real life

This is what happened the day Matthew Ames woke up.

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Matthew Ames with his family.

 

 

 

By DIANE AMES

‘Matthew, it’s so great to see you,’ I started. ‘We have been waiting to say hello.’

I paused for a moment to let it sink in, and continued. ‘You have been really unwell, and you’ve been in hospital for twelve days.’

I could see his eyebrows lift with surprise, as if to say, Really?

I walked through exactly what had happened, in sequence. I told him that he had become progressively worse after being admitted to hospital.

‘The doctors had to do some operations. The first was to clean the area where you had the rash on your left arm, but you still became worse. You were continuing to deteriorate. Your arm had stopped working and had died, so we had to make the hard decision to amputate your left arm.’

I told him that the doctors and nurses had been doing everything they could to save his life.

‘On the Saturday, it looked like we were going to lose you, and the kids came in to say goodbye. We all came in to say goodbye.’

‘The only option to save you was to remove your remaining arm and legs, otherwise you were going to die.’

I was looking for a reaction to that, but Matthew simply nodded. He seemed to accept what I had told him.

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At this point, people moved away a bit to give us some space. I continued, telling him that the kids had accepted everything and that we loved him very much and had great hope for the future. I remembered what Eamonn had said, and reassured Matthew of how beautiful I thought he was. Matthew told me later that this was important to him.

The reason I explained everything to Matthew in so much detail was that I wanted him to understand that, medically, we had done everything we could for him; that we were there to support him; that we had been with him as a family the whole time; and that all of us, including his children, had said goodbye to him along the way. I wanted him to understand that his situation had been that dire, so he would understand why his arms and legs had been amputated.

The love I had felt for him the night he survived the operation had never left and was with me at that moment. I told him I thought he was so brave and strong for fighting to stay with us. I told him I could not have loved him any more – to me, he was the ideal husband, the perfect father, trying to be here for the family.

We were all so happy that he was with us. The kids got to say hello, and it happened that both Kate and Ruth, Matthew’s aunts, were in Brisbane, so they were also able to see him that afternoon.

While I had never thought the outcome would be any different, it was still nice to be celebrating, even though we knew that there was still a huge battle ahead. Living in the moment, as I tend to do, allows me to just accept what is in front of me right now. And right now, Matthew was alive, he was awake and he was accepting what had happened. Life couldn’t be better.

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Matthew keeping his spirits high.

Matthew’s awakening was short-lived. He suffered internal bleeding within a few hours of being woken, and a day later was re-sedated. His doctors couldn’t find the source of the bleeding, and even though it was a small bleed, they had to keep topping up his blood levels with a series of blood transfusions. It seemed to become a fre- quent event and when doctors told me he was having one, I would think casually, Oh, okay. Just another transfusion.

Eventually, they found the source of the bleeding in the small intestine. It was a setback, but in the end, it seemed to sort itself out, and almost a week later, on the first of July, we tried to wake Matthew again. Because Matthew probably wouldn’t remember what he had been told the first time he woke, we needed to repeat the same process, exactly. So everyone gathered around again – Roy, Christine, Rachel, Christie Barrett and the medical team. Again, I could feel the support behind me, but this time, everyone hung back at bit more, so it was just Matthew and me at the bed.

The first time around, I had a sense that Matthew fully understood and accepted what I told him. Matthew never surprises me, so I expected this second time to be the same. I stood in exactly the same place, and said exactly the same words. I started the same way, and I cried. Again, Matthew only cried when I talked about the children, and he expressed surprise at how long he had been in hospital. He had the same reactions in the same places. He was as accepting this time as he had been the first, but again, he suffered medical setbacks…

This is an extract from Will To Live by Diane Ames. You can purchase Will To Live from Booktopia or Bookworld, and visit her blog, Renovating Matthew, by clicking here.