The beginning of the journey

The ambulance took me from Limerick to Cork in less than one hour, they closed down the road through the city and Charlotte bridge just for me...I call that an achievement, first time in an ambulance and I arrived in style! Writing about all of this is very exposing but it's also a way for me to process everything. Writing about this publicly makes me consider and taste the words before putting them out there, it makes me truly take them in. Digest. It's interesting how the human psyche reacts in a time of crisis. When I was told that I might only have hours left to live, my body first went into shock, my legs started bouncing uncontrollably, I tried to press them down tight but they just kept bouncing. Then, all the sudden, calm washed over me. My head was cleared. I could act and be very a matter of fact  "Hi Pappa, it's me..something happened.."  I made many phone calls in that ambulance. what do you tell people when you're forced to accept that you're going to die? It was difficult calling all of my family and all of my close friends to tell them what I wanted them to know, how much I love them and how much they mean to me. Two of my closest friends were heavily pregnant at the time, it's not a good time to call with a message like this in the middle of the night, but the thought of not speaking to them again was not an option. I had to make the calls. My mother, my father and my three sisters.. all living in different parts of Sweden pulled together fast and organised to meet in Stockholm to go to the airport for the fastest route to cork, they flew the next possible flight to London to take a connecting flight to Cork. The flight arriving to Heathrow got delayed and they missed the flight to Cork. That wasn't easy for them, They didn't know what kind of reality they were going to land into. I dodged the bullet that time. And I've dodged plenty of bullets since. My family came before they rolled me in for my first, but not last, brain surgery. The tumour was causing such high pressure so that fluids in the brain couldn't pass. They had to insert a shunt to pass the fluids and to access the tumour  for a biopsy sample. This is usually a fairly minor procedure but when they went in the tumour started to bleed and they weren't able stop it.  As I was under general anesthetic, time was starting to run out. My family was told that if I didn't wake up within an hour they would have to open me  up fully and remove the tumour. You never want a rushed emergency surgery of the brain..That's when saving a life become first priority, quality of life comes second. Waking up from brain surgery is quite ...painful. There is nothing pretty about it. Thank god for morphine. My neurosurgeon Professor O'Sullivan came to visit me in ICU together with a few of his team, they gave me a big hug and was happy that I was doing well, They said that I'd frightened them and aged them about 10 years...Oops!  I recovered well within just a few days, Prof. O'Sullivan asked me where I came from, saying that he was very familiar with Uppsala and that the university hospital, Akademiska sjukhuset is famous worldwide and have some of the best neurosurgeons in the world. We all agreed that going home and transfer me to Akademiska sjukhuset would be the best option for me. The surgeons, especially with such help from the lovely surgeon Lucy, helped us so much in contacting the hospital to organise the transfer. I had a CT scan again to ensure that the shunt was working properly so that I'd be able for the pressure in the air and soon after I was cleared to travel. After being hospitalised in Cork for two weeks, I was going home to Sweden. I flew in first class (#queen) together with my mother and my  sister Sonya and the following day I was admitted to ICU again and life would take a few more turns for me.