Thanks guys for all the wonderful support you are offering me here. You have to be inside my head to know how touched I am by all of you.
Chris has some sort of immune disease. Front runner is MS but tests are as yet inconclusive. Her collapse at the start of February was the final stage of a process that began when she steadfastly refused to seek medical help even as her mobility lessened day by day over a period of years. Doctors confirmed that she was hours away from death when I finally overrode her wishes and called for help. Two subsequent bouts of sepsis took her to the brink two more times. Wow, but those doctors worked some magic.
Unless physiotherapy can work a highly unlikely miracle, she will never walk again. Right now, she cannot even straighten her legs. She has some decent mobility in her left arm and hand, but bugger all in her right.
The conditions that threatened Chris's life originally are now well under control. She will be extraordinarily unlucky to succumb to infection again. She will return home eventually, albeit with a help package that makes all those years of paying NI contributions here in the UK worthwhile 10 times over. Our UK National Health Service gets stuff wrong a lot and people suffer. When it gets stuff right, it does a job unparallelled in human history. Chris and I are lucky to have been on the receiving end of NHS treatment at its most magnificent.
For now, Chris and I are working on ways that I can help her move a bit once she comes home, during those periods when the staff who will do so much to help with her care are not present, and which do not do me physical harm. To get a feeling for where we are, try this: lie in bed; do not move anything other than your left arm for half an hour. It hurts. For Chris, for now, that is permanent. She grows stronger daily, but I have no way of telling how much mobility will return. Not much, I suspect.
To those of you who have indicated that you or your loved ones have problems either now or looming, I offer my sympathy and understanding. It is a real bugger to be in your position.
Thanks again guys. I am deeply grateful.
