There are loads of songs about days of the week by all sorts of music groups: some don’t like Mondays, others get Saturday Night Fever, Jagger couldn’t get over Ruby Tuesday, Lisa was Waiting for Wednesday, and Thursday was the day of the Pet Shop Boys. If I was to write a song about days of the week, I’d go for the whole weekend, killing two birds with one stone or Zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen. You could put your money on it: something will always happen in our slightly limited world of Pádraig’s room over the weekend! Last time was a month ago. So it must have been about time for another bit of excitement. More about this later.

Last week, one of Pat’s cousins came to visit and brought with her a CD called Lúnasa (by otherworld) with some really nice Irish music. Today, I learned about Lughnasadh, the festival when the first cut of the new harvest was taken up the mountains and offered to Lugh or Lú. Many of Ireland’s hills and mountains were climbed around this time of the year, the end of July. As many other ‘pagan’ customs, this custom transferred into the Christian tradition; one result of this transition is what became known as Reek Sunday when, on the last Sunday of July, thousands of people – this year, there were more than 30,000 people – climb Cruach Phádraig or Croagh Patrick, the Reek. Last year, a whole big group of Pádraig’s friends joint this pilgrimage, some of them barefoot. It was one of the first of an endless number of incredible demonstrations of friendship, a sharing of determination, and a dedication of their energy towards Pádraig’s recovery.

From around midday, Pádraig’s temperature went up, his heart beat followed, but – thankfully – his oxygen levels remained great! The doctors covering this weekend are great. No panic, but paracetamol to control the fever, taking blood samples and an x-ray to find, or at least to exclude, the cause of the fever (if there is an identifiable cause). And they were successful: it didn’t take long and his fever went down again, and together with it his heart rate; it’s still a bit on the fast side, but that will hopefully fix itself as the temperature is going down.

There it was again: after a few weeks of amazing ‘firsts’, great progress on the speech valve and the eating, this feeling of uncertainty, panic, wondering whether these scares will follow Pádraig and us forever, the helplessness.

PS 1: Just got word from the doctors: the lungs look ok and the bloods are, while not quite ‘normal’, still ok. Let’s hope this time it was just a hiccup, the hot weather combined with sweating, maybe a slight lack or fluids, or who knows what… Doctors and nurses could not have been better this weekend! And of course, maith thú a Phádraig.

Finally – Some of Pádraig’s friends nominated this blog for the Blog Awards Ireland 2014. Just got word that the blog made it into the (very:) long list under Health and under Personal. I have no idea how this works, but it’s amazing!