I've not really had much chance to blog over the last month because my life is so completely crazy. And the reason it's so mental is because are moving back to Nottingham. In three weeks. 😱😱😱😱
As soon as this looked like it was becoming a real possibility I spoke to Bestie and we cried. We spend so much time together doing everything and nothing that the thought of there being 150 miles between us was literally heartbreaking.
And then all the talking became reality when Hubby requested Voluntary Redundancy from his job. And it was accepted.
So all of a sudden I was thrust into the madness of finding school places for the kids, getting our house on the market, looking for a house in Nottingham and all the other things that are involved in moving house with kids. But this is no ordinary, simple house move. I also have to think about my medical care and what will happen when we move. I've had to speak to St Marks about moving and continuing my treatment with them but with the possibility of having shared care with QMC in Nottingham in the future. I'm really lucky that QMC hospital is one of only three hospitals in the UK that has an Intestinal Failure Unit so if, God forbid, I get ill while I'm in Nottingham I will get care almost as good as St Marks. I also have a lot of treatments planned with the pain team at UCLH so I will be making regular trips to London for those and it's going to be a bit of a longer train journey from Nottingham than I currently have now! I will also need to find a good GP as the one I have at the moment is amazing and knows my history in depth. There's a real fear that I could end up getting one that doesn't really understand my illness and my medication requirements especially as I'm on a lot of opiates and some GPs don't like to prescribe too many of them.
We had hoped that we would be able to tie up our house sale so that we could move in the 6 weeks holidays and that the kids could start a new school in September. But when we spoke to the school that we want the kids to go to we learnt that they couldn't hold the places and therefore couldn't guarantee that the places would both still be there in September. It's a really good school and we knew that we were very lucky to find that they had places for both kids. We didn't want to wait to move in the summer incase the places had gone so in that moment the decision to move was made. The plan was now to move at the end of May during half term, get the kids in school at the beginning of June and move in with my parents. They have been so supportive and have spent hours getting the house ready for the four of us to move in. We are so lucky that they have offered us the chance to literally go home because they've been used to having the house to themselves since me and my sister left home. It's going to be a big upheaval for them and I would like to take this chance to tell them how much I love them and how grateful I am. 💕 I know everyone thinks that their parents are the best but I know that these two people are simply amazing. My illness doesn't just affect me, it's touched my whole family and my parents more than most. But hopefully knowing that they will have no more midnight dashes down the M1 due to me being hospitalised will be a weight off their minds.
And so all of a sudden everything has just started to snowball. We have gone from just thinking about moving at Christmas to properly talking about it in February and then actually planning the move in April. But at this point we hadn't even spoken to the kids about our plans to move. We had wanted to wait until we were absolutely certain about what we were doing as we knew that this was going to be massive for them.
But the time had come to tell them because Hubby and I were conducting most of our conversations in whispers often in the bathroom with the door locked! Or we were having to email each other because our kids seem to have super ears. If we asked them to come and help tidy up then they wouldn't hear us but if we mentioned the word chocolate then their ears prick up immediately. It's also the same when it comes to listening to grown up stuff. You hope and think they're not listening but they usually are with their sonic bat ears!
We planned to do it and chickened out twice but at the end of the Easter holidays we had run out of time. So it was an ordinary Saturday lunchtime when their worlds came crashing down. There were a lot of tears followed by a lot of questions then more tears eventually culminating in them both storming off to their rooms declaring their hate for us. We decided to give them a bit of space and time to get their heads around it and when we went upstairs to talk to them we could hear that they were both in Big Girls room. She was telling Big Fella that "everything would be ok and that this would be for the best". I could feel my heart breaking as I listened to them talking but I also knew that actually I was very lucky to have such great kids. They've had so much to cope with over the last few years and I'm hoping that the move will give them the stability that they've not had. Everyone tells me that kids are resilient and that they will probably cope with the move better than Hubby and I hope that's true.
So on top of just trying to cope with everyday life (which is never easy at the best of times) I am now experiencing some of life's most difficult events all at once. Moving house, moving area, moving kids schools, Hubby looking for a new job and a host of medical appointments. There's also the fun of making sure all my medication and TPN gets sent to my parents house and trying to work out how to move my huge medical fridge from my loft room in Hertfordshire to my parents hallway I'm Nottingham (more about this in another blog post!) It's all currently made even all the more difficult as Hubby is currently sporting not one but two football injuries. He has a broken thumb and sprained ankle after trying to play football like the 20 year old he is in his head when infact his body is almost twice that and obviously protesting!!
I have lists and lists and lists everywhere. I'm finding it very overwhelming and I will be glad when Hubby finishes work in the middle of this month so he will be around more to help with the kids and we can tackle this head on as a team. The kids have said that they're happy about moving and seeing their family more but sad about leaving their friends behind, that they're excited about living with their grandparents but that they're scared because nothing is going to be the same ever again. And I guess that's exactly how I feel. I'm so lucky to have so many amazing friends and they have given so much support to me, Hubby and the kids over the last few years especially. I'm going to miss them all dreadfully, especially Bestie, and I worry about whether I will make any new friends in Nottingham.
I do have a few old school friends that still live in Nottingham and that I'm still in touch with so I plan to rekindle those friendships but one thing I've learnt over the last 13 years of living down south is that it takes a lot of energy to make friends and to keep those friendships going. Like a marriage, friendships require work and regular attention and dates (or in the case of friendship usually coffee and shopping) and I worry that I'm not going to have the energy to be able to give, especially with the stress of moving. And do I tell the new school mums about my illness or use it as an opportunity to start over, with a blank slate and just be Nat? I don't know if that's even possible as my illness makes up such a huge part of my life now. I actually have no idea who I would be if you took away my illness. What would I do with my time if it wasn't filled with hospital and GP appointments, medical treatments, TPN feeds and the afternoon naps? Anyway, that's getting a bit deep and I've gone off at a tangent!
So there you have it. It's going to be good to move and begin building a life in Nottingham, close to the family that I've missed so much in the last 13 years. But leaving is going to be very hard because of the amazing friends that we have in our lives. I think until the house is sold we will be in a bit of limbo so hopefully someone will fall in love with it the way that we did all those years ago and we can find our dream forever home in Nottingham.
NB x
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