I have learned that when you’re going through a traumatic experience, as was the case for me at the start of the year - then you need to hit a low point, acknowledge it, and then move irreversibly and determinedly forward from it.
As I sit here now in the present tense, on another sunny day enjoying the buzz of the effervescently popular Artisan café in Putney where I write this blog; it is quite hard to evoke the raw emotions and fear that I felt at the start of the year because I have not since returned to those memories. I have moved on completely - focused and excited about our future family of 4, and determined that the life that Alex and I have always dreamed of living, but not quite had the balls to go after, will truly begin after my impending operation.
But for this post, we go back to the first week in February, when my lowest moments came on the evening and the morning after my second MRI whilst travelling on a small plane to Cornwall with Barnaby.
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The second MRI was far less traumatic with a friend on hand, and with the experience of the first, I was able to fix my mind on a point above my head and take long deep metronomic breaths. The session was well choreographed by the radiology manager who had been brought in from St Georges, and would talk to me in between each scan, breaking up my anxiety and getting me to the end quicker.
It was a crazy day looking back – I hadn’t wanted to pull out of an all company presentation that afternoon where 100 or so colleagues would be gathered in an auditorium in Clerkenwell specifically to hear my presentation and take a tour of the new office that I was managing at the time. Having rushed from the MRI room after they had removed my rhino like folds of grey casings around my neck, I quickly got back home to change, and ran from train to taxi to conference centre to lectern, flanked by my powerpoint presentation either side. I would later be satisfied with a job well done and the laughter that I had invoked, but the adrenaline downer on the painful commute home to collect Barnaby and the tension of the day would create the perfect conditions for the back of my neck to clamp shut, and the beginnings of the worst migraine I ever need to endure.
With Alex meeting us for a mini break in Cornwall by a surf board laidened car the next morning, I was without the security of his support to get Barnaby packed and through his bedtime routine that night, and to the airport the next day. But nothing could deter me from my mission to get us both to the sanctuary of the gorgeous Watergate Bay Hotel and the short break that we so desperately needed together as a family. Though looking back, we made it in spite of me, and because of Barnaby’s wonderful compliant behaviour and support. I have never met a toddler who can show such empathy and behave so adorably when I truly need him to.
I try to live my life with few regrets, but I fully regret turning on my laptop that night after I’d got Barnaby to bed. I have not allowed myself to indulge in any negative thinking, nor let the tears properly flow since that night. As a mother, it was entirely irresponsible and unproductive and a place I can’t afford to return to.
On the assumption that I have an aneurysm, my search string quote from Dr Clifton’s report had led me to a Japanese report on a decade of data comprising ~ 100 cases of aneurysm operations with the same characteristics and expected location as my own. It was not a good read! There are seemingly not enough cases in Europe to provide similarly robust statistics. Despite being in a migraine stupor at that time, I can still quote the report verbatim as I did to myself over and over in bed that night, indulgently letting my head run away with the 2 negative scenarios available. I fed my migraine with sobs and tears,preventing me irrepressibly from sleep.
It was Barnaby who got me up at 6am.
“Mummy, is it time to go yet? Is the taxi here? Can we go to Cornwall now? Please mummy? Yes mummy?”
And it was time to get up, and possibly for the first time in his life, Barnaby went back downstairs and got fully dressed into his travelling outfit all by himself, whilst I surveyed the wreckage of my red eyed face and my sore head that had been fed just 30 minutes of sleep.
“Come with me mummy”, Barnaby said as he led me and his Gruffalo Trunky bouncing down the stairs to the front door, where outside the taxi was indeed waiting for us.
I obviously read the signs when we arrived at Gatwick, but I could swear that it was Barnaby who led me to the gate and not the other way round. He loves airports, he loves planes and he loves Cornwall, and I have never known him to be so helpful, well behaved, and completely compliant and good natured on every request. It was as if he sensed that he needed to be in charge that morning.
As we got to the height of our climb, with the small Flybe jet preparing to descend immediately, I placed my hand on my forehead where I could feel the mother of all migraines throbbing in my palm. I could sense that all the blood had drained from my face, and when I closed my eyes I saw the psychedelic lights of a children’s light shaker. It was at that hellish low moment that I thought of my irresponsibility and the possibility that I might black out, leaving Barnaby sat next to me on the back row with no instructions as to what to do with him. Who would know that his Daddy would be meeting him at The Watergate bay hotel if his mummy wasn’t conscious on landing? How had I not even asked the neurologist if it was safe to fly on a short flight that would actually present more air pressure force than a longer one? Damn the knowledge from my degree! Just then Barnaby looked at my glazed over eyes, stopped sucking his lolly and said:
“Is your head poorly again mummy?”
When I nodded, he said “It’s ok mummy, I’m here, let’s look out of the window together, shall we? Yes mummy?”
And we could just make out the toe of Britain, as a shard of winter sunshine crept out from a cloud and shone a torch on turquoise waters lapping the shores of the Lizard Peninsula, with the plane banking northwards towards Newquay. I felt the pressure relief valve open a little at the back of my neck and inhaled a deep breath. .
The second that Alex made it to the hotel after a long car journey, I handed Barnaby over and told him I needed to be in a dark room alone for some time to recover. The boys dutifully trotted off and had a ball in the stunning hotel infinity pool that ends in a huge glass pane looking out over Atlantic rollers that seem to threaten to come right into the pool.
As ever when I need it most, sleep evaded me, but after a few hours of rest I ate some microwaved porridge that I’d bought at Gatwick, sat upright and would later be brought back to life by Barnaby’s unconstrained delight that he had swum the 30m length, aided by arm bands but not by Alex (remarkable given how clingy he normally is in the pool). Alex is beaming too:
“You’ve got to see it for yourself Soph, come, come”.
And so I followed them to the ‘Ocean Room’ lounge where I looked on at Barnaby’s infectious splashing in the pool below and let his squeals of joy wring happily in my ears. Later I would join him in the lovely chlorine free water, and turn to watch the sun setting on the beach through the enormous glass front. I had reflected that if I was given an unlimited budget to design my perfect beach side hotel, I would struggle to conjure up something so perfect as this place.
I was already beginning to feel cleansed, my bad head was retreating, and after 10 or so hours of sleep that night I started to feel human again.
In fact Saturday would be a brilliant day and a turning point, it was actually the day when the nightmare regressed into the background, replaced with the glorious vision of our dream future that still fills my daily thoughts and feels well within our grasp today.
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‘Confirmed Diagnosis’ and ‘Making Plans’ to follow after I've scrubbed the mildew off the Bugaboo from the damp cellar…
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