On My Fridge

When I decided to sell our old house, there was a few things that I ended up having to do which I had put off for over a year.  One was taking things off the fridge that were too hard to take down earlier.  

On our fridge we kept things that were important to us - the gym timetable, Aaron's school timetable so I knew when he was on class or not teaching (as we often rang each other during the day), important phone numbers that we used on a daily basis and a list of Noah's medications.

Aaron and I knew Noah's medications and doses off by heart, and could make up his meds without having to look at the list, but I was always worried that something could happen to us one day (crazy to think about it now when we know what has happened) and no one else would know what he took. 

Often we would adjust the dose of different meds depending on how Noah was.  He had seizures every day but if he was having more than usual we knew the maximum dose of his seizure meds we could give, and would adjust them accordingly.  If he was more constipated than usual then we could adjust the dose of his bowel meds etc.  I was always the one who would make the decisions about changing the doses as I knew Noah's medical needs the best, but this meant that Aaron and I were always talking about the doses of his meds and if anything had changed, as we would take turns preparing his meds for the next 24 hours.

Everytime one of the doses of a med would change, I would retype the list for the fridge.   I was always in a panic that Aaron and I could end up in a car accident together and could be in hospital together (or worse) and someone would have to care for Noah.  I just knew as long as there was an up to date list of his meds on the fridge, then at least some of his medical needs were taken care of.  I hated to think about the possibility of that happening because no one knew Noah like we did and it really worried me how people could cope with caring for him for a long period of time, if that was ever needed.  Thank goodness we never had to worry about it, and the list of meds on the fridge never had to be used by anyone.

It was very handy though to have on the fridge because whenever Noah ended up having to be admitted to hospital, I would just grab the list from the fridge and just hand it to the doctors in Emergency when they would ask me which meds he was on.   It was so much easier to just hand them the list, and they loved it and would go on about how awesome it was that I just had a list to hand over.   I guess it made it a lot easier for them when writing up his medication chart.

  

When Noah passed away I remember getting back home from Hobart and walking into the house and straight away seeing his list of meds on the fridge.  I knew we didn't need it anymore, but there was no way I could take it off the fridge.  It stayed there until the day that we got photos of our house taken for the real estate websites as I wanted the fridge to be bare. 

I also had a script for antibiotics for Noah on the fridge, in case we ever needed them.   Because we knew him better than anyone else, our doctors would allow us to make the decision about when Noah needed oral antibiotics, so we always had a script on hand.  It would often save him having to be admitted to hospital to go on IV antibiotics.  I couldn't bear to throw it away either, until the day that I finally cleaned the fridge off - over a year after Noah passed away.  

I hated having to take these things off my fridge when we moved, and wish they were still on there now.  I wish that I was still adjusting Noah's list of medications. I even hate not having a list of important phone numbers on our fridge anymore.  I used to have to ring the hospital, St Giles, school, the hospital pharmacy, and dieticians constantly.  It's so strange to not be busy with taking care of Noah's needs - even eighteen months later. 

I wish I was busy having to take care of all of Noah's needs and appointments still. 

I wish I was checking Aaron's timetable to see what time I could ring to have a chat during the day. 

I just wish things were so different right now.