Feeling guilty

Yesterday I had to shorten my swim by 50 metres (2 x 25m kickboard sessions) and my planned 60 min ride by 20min and then today I was unable to squeeze in my interval run session because the start of semester has meant a new routine and it has been difficult to schedule everything. I know this is just a blip while I work into my new timetable (teaching, office hours, etc) and a one off trip to Auckland next week, but it still doesn't stop me feeling gulity about missed training.

I reckon I've done remarkably well at sticking to my schedule to date, only missing 4 or 5 sessions out of over 160 scheduled sessions and these were mostly because of illness or injury, so I can't really complain and I shouldn't beat myself up over it. I guess one of the things that I am gaining out of this journey is the sense of accomplishment that comes from maintaining discipline and this week I feel like I have let that slip.

At the time of my accident I also had massive pangs of guilt, not least of which was when my parents arrived at my bedside a couple of days after it all happened.

23 August 2001 (two days after the accident)

I am out of ICU now and in a normal ward of the Austin Hospital. My IV is connected to a blue box on the IV stand - a PCA (Patient Controlled Analgesia) - and connected to the blue box is a lovely bottle of morphine. As the pain begins to increase I can dial-a-dose with the push of a button and the pain goes away (well it is reduced, at the moment it never goes away). If I don't push the button it gives me a regular dose anyway as they want to minimise the pain to aid my recovery. It's all very clever and very useful and it's also designed so that I can't OD if I get too trigger happy.

Carleen was with me when we came up to my new room, but she has just popped out to meet Mum and Dad to bring them upstairs. My room is a single room and I am struck by the starkness of the bright white walls and the sun steaming in the windows. It is located on the 7th floor and, being a corner room, it has windows on two walls with commanding views over Heidelberg and Warringal to the hills of Eltham and beyond. Not that I care too much about the outlook, I am in too much pain and I'm stoned up to my eyeballs. But I am, at least, grateful that I can see that the world is still very real and that I am still very much in it.

My parents arrived in Melbourne this morning after a hastily arranged flight so they could be near me (their eldest son) and to help in whatever way they can. I can't imagine how they are feeling right now, especially as they have already lost a daughter. My sister, Lara, died in 1995 at the age of 19 after a routine surgical procedure to open up a hiatus hernia of her esophagus. She had been undergoing this procedure for many years as it was one of many conditions that she had as part of her Downs Syndrome. Despite the fact that when Lara was born my parents were told Lara would be unlikely to live beyond the age of 5, my parents were understandably hit hard by her death. My Dad, took it particularly hard and it had taken him years to come to terms with it (in fact I am not sure that he has fully come to terms with it yet) and now I had come close to being the second of their children to die prematurely.

Lara was a beautiful person, she touched everyone that she met. She was kind and gentle and had a wicked sense of humour despite her limited vocabulary and many medical conditions. She very rarely complained about anything even though her hernia meant that most of her food had to be pureed and she would often vomit as food got stuck. She endured dozens of surgeries and hardly a year went by where she wasn't in hospital. But somehow through it all she was a beacon of light and joy and we were all better for having had her as part of our family. Mum and Dad went through a lot of pain and heartache with Lara's condition and I can't imagine how hard it must have been for them to cope. For Gary (my middle brother), Chris (my youngest brother and Lara's twin) and I, Lara was just our sister. Sure she was handicapped and sure she had a lot of health problems, but she was our sister and we loved her to bits.

Mum and Dad are on there way up now and I am not sure how I am going to deal with them being here. We are all used to hospitals, illness and injury. With Lara in and out of hospital and Dad having several major back surgeries over a period of several years when I was a teenager, visiting someone in hospital is nothing extraordinary. I too, have had my fair share of hospital visits (rugby injuries, cycling accidents, chickens wrangling incidents...), but this was different. I almost died this time and I am far from being out of the woods yet. Given how Lara's death had been for Mum and Dad, I am really worried about how this is going to impact on them.

I was there when Lara died and because it had hit Mum and Dad so hard and I was the oldest son, I felt that I had to be the strong one and that I had to help them through. In a lot of ways I feel that on that day I become an adult (even though I was 24 at the time), I felt a huge sense of responsibility to pull Mum, Dad and the rest of the family through. Now as I lie flat on my back in the hospital I feel the same sense of responsibility, the same need to help Mum and Dad through, but this time I am powerless to do anything. This time I am the source of their despair and not part of the solution. I am overwhelmed by guilt.

Mum and Dad are here now and we embrace, sobbing uncontrollably as one. We are utterly defenseless. We are vulnerable, raw and exposed. We are in 1995 all over again, only now I am not strong and I hate what it is doing to Mum and Dad.