Help Chris get on her feet after nursing Paul

For those of you who knew Paul knew what a fun loving, giving, wonderful man he was to be around. He had more friends than you could count, worked in business banking to help people achieve their goals, he coached high level basketball as well as juniors to give back to the sport he played for so many years at a high level. He always coached females because he wanted to help keep as many females in sport and wanted to fight to give them an equal platform.
over 10 years ago, Paul was diagnosed with Cardio Myopathy of the heart. For the first few years this disease didn’t effect his life too much as he continued to work and coach basketball with some hospital trips and operations including putting in a defibrillator, he still managed to live a relatively normal life.
Around 5 years ago the function of his heart continued to decrease and the talks became more serious and his life was slowly starting to become effected. During 2016 after a lot of hospital stays, the diagnosis was heading towards eventually requiring a heart transplant. 

In October 2016 he had his appendix removed, all in preparation for the transplant, and 2 days later managed to come to my combined 30th and engagement party- I’m an only child and he wouldn’t miss these things for the world.
During early 2017 he continued to have pre-transplant procedures in order to have his body best prepared for having a successful transplant, and in mid-2017 he finally went on the transplant list once his heart function was now below 10%. I was due to get married in September 2017, so the anxiety that we would get the phone call on that day was real! We didn’t and had a beautiful day celebrating.
Bring on August 2018 and I find out I am pregnant with Mum & Dads first grandchild (I am an only child), and we finally get to give them some good news! How proud Dad was and how excited! 3 days later Dad collapses at home with heart function at now 7% and the real s**t starts. We are told Dad will not make it until a transplant is available and they will need to put in an artificial pump called a Ventricular Assisted Device (VAD) in one side of his heart, if not 2. This will be done in a days time as it’s now urgent. We prepare ourselves as best we can butare very nervous given how sick dad has now become. The operation is successful and they found they only needed to put 1 in, obviously better than 2. Dad took 12 days to wake up from this operation as his body was struggling. 2 days before he woke up they found he had a distended bowel which after emergency surgery they found it was perforated so to save his life he had 2 more life saving surgeries on his bowel and took another 10 days to awake from his coma. Dad was critically unwell they continued to tell us, but he had something to fight for, as I was still in my first trimester of pregnancy.
Dad was in intensive care for over 8 weeks, wehad some more life threatening scares while he was in there- they prepared us that he might not wake up from another emergency bowel surgery they had to perform, he had some emergency surgeries to stop bleeding etc., but he finally went to a ward once he had learnt to start walking again.
the rehab was brutal for him, laying in bed for 6-8 weeks straight plus your body being in the state it was, everything was tough.
he eventually came home in mid December and life with a VAD started. A VAD is an extremely tricky thing to have. You need to change batteries regularly and also ensure power is handy. You cannot leave a person with a VAD alone in case there is a fault, so we all needed to be trained in how to use this, my Mum had to arrange to work from home, however given all of Dads hospital appointments (having a VAD means you can no longer drive), Mum had to use all of her leave from work in order to care for him, it was a full time job.
June 2019, we finally got the call. There was a heart available for Dad! How exciting but nerve wracking at the same time. Early this Friday morning Mum and Dad trekked up to the hospital and I would come up once Finn was awake-he was now 9 weeks old.
that day was an anxious wait- after what we had already endured it was hard not to be.
the transplant was a raging success, one of thebest matches they had ever seen they told us- and I thought ok this is the start of our new life! I will have my fit, happy go-lucky Dad back, Finn will be able to go to the park with to kick the footy with his Pop, this is the solution to all our problems- I’ll have my Dad back!
Although the surgery went well and dads recovery was fairly non-eventful he was in hospitalfor 3 months post transplant just to try to get his body back some form of condition and he was having intensive rehab. He finally came home and I was excited for us to put all of these health issues behind us- dad had a new heart, what else did we need?!!
In February 2020 the doctors deemed Dad healthy enough to perform the last bowel major surgery that he would need. This was nerve wracking because he hadn’t had a good track record with bowel surgeries but we were confident, he had blood flow and a healthy pumping heart. The surgery went well and he eventually came home, but from here he had issues with blood pressure causing him to have falls that would put him back in hospital, he couldn’t keep food down for months and lost a lot of weight. Also being peak covid- and Dad being high risk we had to be so careful with leaving the house etc. 2020 was not a good year for Dad he lost a lot of weight and condition while the balance of drugs post transplant, his body not taking in food post operation, he had a lung infection etc. but he still tried to power on.
October 19th 2020, Dad had a routine x-Ray appointment at the hospital, we dropped him off and went home to start our day. Mum received a phone call that Dad had collapsed and that we should go up to the hospital. When we got there we were told we should make some phone calls to family etc as things were looking very dire. Although we knew Dad was very unwell, this was still a massive shock to hear and Mum and I just didn’t know what to do. They said they were taking him to intensive care to workout what to do. Luckily one of the surgeons who had worked on him a lot was there and she said I will open him up and see what we find. She found a lot of bleeding but was able to fix theproblem. Dad was resuscitated 4 times that day. He took 10 days to wake up from this surgery, but he was awake!
This hospital stay felt different than the others to me. We had some very dire and serious visits previously but this one felt different, but Dad had fought the odds so many times, he would get through this one. But he just didn’t have the strength this time, we lost him on the 19th December 2020.

The worlds most beautiful, proud, funny, happy man was taken from us and our marathon of a fight was up.

The scary thing was, I haven’t even put down everything- the falls he had resulting in broken limbs and more surgeries, the constant dialysis,the challenges at home etc. I’ve just told you the key pieces of information to give you the full picture.

Why am I writing this? For those of you who know my Mum would know that she would hatethis. She’s an extremely shy, introverted person who hates any attention. But I want to help her as much as I can.
It is now just my Mum and I in Brisbane, all ourfamily live in Adelaide so we have very little family support close by.
Not wanting to go into too many details, due to my dad needing to quit work a few years ago, his ongoing medical bills, his ongoing hospital visits requiring mum to give up full time work, the financial position has left Mum with many more stresses than she needs to have- especially at this time of her life.

Mums dedication to Dad the last few years was admirable and she couldn’t have given anymore. She put her whole life on hold to give dad everything he needed. I want to help her as much as I can, but I’m only one person.

so I just thought if I could reach out to family and loved ones that maybe we could all help her.

Like I said, Mum would hate this, but she deserves the world, and I know that Dad would want her to have it. So if I can do one small thing togive them both what they want I’m going to.

Thank you so much
xx