After Nathan was born we arranged for his christening and on a Sunday morning the whole family went up to the local church and he was baptised. My dad came on his own, I don’t know why as we had been to meet his third wife. All went well and everybody enjoyed themselves with a party back at our house.
It was a few weeks later that we got a Christmas card from my dad and Pauline with a note and a new address for them. It said this will be our new address very soon. It was for Economy Bay, Nova Scotia. They were moving to Canada. Pauline had got a job over there and Dad was going with her to see if he could get work. They had been sponsored by Pauline new employer. I was stunned he had not bothered to tell me or the rest of the family face to face. We did not have chance to say goodbye or to wish them good luck. Since then we have had sporadic contact through my aunty Mavis, his sister.
Heather and I decided to have a second child quite close together so that they would grow up together and we found out late in 1980 that we were going to have another in August 1981. Heather had quite a rough pregnancy with Braxton Hicks for a long time. We christened the bump Tillie Mint and laughed it off whenever Heather had a hick that Tillie wanted to be in the world with us. Tillie Mint was due to be born on the seventeenth of August but she arrived a month early on the sixteenth of July something that I still get mixed up with today. We named her Gaynor for Heathers second name and Barbara after my Mum as she was her first grand daughter. As she was early and so small she was taken to the special care unit straight way. She spent three weeks there with us going in every day, spending all our spare time feeding her and longing for the day we could take her home. The nursing staff were marvellous, they could not do enough to help us. Eventually we got to take her home and we fell into a routine again. Gaynor was a baby that cried a lot and at times we were pulling our hair out with walking the hallway trying to get her to sleep. Then someone suggested trying Calpol, it worked but not all the time.
We decide that it was time we got her christened as well and we sorted out with the vicar that she could be baptised after the Sunday morning service. On the Wednesday before the Christening I was feeling quite ill as I was doing my round in the wagon around Liverpool. I had a terrible pain in my groin and could hardly walk when I got back to the depot. I made my excuses and did not stay to put any of the rounds in order as I did usually. I managed to drive myself home but when I got home I had a struggle to get out of the car. I had to swing my legs out onto the floor, then put both arms up over my head to grab the car roof to get myself up into a stooping position. I sounded the horn as I got out by accident and Heather came out to see what was wrong. She found me leaning over the bonnet in tears with the pain. I managed to shuffle around the car and up to the front door by half lying across the car as I shuffled my feet from side to side. I got in to the house and collapsed onto the arm chair. I said to call the doctor and tried to relax. I felt like I had been kicked repeatedly in the crown jewels, it was extremely painful to say the least. The doctor came down to the house within the hour and called an ambulance straight away. I was rushed into Ormskirk General hospital and put into Philip ward. When the consultant came round to examine me had said that I was to be first on his list for the morning. I asked what the problem was as no one had explained what was the matter. He said that one of my testicles had got twisted somehow with the blood supply may be cut off. He said the swelling was either down to infection or that the fluid was building up and could not drain away. This time it looked rather peculiar with one testicle the size of a duck egg. After he went away the ward sister came down and asked to examine me, I thought this was what happened she was just checking that it was not getting worse, until half an hour later the staff nurse arrived and pulled the screens round. She wanted to examine me too, it went on for the next hour or two, I must have had a good six or seven “examinations”. Then one of the nurses said they all had to see as they had not seen one as big before. It is a good job that I was given pain killers as overnight it had swollen up to the size of a goose egg.
I was due down in theatre at ten o’clock but I was woken at six by the new shift changing over. Then the examinations started again until the breakfasts had to be served. I was not allowed even a cup of tea as I was nil by mouth until after the operation. In Ormskirk the theatres were in a different building and all patients had to be taken outside to get to the theatres. To transport them were two converted electric milk floats or that’s what they reminded me of. I was put on to stretcher and carried to the electric vehicle and driven the two hundred yards to the theatre building, up in the lift to the first floor and the anaesthetic room. A needle was inserted in my hand and I was asked to count backward from ten. Ten, nine, eight and I was coming around in the recovery ward. I was taken back down in the lift, along the bumpy road in the electric cart back to Philip ward.
When the surgeon came round to see me he explained that the blood supply had been twisted and that is what had caused the swelling, he had managed to release the twist and stitch the testicle into place so it could not happen again. He had left a drain in and wanted to see how thing s went for a few days before I was let out to go home. This was Thursday and the christening was only three days away, I could not miss my own daughters christening. The swelling was starting to subside by the Friday morning when the doctor came to do his rounds and I was still very worried that I might miss Gaynor’s big day. On the Saturday the doctor came around in the morning and said that he would be back after lunch to see if the drain could come out. I was getting quite perturbed as to what was going to happen if the drain could not come out. He came around at about five o’clock, removed the drain, he said he would check in the morning if the wound was safe enough for me to go to the church but if I did go it would be on the proviso that I stayed in a wheel chair for the whole day.
The next morning he came round a nine o’clock and I had to be at the church by ten thirty. It was all right so long as I obeyed him about the chair and no alcohol as I was on the strongest antibiotics he could give me. I phoned home straight away and my mum came out and picked me up with the wheel chair. I stayed in the chair except to climb the stair up to our living room after the service. I had to be really careful because Nathan wanted to sit on my lap and I could not let a two year old bounce on me really.
I was taken back to the hospital and had to stay in for another five days but I was not alone. My mother in law Lou was taken ill on the Monday and was admitted to the same ward. The staff were so good as we were “related” we were put in the same cubicle. I really thought this was a joke they were having on me but it turned out quite well on visiting times as it saved all out visitors having to go to two separate wards. At times for that week it seemed like a family party time instead of visiting time.
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