The first half of 1999

We endured two six week sessions of radio therapy combined with chemo and at the time of his 70th birthday in June that year he was a shadow of the man I married 14 years earlier. However our relationship became better and far more emotional. He started to tell and show me the caring and love that I craved for.

Friday, January 30, 2009

I am so happy with the wonderful reaction to this blog. Thanks so much to all of you who already joined the Facebook Group. It is clear that we are all going to enjoy reviving memories. This blog will not necessarily be a chronological report of my CI journey since dates are less important than the memories although I will try to retain some sort of order as to when and how things happened.To get back to the beginning… The time following Hennie’s operation in January 1999 till about the middle of that year is somewhat of a haze now. Maybe because my brain is deliberately pushing it to the back of my mind because it was so sad and traumatic. I can just remember the inability to communicate easily and all the visits to the Oncology Department for his radiation and Chemo therapy. Also seeing his health decline almost daily but admiring his courage and acceptance of the inevitable onslaught of the cancer on his body.

One specific coversation that I remember very well and will never forget was between him and one of my friends. He thought that I could not hear him but I could lip read perfectly when he said to my friend Phyllis:”Marie was my first wife but Wia is first in my life”
He could still talk but I could not hear his voice that was merely a whisper. However we communicated Ok on a one to one basis since my lip reading was excellent. The days and months just passed with him being less and less able to eat and from the beginning of that year I just battled to keep up with making fluid meals that would contain enough calories for his huge demands for energy. Lots of time went into trying to get special feeds and food supplements for this needs. Thinking back on those days it now feels as if all I did was just seeing that he was comfortable, driving him to doctors and the Oncology Department and making fluid meals… My hearing loss was on the back burner but deep down I had a fear of the future and did not know how I was going to cope once he was there no more but there was no time to reflect too much on this problem.

Today - in hindsight - I realise that it was a blessing in disguise to had to care for Hennie because that helped me not to collapse completely with depression about my hearing loss. In that respect I may have been lucky not to have had the severe depression and anxiety that so many deaf and hard of hearing people experience before they get help with hearing aids or cochlear implants. My hearing loss was just part of my life that I accepted without worrying too much about its impact on my life since the effect of my hearing loss was dulled by Hennie’s needs that I HAD to attend to.
However – when I look back at what I wrote some years ago when compiling my first web page, I did have a lot of anxiety – now – not remembered so well any more since time has done its healing…
My story with all the emotions will remain on my web page because it is part of this journey and my life and should not be deleted or changed. (You can see more of it at http://wia.viawias.com - “CI story”) I wrote (About August 1999) :

“There were many more raw emotions at that time. I now look upon them differently because I realize that those emotions had a severe impact on my ability to adapt with my babblebox three months later. I remember how I missed talking to him, how desperately I longed for the days when we used to sit talking and listening to music till late at night. My thoughts had wings and made numerous return journeys to years gone by when everything was still good and healthy - I wanted to look deeper than just the words that I could not hear and the lips that I could no more read. I felt severely disabled.”