Four days have now passed since the large piece of Darryl’s skull that was removed to save his life, was replaced with a state of the art acrylic prosthetic flap, moulded perfectly to fit the deficit. And now as the swelling starts to subside the Darryl we used to recognise, re-emerges.
For those that have read the last posting, “Humpty Dumpty Day” you will know just what a relief it has been for Darryl and for all of us to have this part of the journey behind us. When Darryl returned from surgery accompanied by a model of his skull (with the bone flap missing) made by the manufacturers of acrylic bone flap, the true scale of the injury and the degree to which Darryl must have been feeling out of sorts is glaringly obvious. It is a hole equal to about a third of the surface area of his skull.
Darryl bounced back pretty quickly (as you can see from the Humpty Dumpty day photos) and by 10 am on the Thursday morning we had left the hospital and Darryl was at the Auckland home we have been staying at, relaxing and sleeping it off. He was in good spirits for the rest of the day and had a good 13 hours sleep that night, something he’s become very good at I might add.
Friday morning we returned to the rehab and Darryl completed a good gym session with a 15 minute walk on the treadmill, some sideways and backwards walking, followed by some strength work for his right leg. After speech language therapy that afternoon we headed back home to the Auckland address again, for the weekend. By usual standards it was a fairly relaxing couple of days but as the swelling is subsiding so too is Darryl’s feeling of health improving, so we will make the most of the last two gym sessions on Monday and Tuesday. And on Wednesday we close the door on this chapter of the journey as we head for home in the Far North, some four and a half months after we arrived at the rehab and well short of what they expected.
Darryl we have two more days until we can move on from the unusual and undoubtedly confusing world you slowly woke to as you rose from the fog that shrouded your life on ANZAC day this year. There are few milestones more significant than returning home – to the home where life will deliver the normality your life knew and the familiarity from which comfort will return.
It will be an uniquely special return and one I knew would be made, for some reason. I guess it’s because I can’t imagine a life without you in it, I couldn’t back on D-Day either, which may explain why I couldn’t accept what the medical staff were preparing us for. So before we return home we have one last door to ‘close’, that which you were wheeled through, fighting for your life with every sinew in your body.
Your life and ours was changed forever when you entered critical care that Saturday night. But despite the odds, your life is still yours to be changed and this is something to celebrate. For those who shared in your survival each and every minute in that first week there is also so much to celebrate and to return to where it all began, standing upright, walking through those doors, a smile on your face, will bring closure unparalleled.
I want you to be in that place, that place that carved such horrific memories into our consciousness. I want you to move around it and talk with the superb team that live and work in that environment of perpetual beeps and buzzes from monitors. An environment where the lights ensure it is always daytime and time neither stands still nor rushes by, but is trapped in a twilight zone of excrutiating anxiety. I want you to look them in the eye and them you, as they marvel in the power of the human spirit they nurtured, as you clung to whatever could support your life as those minutes and hours ground by.
And then I want to see you wave them goodbye as you turn and walk back out of those doors, those doors which so few have the chance to pass back through.
Then Darryl, that part of the journey will have gone full circle and as you move forward and embrace the new life you have worked so hard to secure, you will do so with an appreciation of the mountain you have moved. It is only when you have a true sense of what you so nearly lost , that what you have got left to give can be freed within you. When one door is properly closed then the next swings fully open. And as Graham Henry wrote on the note he left for you that first night – “onward and upward” and without question this will be the case for you.
I love you Darryl, but more so I am proud of you for enduring each minute, each hour, each day, as you have worked your way back to you.
Enjoy closing that door, I know I will.
Dad
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