Who am I and what is this site about?
My wonderful wife, I will refer to her as ‘J’ on this site, had just entered her 50s in April of 2023, just two months before she died.
She was the most vibrant, beautiful, funny and sharp-witted woman I have ever met!
Any room was lit up by her presence and even after 25 years of marriage, my heart did a little dance when I saw her across a crowded room, or she greeted me when I got home from work.
I loved and still love her with every fibre of my being! She was always the one…
J had been unwell in hospital for four months when she died, first our local then the last 3 months in the nearest city Hospital with a specialist team, 60 miles away from our home.
She had developed Necrotising Pancreatitis after a gallstone had blocked her pancreatic valve (hence the excruciating pain that had hospitalised her). During her illness, J was mostly in ICU, isolation or specialist wards, for four months.
She never complained.
The consultant had said she would be in hospital for many months, even years and some patients with this disease never leave semi-permanent hospital care.
Despite this, after enduring numerous procedures, CT & Ultrasound scans and daily blood tests; after being constantly fed via tube and connected to multiple abdominal drainage tubes, being intubated several times and undergoing several serious and invasive operations, she was slowly getting better and beginning to get stronger.
We expected her home within weeks.
Then one morning, on a day my 17 year old daughter and I were planning to travel up to see her after we finished work, J sat up during daily rounds to take her medication and an undetected Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) ruptured, causing massive internal bleeding and she lost consciousness.
She never made it home.
And my life was shattered, irreparably.
I only wish you could have met her, you would understand why I find it so hard to accept that she has gone and why I am driven to record all I can about her and what it means to live in a world without her.