Little Miss Independence

As Vicki lies, heavily sedated, it seems that she's slowly starting to grow stronger. Whilst Tracey and I were in ICU with her yesterday a cardiologist arrived to check that her heart is OK. As the doctor tried to set up the equipment, Vicki lashed out, and pulled out the tube that had been assisting her breathing, which of course caused more than a little panic. However, it would seem that she was breathing normally, and very quickly the doctors realised that she may not need this tube anymore, and would monitor her closely to see how she did.

Stood at her bedside, for once I was rapidly running out of things to say, so I thought to myself I'd see if she would respond to me if I asked her a question. Mmmm, I thought what should I ask. OK, lets start with simple arithmetic. I primed her for the oncoming onslaught of mathematical questions that would tax every sinew of her cerebral cortex. "OK sweet heart, can you tell me what one plus one is?" She made a noise, so I asked her "did you say two?" and she nodded. You cannot imagine the euphoria this simple act induced in me. Tracey and I smiled at each other and laughed. As if to prove that this wasn't a simple coincidence I asked her another question: "So my little angel, what is one plus two?" Once again, she made a noise, and again, I asked for clarification. "Did you say three?", and again she nodded. Y-e-s! I know this may seem to you like something of minuscule importance, but to Tracey and I it was a tiny ray of light shining through the heavy black clouds for the first time.

However, now I thought, I could ask her a few more probing questions like, "who was that boy she fancied?" Mind you, she would of course never forgive me for this, so I just chuckled to myself at this thought. Then I thought, "oh my God, I've just chuckled to myself", and again whilst this may not seem like much, it meant so much to me to be able to look at the lighter side. However, please don't get me wrong, we are far from out of the woods, Vicki is still treading a very fine tightrope over a very high gorge, but nevertheless, this small punctuation of positivity was shining like a beacon.

As Tracey and I left for the night, we reckoned that Victoria had deliberately pulled the breathing tube out, she'd made her mind up, and that was that, no doctor was telling her that she needed help to breathe! Little Miss Independence indeed.

By the way, for those who were worrying, the cardiologist said her heart was fine.