However I am feeling a lot better now and moving on and so, if you guys wish me to continue, come December, I will ... or if you prefer I hand the reins to someone else I am fine with that too.
I had a number of setbacks through the last few months and they came hard and fast. The loss of my only son was the hardest - completely unexpected and out of the blue - 5 weeks from when he found a small lump, up anchored and headed back to Brisbane from the Keppels to see a specialist, who immediately organized hospitalization to have surgery to remove it. Dave was discharged twice from hospital despite his protests that he felt to unwell to leave, and both times a subsequent collapse within minutes of exiting the hospital saw him readmitted. Just 3.5 hours after I last spoke to him via Skype he was found dead - and as he was not being monitored at all no one knew until the nursing staff did their rounds at midnight. There was then the concern for my DIL who had to sell the boat they had lived on for over a decade, find new accommodation for herself and start to rebuild her life. Thankfully she is a strong woman and is doing just that.
A few months after this I lost my Staffy Maddison - she died in my arms very quickly after collapsing in the back garden. I had her less than 2 years and subsequently found out she was riddled with cancer which we were treating. she had a growth on her spleen which was inoperable. Her spleen had ruptured and she bled out in minutes. It was made more distressing by the fact that I couldn't lift her to bring her inside and it was a very cold night - there was no one available at the village to help and I had to call on my brother to help me to carry her inside.
Then both my younger sibling also became ill - my sister has Alzheimers with asphasia and can now barely speak and can't/wont communicate with us anymore. She no longer knows us in our opinion, as there is no interaction from her at all. to me or to her own family. It is very sad and difficult to come to grips with. If anyone was going to suffer from that she was the last person we would have thought of.
Then to add insult to injury and the straw that broke the camels back was my planning to adopt another staffy, for whom I ticked every box with the rescue organization, after a long wait and initial refusal, was phoned to see if I would still take her and to organize a meet and greet - only to then have my hopes completely dashed by being told I was not considered a good match for her. So we have a senior woman, with experience of owning 15 various breeds of dogs including a pit bull and another Staffy over a 50+ year period, wanting to adopt a senior dog and being told that she was not suitable for me -r I was not suitable for her. Which part of my application was unsuitable I don't know as they refused to answer that question and despite me asking numerous times, along with support from friends etc they banned me from their page.
So I hope you can all understand why my head has not been in a good space and why my absence was so sudden
But on we go - so I am off now to write something to the set of prompts that Shelley has put up and we'll see what happens next.
