Long time no see, old blog of mine, maybe its time to take you in a new direction, see I was doing so well on that degree until the shit well and truly hit the metaphorical fan. y’see like all the things that I start with rapid and unwavering enthusiasm, something always seems to happen that sticks a massive spoke in the wheels to throw me off course and cause an enormous existential crisis creating a rift greater than the big bang itself, internally, and throwing me completely off the tracks of whatever I am doing.
This time, like so many others, it was entirely me. I got fully caught up in the thing, I researched the thing, I enthused about the thing, I researched the thing some more, I bought all the things to do with the thing, I worked on the thing tirelessly, I did the thing to the best of my ability and got really very good at the thing, then the thing suddenly became not very interesting to me any more and I got really sad and depressed and anxious and burnt out and couldn’t even pick up a pencil and couldn’t manage the thing and couldn’t look at the thing and couldn’t even think about the thing without having severe anxiety and panic attacks. the thing started making drawing miserable which flew in the face of all the reasons why I was doing the thing in the first place and in the end I decided that doing the thing was a complete waste of time and energy and money and could no longer cope with the thing anywhere near me.
Then shortly after making the decision to pull out of my degree, and get back to drawing off my own back, which was a process in and of itself, on 30th December 2017, my dad suddenly, Very Suddenly, without warning, dropped down dead. he didn’t have a heart attack. his death was very avoidable. You see, my dad and I had the same genetic predisposition to blood clots. A protein S and Protein C deficiency. A DOUBLE WHAMMY OF THROMBOPHILIA. I take rivaroxoban, a relatively new anticoagulant which keeps my blood pretty well manageably runny and clot proof. Not 100% but near enough. My dad should have been on it, or similar, but thought he knew best.
He went into his garden at the house he lived in in Devon with my mum to fill up the bird feeders on 29th December 2017 and slipped on some ice on the patio, landing on his leg. He had had two Pulmonary Emboli (blood clots on the lungs) and multiple DVTs in his legs (I’ve had two of each as well). he said soon after, to my mum that he felt as if he had a blood clot in his leg and my mum suggested going to the hospital. He refused. Then I chatted on the phone to him for about two hours on Saturday morning, about this and that and nothing much. He told me that he felt as rough as rats. I said, as I often did, that I loved him and I also said as we parted on the phone, “don’t die!” “I have no intention of dying!” Said he…. at 11am.
At 1pm I was out and about and received a phone call from my mother telling me that she had called an ambulance. my dad had collapsed and lost full consciousness and voided his bladder. The ambulance were “taking their time”.
At 2pm the ambulance still hadn’t made it to the property and my dad was grey but in fairly good spirits. his heart was racing and he was finding it difficult to breathe properly.
At three pm the ambulance turned up. They decided that despite his fall and despite his predisposition to clotting and despite the fact that he wasn’t on an anticoagulant, and despite the fact that he was showing all the hallmarks of a pulmonary embolism, the symptoms that he was having were most likely to be an infection caused by a spot on his back. so instead of blue lighting him to hospital they took it slowly and drove him in in no hurry.
When they got to hospital, having been told my dads history by my mum, the doctor decided that my dad wasn’t an urgent case either, even though his pulse was racing and slowing, racing and slowing, just like it does when you have a PE, even though his O2 sats were jumping up and down, just like they do when you have a PE, even though his history was that he had a protein S and C deficiency which made him predisposed to DVTs and PEs, and even though he wasnt on an anticoagulant, even though he was breathless and passing out repeatedly, and then voiding his bladder, to NOT start him on clot busting medication.
At6pm I received a phone call from my mum, “Im in Accident and Emergency still with your dad. It doesn’t look good.” so me and my partner started packing our bags to drive down the two and a half hours to Devon.
At 7pm my dad looked at my mum and he said “This is it Ruth! I think I’m going!” and then died.
My mum said the doctors swarmed around him, pulled him into the resuscitation bay, and worked on him for an hour in the most magnificent and brutal way. she begged and pleaded with him to survive, she rubbed his feet and reminded him that he had promised her that he’d look after her, but after an hour of relentless chest pumping from a machine that broke or at least bruised every rib in his body it was clear even to her that nothing was working.
She asked the consultant if he had any chance of a meaningful recovery if he did pull through. “No” he said. He would be tube fed, unlikely to speak or understand anything, completely dependent, poor quality of life. “Then stop, if you can save any of his organs or tissue please do, but stop, he wouldn’t want that.”
The next few weeks and months are a blur, a whirlwind and a muddle. New year, his funeral, my birthday. its been nearly 5 years now and I still cant believe he’s gone.
We tried to claim compensation from the NHS for the negligent way that he was treated by the ambulance and hospital. the fact that they disregarded his history and didn’t administer clot busting medication in spite of overwhelming evidence to suggest that it was required. we failed.
Even though my mums story has NEVER changed, she remembers times and details and she never varies her story, the ambulance drivers denied being told that my dad was predisposed to DVTs and suffered from previous clots, the hospital said the same, negligence was avoided by the skin of their teeth. the post mortem ruled that my dad died from a massive heart attack caused by a pulmonary embolism caused by a deep vein thrombosis caused by a protein S/C deficiency, triggered by falling over the previous day.
I didn’t pick up a pencil for years after my dad died. I was far too sad. I didn’t garden, I didn’t do much of anything. It just about broke me.
"Pencil-Case" 