They had an IT problem and were half an hour late (where will it all end???) but they did arrive eventually. Unfortunately, not with the collapsable stretcher and not with the bigger car – which meant that the stretcher could not be brought into Pádraig’s room (we had to carry him out of the room in the lifter instead) and that Pádraig’s legs had to be slightly doubled because otherwise the door of the ambulance supposed to carry him to the UKE would not have closed. All of this stuff is really predictable, we’ve been there and done it. Why it happens again and again, although this time I had highlighted his height when ordering the ambulance, will remain the secret of the ambulance companies:)

Each time we arrive in a hospital, it’s the same procedure: attempting to gather all the ‘stuff’ Pádraig needs. Usually it starts with the extension to the bed. Then it’s ordering a special mattress (as he will not move much in the bed). And it goes on …

This time, we have a double room. I have been admitted as a carer, with a bed and an ‘all inclusive’ food deal. It makes so much sense for the hospital. They don’t have the staff and the capacity to look after patients like Pádraig, so they get the insurance to pay my all-in stay.

Pádraig was a bit apprehensive but then it seems that he like where he was. For the first time – yes, another first!!! – he finished a full bowl of broccoli soup for dinner. Something seems to be happening these days: he is really into strawberries (well, who isn’t?), he manages to finish a cup of tea, and had no problem finishing the freshly squeezed orange juice his friends had bought for him. OK, I hear you say, this is just premium food that smells nice, has a great texture, and tastes like heaven – who would not eat or drink this?

Well, Pádraig would not have just a few weeks ago, at least not with this relative ease and natural-being-himself ‘gusto’!

Tomorrow, there will be a few conversations with doctors, planning the operation, as well as a few routine tests. Nothing too stressful, I hope, but probably time consuming.

Finally, another first: This is the first time that Pádraig is in an ‘open’ room – no isolation, no “Kittel” or aprons, face masks, and gloves. Can’t believe it.

Today’s move was good. Here is to hoping that the next few days will work out well!

PS 1: I almost didn’t manage to get back home, but this morning I managed my 25k run in preparation for the Hamburg Marathon. – Just checked out Andrew’s fundraising page and got a bit of a shock: just 35 days to go!

PS 2: Hopefully, I will be able to reply to your very kind comments you posted over the past few days, following the death of my mother. I really appreciate each and every one of them. They gave me the strength I badly needed to get through the past week and the coming weeks and years. Thank you!

The Day After and it is still not real.

There was the day itself, organised and arranged. There was the event.

There are those who have gone before her: her brother, her husband, one of her daughters.

There’s us, left behind to do the best we can in the time we’ve got left.

Pádraig got a new wheelchair, a “Netti”, the day before yesterday. It took the technician around 2 hours to set the chair up for Pádraig – and we already wonder how we managed with the old on. It’s a brilliant chair!!!

Tomorrow afternoon, Pádraig and myself will check back in to the UKE, this time on a urology ward, pre-op on Monday, and the operation on Tuesday. Hopefully, we’ll be back out in a week. I hope and pray that all will go well.

I did not have the energy yet, to answer all who sent us their best wishes but will do so soon. In the meantime please let me thank you for all your kind words and messages.

It was a long day today. A day when Pádraig was missed a lot. He and my mother really did get on so well. Since the accident, my mother was constantly asking for him, constantly telling people about him, constantly praying for him.

Pat stayed with him in Hamburg, but in spirit they were with us all day.

I am not sure whether you have experienced this, but it seems like that when remembering difficulties fade, even more so when persons died, to a point when you wonder about your own memory. Which is what happened to me during the remembrance.

German funerals are also distinctively different from Irish, as are the people attending.

Tonight, I am not sure whether I am grasping the enormity of what has happened.

Back in Hamburg, back with Pat and Pádraig. Yet, the world ain’t as it was and will never be.

This is the day before.

Pádraig had a great breakfast this morning with his two visitors from Dublin, with lots of chat and good humoured laughter. When they left, I did a bit of work and then left myself to collect our daughters on the way to my sister’s where we will be staying tonight.

We’re going to bed early and will be driving to the cementary through the early morning rush hour. Because the funeral will be early, the mass will take place afterwards in Nordkirchen. We’ll then have soup and sandwiches. – It’s all quite different from what a funeral in Ireland would be like.

I wonder what the day and the day after will be like.

There are a few things that I wanted to write about. Some revelations from the German health system the German magazine “Stern” reported about in late February. Or our preparations for going on the train, the special train, to Lourdes in May. The new St. Patrick’s Trail that the Irish Media reported on recently – because of the millions of euro it’s going to generate…

They’ll have to wait for another day.

Two of Pádraig’s friends are over for their now traditional St. Patrick’s Day visit. It’s really great how they keep their visits going and show Pádraig how much they care for him. It was a warm, sunny day today in Hamburg. Warm enough to explore our roof terrace and go for a walk on it, discovering it measured more than the 12 steps up and 12 steps down of the Schön-Klinik’s equivalent. But, at the same time, their visit, their stories from Dublin made me home sick, and I can just imagine what the visits meant for Pádraig. The visitors brought some recordings from a show his friend did with Pádraig on Raidio na Life years ago. Can’t wait to listen to the recordings with Pádraig.

One thing that is certain in life is that it will end one day, at least in the physical sense. But there are sensations, music, pictures, even smells that bring back memories, that bring back people to life. In a spiritual way, people that mean something to you, people that have influenced you, those who made you who and what you are, these people will never ever leave you. Whether they are with you in person or not, they are always right beside you, with you, all the way.

Today and tomorrow feel like in-between-days. The kind that let you drift away for a short time.

I’ll collect the girls tomorrow afternoon and drive with them to my sister’s house. We’ll be ready for the funeral on Friday morning. Pat will stay with Pádraig. What I wouldn’t do to have both of them travelling with us tomorrow.

What a Lá fhéile Pádraig. The first one since his accident Pádraig did not spent in hospital. Unfortunately, I was only with him for a short time today. I drove back to Hamburg at noon but it took almost 6, rather than the usual 3 hours because the autobahn was completely shut down and traffic diverted to country roads…

Thank you for all the messages of support you sent to us.

I can’t really think straight tonight – it’s difficult any night, but tonight I’m not even trying.

You might have seen a picture of Pádraig in newspaper article about the accident. That picture only tells half the story, and it’s only half the picture.

The full picture has my mother in it and was taken by my sister when Pádraig visited my mother just before he went to Boston almost two years ago, because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to see here for her birthday during the summer.

So here, there are the two of them. My mother kept the pictures beside her in her room where she prayed for him every day, where she told me every time I saw her that he was going to get better, where she held my hand and comforted me, even during her last days when she could hardly talk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another reason not to, never to give up. “Dranbleiben” is what makes the difference.

Deirdre just came on RTE Radio 1 talking about Pádraig.

Life is a journey.

On the road, the autobahn, from Hamburg down to my mother’s, my sister rang. I had talked to her several times in the morning. My mother was not well, but well enough to hear my voice on the phone. Even though, I decided to drive down to see her.

There were tears in my sister’s voice. I knew, I was going to be late. My mother had gone.

I know, I know… but in Germany it’s not Mothers’ Day today. There are international days for almost anything and anybody, but Mothers’ Day still seem to be a national thing.

This morning on the Week-end on One, Cathal was playing all sorts of songs for Mothers – some were really good. Like “Mothers’ little helpers (what a drag it is getting old)” or “You fill up my census” (yes: that’s how he announced it:)

So to all of you mothers in Ireland: Happy Mothers’ Day! I hope you were pampered with breakfast in bed and brought out for dinner, with flowers and cards adorning the house!

For Pádraig, today was the last ‘medicine day’. Isn’t it amazing: just over two months ago, he was on a range of meds; you could only see him once you had put on a face mask, hair net, Schutzkittel (some kind of overall) and what not; he was on half a dozen of monitors beeping left, right and centre, with contacts glued to his chest; he had a tracheostomy that his doctor wanted to converted into a surgical, i.e. “permanent”, tracheostomy; we were not allowed to take him out for a walk.

“Lá Fhéile Pádraig” this year will be a great day, very different from that of the past two years. Can’t wait.

Tonight is Saturday, the night of a weekly  programme on Irish radio called Céilí House. For many year, we have been listening to Céilí House when we were in the middle of nowhere (Leitrim:) for the weekend. It’s always been a really great programme with brilliant music and chat.

In 2011, on Saturday the 3rd of December, the programme (I think it was recorded the previous Wednesday night) came from O’Neill’s Pub, on Pearse Street, just across the road from Trinity College Dublin.

This night, the great Kieran Hanrahan, the presenter of the programme, had a problem.

There was a tall fellow there to whom he had to hold the microphone up to so high that he almost got a cramp in his arm. But the two of them had a lovely conversation, full of laughs, so well humoured, with lots of energy and happiness. And it was the only conversation that night in Irish.

They went through the archives, dug down deep, took the dust of the tapes and found that night’s recording. It’s a really really great programme, with lots of Pádraig’s friends (who I wouldn’t have known then) playing and being interviewed. So it’s certainly worthwhile listening to the whole programme.

Pádraig had his slot towards the beginning (10′:40″ – 13′:30″) of the programme.

I am sitting here with him, listening to the programme with Pádraig. We wondered how he would react to it. Turns out, it’s an incredible experience.

There is a constant smile on his face, more even when he hears the names of his friends and their music. But he had never had as big a smile on his face than when he heard his interview with Kieran.

There was a sad moment when Éanna Drury, the son of the brilliant, legendary journalist Paul Drury, who recently passed away, played the Uilleann Pipes (which he also played at his father’s funeral earlier in the week). The Irish Daily Mail, of which Paul had been the editor, has repeatedly reported on the injustice that is the need for Pádraig to ’emigrate’ to Germany to get treatment that he (and other persons in his situation) cannot get in their own country.

Listening to this programme, just about to finish, he has been, most definitely and without a doubt, really happy.

Thank you to all the friends who made the programme happen, and to Kieran and Niamh for getting the recording over to Pádraig!

 

 

 

His first words greeting thousands of people who had waited to see him on this magnificent square, and probably millions watching world-wide on TV, were: buonasera, good evening.

This morning, a German radio broadcast reported on today’s second anniversary of the inauguration of Pope Francis who, as they reported, has continued to annoy loads of people in the Vatican Curia, talking about spiritual Alzheimers, raising important but very controversial issues with the cardinals, focusing on the people who make up the catholic church, living a much simpler life than most Popes before him had, realising that he is a person with personal faults as everybody else (and why not).

Pádraig today did well. One thing we noticed in his overall condition is that he has got so much more relaxed since the same carers, and just two different ones, are coming in, since they have started to come at the same hours during the week, and since we’ve had long, relaxed weekends.

I went to visit my mother again today (an almost seven hours drive in total). She is as helpless as Pádraig nows. She is very, very weak, but comfortable. Leaving her in the evening almost broke my heart.

What if we all concentrated on the essential. Switched off the ads promising us better, cheaper deals for things we don’t need. Focused on people, on friends and families, not on things. What if we started to annoy the establishment, raising, like Francis does with the curia, important and controversial issues. What if we told them that we want a different kind of politics, a different kind of society, one that puts social responsibility, people responsibility, first, no matter what.

If we did we might all sleep better.

Buonasera.