D-Day - England here I come!

Well, it´s my last night here in Germany. I´m sure you all will understand when I say that I seem to have waited forever for this day to come around & now it seems to have dropped on me like a tonne of bricks!!

We had a lovely family dinner at my nieces house tonight, with a few tears shed for the times that we might have had in the future but won´t have now, ´coz I won´t be here. But hey, England isn´t that far away from Germany, right? My sister has lived over here for the best part of 30 years now & I can remember back then, Germany did seem like it was an age away & at the end of a holiday, we never did know when we would see each other again, but it´s certainly not like that now, thanks to airlines like Ryanair & the other cheapies.

I´ve managed to remain quite positive about my hepatitis these past couple of weeks, mainly ´coz I´ve had my move to England to prepare for & all my last minute stuff over here to ´tidy up´.

I have been worrying a little over the past couple of days though - about how I´m going to tell my family about my hepatitis. There´s only really my parents & my 2 daughters that essentially need to know & after reading advice given to me on the forum & talking to my niece about it at length, I´ve decided to tell my parents first & on their own & then tackle telling my daughters afterwards. My main concern is with my parents (especially my mum). They are of the older generation & don´t take information like this on board very easily. They don´t have a computer either, let alone internet access, so I can´t just give them a couple of websites to look up, like I did with my niece. I can just see my mum getting side-tracked & going off at tangents about whether I should infact be seeking full-time work & how I´m going to manage financially if I can´t work. So, I´ve decided not to tell them as soon as I get over there, but rather wait a couple of days, until I have been to the job centre, spoken with a Disability Employment Adviser, been to register for a flat, & seen my GP. Then I´ll be able to also tackle a few of my mum´s other questions as well as those related to the hepatitis. What I know will also worry her is how it will all work out with my arthritis as well, so I think I might invite her along to my first appointments (when I eventually get them) with the rheumatologist & hepatologist which will make her feel a little more able to support me in a practical way, which I know she´ll want to be able to do. As far as my daughters are concerned, I think they´ll be more worried about my health & if / how I can get better, rather than where I got it from etc, so I´m fairly relaxed (I think) about that conversation.

So, I think I´ve got my thoughts straight about how I´m going to tell those closest to me. For the time being, I won´t be telling anyone else - I´ll make a decision on who else might need to know at a later date. Let´s just tackle exactly what needs to be done for now & what can be left for another time, can just be put to one side.

Well, it´s 02.10am here in Germany now, & although we´re not leaving until the afternoon, I´ve still got a few things to do & need to get up early. Then there´s the long journey ahead of us (me, my niece, her husband & her son, that is). Wolfsheim to Calais, then the ferry crossing, then Dover to Telford, where we should arrive around 06.00am Monday morning.

Internet access will be hit & miss in Telford for a while, but I´ll try & get to this blog as often as I can & certainly to record the important stuff.

I really can´t wait to get there, I can tell you. You know the saying "you never know what you´ve got till it´s gone"? Well, that´s so, so true!!

"Take me home, take me home, I know the place I long to be ........."