The period running up the illness

Life was fairly normal in 2009. Just like any normal life, coping with the drudgery and triviality of surviving life in 21st century Britain. Work, bills, cooking, cleaning, relationships, TV, credit crunch, swine flu, you know the sort of thing. 2009 had bought some exceptional challenges. My dad had cancer and died in March. I had a cancer scare, and after an operation in June it turned out not to be malignant. So you see, cancer had already touched my life. Still, I would say that none of this was particularly unusual, lots of people face these issues.

However, there was one thing that was at all normal. Samuel was not going to school. He wasn't truanting in the traditional sense of the word, but seemed to have some strong psychological barrier preventing him from attending. He stopped going to school 2 weeks before the Easter break. I won't go into detail as this blog is not about this, but suffice it to say, Tracey and I were seeking professional help from all available sources.

Things had rather come to head in July and Samuel and I were not talking or seeing each other, and had only exchanged a few fractious text messages in this time.

Needless to say there was also enough residual resentment between Tracey and I to escalate this out of proportion.

So to recap, normal...ish.