The Best of Times – The Worst of Times.

In my last post I was able to recount a little of my holiday, which in many ways was the best time I have had in recent years.

Ten days after our return home my 9 year old grandson was involved in an accident with a bus.

With severe head injuries he was taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool (England), where the fantastic staff worked for four days to stabilize him.  Sadly, his injuries proved to be too traumatic and he died in the early hours of the 10^th July.

With tremendous bravery, my daughter agreed for some of his organs to be removed for transplant and we now know that his kidneys and pancreas are providing others with the gift of life.

Without doubt, our family is currently working through the worst of times imaginable.

We have nothing but praise and gratitude for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital as they worked so hard to save my grandson and we hope, in the future, to be able to help with fundraising for this amazing place.

We were also made aware of how few people are willing to agree to release their children’s organs for transplant when they are faced with similar circumstances to ours.  Every parent with a child in need of a transplant is praying for an organ to become available to save their child’s life.  In order for this to happen, other parents have to take this very hard yet brave decision when told that their beautiful and beloved child is not going to live and are asked by the hospital to consider allowing their child’s organs to be removed for transplant.

There is little to comfort our family and other’s like ours, who have had a lovely and lively child snatched away from us at such a tender age – but knowing by his death that others have gained many years of life does help a little.

It is not a subject that anyone likes to think about – or discuss – as no one expects it to happen to them, but I urge you to take the initiative and talk to all your family members, young and not so young, so that you know what their feelings are on the subject – and yes, even children as young as 9 can understand how transplanting organs can help really sick people to live.  My daughter had already had an opportunity to talk to her son and knew that he thought it was a ‘really good idea’.

It may feel a little uncomfortable but take some time to think and maybe talk to others about this.

None of us know what the future holds for us and our families – for some it is the best of times – sadly, for others it is the worst of times.

Attention All Film Buffs!!

This is a bit of a deviation from my usual blog content – but my son, who is currently at University doing Film Studies and Film Production has been asked to write an evaluative essay from one of his short films and needs to get feedback on it from as many people as possible to get a balanced outlook.  I have agreed that he can use my blogs to try to get some feedback…so here is your chance to become a film critic!  He is happy to receive all comments – both positive and negative – so long as they also explain the reasoning behind the comments!

All I ask is that you refrain from making comments that could upset my usual readers…so no bad language or crudity please!!

MY COMPUTER JUST DIED!

Oh well, all my plans to post regularly on my new blog have come to nothing!  I am writing this on a borrowed laptop, which I am grateful for but I am having great trouble getting used to it.  I sat down with my ‘elevensies’ (a nice cup of tea) on Tuesday and turned on the computer to find it was stuck in a loop around the windows opening page and I couldn’t do anything with it.  It was just as well it happened on the 2nd of March because I would have been devastated if I had been unable to post my last few ‘thing a day’ things – so I guess you have to be grateful for small mercies!

I really enjoyed the ‘thing a day’ experience and have all sorts of ideas that I want to develop as a consequence of my experiments.  I have had another couple of nice comments since it finished – which is really lovely- and which I will have to add to the back of my little ‘Memories’ book.

My jewellery making has been a bit curtailed this week because I had a request to make a character birthday cake, which was at rather short notice and which took quite a long time to do.  I have also been making little pmc heart tags to go onto the chains I have made recently, as this is where my hallmark gets put, and I am sending a new batch of chains off to the Edinburgh Assay Office to be hallmarked.

My daughter has also asked me if I would be willing to do a jewellery party at her house in a couple of weeks…  Now, I was planning on starting to do these after the summer so this is a bit soon – but I can’t turn down the opportunity!!  I must start thinking about how to approach this as well, so this is another little diversion from my planned pathway this month.

They said my computer might be ready for collection today…(fingers crossed), or I will have to be without it until Monday!

When it comes back I will fill in some of the empty bits in my blog…like the About pages!!   And I will post a picture of the cake I did so you will see I have not been idle!

Well, that will have to do for today.  I promise I will do better when I have my trusty old computer back!!