Heart-stopping news

Hi, oh hi, what a time it has been! The day after my last entry in the Hot News Space my world fell apart. Listen to THIS. . .

I came home this Tuesday morning April 4th from my second trip to the USA in four weeks, if you get that time sequence. In the week I was home, between the two trips, Malcolm my husband had sudden heart surgery: a quadruple by-pass, after chest pains. He had a stress test on March 15th, his 55th birthday, an angiogram on the 20th and the surgery on the 22nd. His older brother died at 55 of heart failure and my sister’s husband also died at 55 of a heart attack, as he was jogging. So 55 is v. big in our family.

I was packed to go to the USA when he had the angiogram. I unpacked. I had five major presentations in the States some of which had been booked two years previously. I wanted to cancel them all but M. said the show had to go on, as long as I could stay until the operation was over and successful (as if I wouldn’t have!) so I cancelled only one event in Michigan (sad!) and left the day after his surgery. I saw him in intensive care after the operation and then again from 6 am -7 am on the morning I left, on the way to the airport. I cried my heart out and I’m 54 years old.

Chloe (our only child, the one in Paris) came to Australia and arrived three hours after I’d left. Oh the anguish. The stress. I have known Malcolmm for 35 years and been married to him for 31. I don’t think I could have left him had I not adored him enough to believe that he wanted me to go. (My syntax has gone to jetlag-land.) We spoke on the phone every day, Chloë chattering as if it were a local call, M, thank God not really communicating until about four days after I had left, after which we talked forever each night.

So of course I am ecstatic to be home. He is BRILLIANT. Walking every day, another 100 metres each day. Looks great. Gruesome scars on leg and chest of course but such a well face it’s disgusting. I got sick last week and had to go on working in the USA in spite of a viral chest infection: my immune system had stayed behind in Australia but hey, here we are, alive and in medium condition back in Adelaide. Bliss. Chloë walked off her job (another one!) at Agence France Press for her father’s sake. She returned to an employment b-l-a-n-k but I feel that since she made the right decision to come, the right decision will be made for her, somehow, when she looks for work. A job will pop up. She went back to Paris this week and Malcolm and I both sniffled a bit. We are feeling fragile! I wonder why?!

So that’s the latest. Until next time, all the best!

Much love,

Mem xxx