111 – Slow Slide Towards Death Part 1: 3 December 2024

Our dinner in Killashee House on 22 September 2019 to celebrate our wedding anniversary, was the last significant event that Margaret and I ever took part in while Margaret was still alive.  We did not know it, but her death was now a little less than four years away.  We would never be able to return to Ireland again together.

We flew out of Dublin on Tuesday 24 September and we got home to Adelaide on 25 September.

When we got home, Margaret was still in great pain from the deterioration of the myelin sheath that was supposed to protect her spine.

I still suffered from constant sneezing and the sneeze attacks were obviously getting worse.  I was unable to breathe at all through my nose.

Despite our health issues, we were both completely elated.  We had just spent weeks in Ireland with our wonderful friend Anne Ryan, we had again caught up with some of our wonderful Irish friends who had come to our wedding in 2009, and our unbelievably wonderful friend Anne Ryan would be joining us again in Adelaide just a few short weeks after our return home.

How could life be better!

We were both so very glad to return to our own home again.  We have a small, enclosed veranda outside our back door.  My birthday Buddha statue is sitting on the table in this photo.

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I no longer remember the exact date when Anne Ryan returned to Adelaide for her Australian summer break, but I think it was in October 2019.

As always, we met Anne at the airport and drove her to her fully owned and paid for summer residence at Glenelg. 

I had lent my car to Anne in November 2018 when I had been unable to use it because of my open heart surgery.  

I again lent my car to Anne when she returned to Adelaide in October 2019.  As before, we neither asked for nor accepted any payment for Anne’s use of my car.  We made it clear she could use the car until she returned to Ireland via Bhutan in February 2020.

In fact, Anne retained use of my car until the date she cancelled me in February 2021.  

Her way of saying thanks for our generosity in relation to the car and everything else was to give Margaret a $150.00 chocolate gift voucher and I got a $150.00 gift voucher for books.

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We both tried several sessions of acupuncture in an attempt to relieve the symptoms that afflicted us.

The acupuncture gave neither of us any permanent relief.

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By the end of 2019, Anne had become best buddies with every one of our friends in Adelaide.  

Anne, Sue Chapman and Heather and Andrew Long decided that a short holiday in South Island New Zealand should happen and we were kindly invited to join them.

Neither of us particularly wanted to go to New Zealand and neither of us was in good health, but of course we agreed to go.

Andrew and Heather Long, Anne Ryan and Sue Chapman decided they wanted to celebrate New Year in New Zealand by doing a guided walk through the New Zealand wilderness.  They all knew Margaret’s back meant she could never take part in their walk, but that did not really matter to them.  They knew that because I would never leave Margaret on her own, Margaret’s physical disabilities would never be their problem.  

Margaret would never complain and John would never abandon her under any circumstances, so there was no problem for them to solve.

We arrived in Christchurch Airport on 28 December 2019 and stayed overnight in the airport hotel.

We flew to Nelson on 29 December.

The two female lovers and the married couple left for their guided walk on 30 December while Margaret and I drove a car to Picton, where we stayed until we returned to Nelson on 1 January 2020.

We flew from Nelson to Christchurch on Saturday 4 January 2020 and we arrived back in Adelaide on Tuesday 7 January 2020.

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I took this photo of the two lovers in Christchurch on Monday 6 January 2020.

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I took this photo of the South Island countryside on Sunday 5 January.  Compared to the outback of South Australia, the countryside shown in this photo is astonishingly green.  In January, the countryside around Adelaide – which is among the more fertile land in South Australia – is burned to a brown straw colour.

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When we got home, Margaret visited the GP.  She felt unwell and she had lost weight.  Her weight loss turned out to have been 20 kilograms compared to her normal weight.  The GP ordered a cat scan and the cat scan revealed a “polyp” in her digestive system.  It had to be removed surgically.

As for me, my sneezing had become almost unbearable and my inability to breathe through my nose was starting to cause me great discomfort.  The GP recommended Nasonex spray and ordered a cat scan of my sinuses.  The Nasonex made the sneezing significantly worse.  My cat scan showed my sinuses and breathing passages were choked by polyps and completely unusable.

Our slow slide towards death had begun to accelerate.  

Neither of us had any real idea about how desperately ill we both were.

The lovers and the rest of our closest friends didn’t give a shit.  It was irrelevant to them that we were in a death spiral.