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user-inactivated  ·  1999 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 3, 2018

    There are people with fantastic parents, right? With great memories of childhood they look back on fondly as adults?

My parents are great. I got a solid bit of perspective on this when my mother came through to town to give a "case-study" to the new batch of medical students at the local University. She's been doing this for about a decade or more but this is the only time I've been able to come along to see it, as I now work for the Medical School here.

It was an hour of her explaining the issues of raising a child with severe hemophilia (my older brother) - the likelihood of his early death, the terrifying bruising from everday interactions, people seeing the bruising and assuming my parents were beating him, my brother being so accustomed to pain that any new experience had to be braced for (getting his first proper haircut he had to ask first how much pain there would be). She recounted having his treatment filling up the boot of the car, so any family trips would have to be short-lived and always within range of a decent hospital. We shifted towns because the local school wouldn't accept any of us kids there, due to my brother having had blood transfusions and rural NZ assumed that meant he had AIDS - which also meant we all had AIDS. They just kept trucking on. The purpose of the lecture is for the students to hear from someone who isn't medically trained but is extremely knowledgable in one specific facet of medicine (in this case bleeding disorders), to understand what the patient may be going through and what the patient may actually know about their condition that the Dr may overlook.

My mother in particular is something special. She helped my father through his depressive episodes when he was younger, she helped me through mine that started in 2014, she raised a child with severe hemophilia who went on to develop and then kick an opioid addiction, she's helping my sister (who is now a single mum) raise her 2yr old son. She takes in exchange students and works two different jobs, she lost 35kg one time through diet and exercise, only to have a stroke weeks after her mother passed away. She recovered from it all and bounces back happier than ever.

I'm not even doing it justice, just rambling through some of what she's had to do for our family. Her and dad are brilliant and I'm not skimping on the Christmas pressies this year, that's for sure.