Carers - no time to complain

There is very much a theme about the role of carers going on in blog land this weekend with two fellow bloggers inviting posts to highlight life as a carer.  The timing was great for me as this weekend I'm on my own, Andy is away working in the States and I am at home with all four children.

This is hard work.   Today I have changed 7 stoma bags, 1 catheter, I have given two intravenous medications, disconnected an intravenous drip, put a new drip up, administered countless enteral drugs, carried my daughter upstairs in order to bath her and then carried her downstairs to her bedroom and the list goes on...Factor into this the needs of the three other children then preparing meals, laundry, shopping, homework, there is very little time left for me.  I survive on coffee and chocolate and the children's left overs.  It's why I go running, it actually gives me a break and I'm itching to get out running this weekend but can't because I'm on my own and Daisy cannot be left with anyone other than a trained carer, and that's only when she doesn't have her TPN running (when her drip is connected she can only be left with Andy or I or a qualified nurse).

This Mother's Day I will be mostly.........

.....running a 10K race around the country lanes of the Vale of Glamorgan.  In fact over the course of 2012 I will be running 7 races of lengths between 10k and half marathon.  So why having blogged last week that I have very little spare time am I planning to spend some of it with thousands of other people pounding the streets of the UK?

When Daisy was 6 months old we already knew that her life was limited and that the future with her was uncertain, at that time she had just finished her first long stay at Great Ormond Street having been ventilated for respiratory problems, diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, found to be partially blind and extensively tested to eliminate cancer as being the cause of her pain and constant discomfort.  With no family nearby and three other children under the age of 7 to say we were struggling was an understatement.  Daisy's neonatologist referred her to our local hospice, Shooting Star Chase and from that time on we were no longer alone.