissolved with every precious minute I have her back with me. It turns out she was the only Spanish-speaker in the group of eighteen and was pushed forward at every turn to speak for the group, arrange transport to collect them or negotiate accommodation in advance and haggle down the prices. Her Spanish went from rusty GCSE standard (done a year ago and forgotten ever since) to passable conversation standard within a few days and rose to very good within the space of the four weeks. She also taught the odd phrase to all the others to help them with what they needed to buy their souvenirs or order a drink. But she was always the one to order the bulk food in the brightly-coloured markets , to converse with the guides they took on, or to haggle the prices.

Market in Chichicastenango

She has so many stories that it is impossible to put them all here. One is of the mountain trek overlooking Lake Atitlan. The paths were steep, shoulder-width and covered with crumbling rock. The descents were the worst. Carrying extremely heavy rucksacks, with their homes on their backs, the girls had to negotiate the steep crumbly paths with sheer drops to one side and the danger of more falling crumbling rock to the other side. The views of the lake and surrounding volcanoes more than made up for it though, as her photos bear witness. By the way, you can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them.

Lake Atitlan

Another story is about the climb of the Pacaya Volcano. It had erupted two days before they got there, spilling molten lava over the sides, then it rained the next day, cooling the lava. On the day they climbed, the lava was still cool but now and then in the cracks and fissures, they could see burning red-hot fire. Some passing Americans on their way down gave them some marshmallows and a stick to toast them. Their delight in being able to do that was palpable. The following day in a nearby hot-spring they swam in sulphur-enriched waters which turned any white on their swimsuits yellow.

Another lovely part of the trip was the community project. They stayed on a reserve on the Pacific coast for a week, lived with the villagers and helped with turtle conservation. Apparently the turtles there are in danger of extinction and have their eggs poached by those who believe they are an aphrodisiac. The community scan the beach for any signs of eggs and put them in a hatchery where the baby turtles can hatch in safety and then waddle back down to the sea to start life all over again. The beaches also need to be kept clean from debris to allow the mother turtles a safe path ashore to lay their eggs, so the English girls helped with that too. In exchange (to put something back into the community) the girls paid for lessons on how to make knotted-rope hammocks or brightly-coloured string bracelets.

Kay's hammock in progress

Or they played with the children.... black-haired, dusky-faced cherubs with toothy grins who were eager to learn the English games the girls taught them. The girls also arranged a Sports Day for the children to which the whole village turned up. It was sad saying goodbye to their newly-made friends. (Incidentally, Kay says that many people in Guatemala believe that the tourists come to steal their children. There may be an element of truth in that, as some cute children have been kidnapped to order for childless tourist couples. So out of respect for them , you are sadly denied those lovely pictures.)

Now the photos are being stored and the stories written up. What memories she will have to look back on in years to come. Her AS results, by he way, waiting for her return, were excellent and a good foundation for the finals next summer, but it will no doubt be another stressful year ahead, full of hard work and distractions, courtesy of Greg. But meanwhile she has another week to unwind and to dream of those far-away places. And me? I'm just so glad to have her back.