March 2005 It never rains!

A good many folk on the site seem to have had their fair share of bad luck and experiences during March and we were no different. Ours were three fold and started when the Land Rover decided it wanted another clutch. Then the washing machine died an agonising death with smoke coming from the rear painful!
By far the worst was when one morning Debbie took the kids to school and crashed the car. Both Debbie and the other driver walked no hobbled away from the two write offs. When I went over to survey the scene I saw that both were extremely lucky. Meeting Head on over a blind summit they didn't have anywhere to go except bumper to bumper.
Debbie went off to the doctors then the local hospital for precautionary x-rays with her friend whilst I waited at home with our youngest. A short time later I got a phone call to say that Debbie had broken a bone in her neck and was being taken to the main city hospital and so the nightmare began of running around trying to organise things to go with her. Eventually got the animals sorted and arranged for friends to look after the kids and off we went in the ambulance.
That journey was a nightmare with Debbie strapped on a board to restrict her movement and although the ambulance men were trying to keep us occupied talking my mind started to wander and think about how we would be able to cope for the next few months. Debbie would have to stay in hospital for weeks if not months with a broken neck, how would I be able to look after the kids the animals and travel to see Debbie. How would we cope when she eventually got home?
We got to the main hospital and I was left in the waiting room whilst
they examined Debbie. I expected to have a wait before being told anything but once the waiting had passed 2 hours I started to worry. Why hadn't they told me anything something must be seriously wrong otherwise they would have been to see me?
It was 7 o'clock at night the animals were due feeding, the kids were at friends, and I was miles away from home, no money, no transport, and no word about Debbie. I went to the reception and asked if they had any news. I was taken to the ward were Debbie was to find that they didn't think her neck was broken after all but that they were keeping her in overnight as a precaution. The sense of relief numbed the sense of anger at first being told she had broken her neck.
I eventually got home around 9 having seen Debbie for a short time, in time to feed the animals and get the kids back and into bed. Debbie came home the next day and spent the next week in bed recovering from aches, pains and bruises slowly not helped by a condition she has been suffering from for some months.
During the rest of March I spent most of the time thinking about our way of life. The pressure to keep everything ticking over was really stressful and my thoughts centred on the pigs. All the animals except the pigs are quite low input if needed like in an emergency, but the pigs are generally high input all the time.
Those that have pigs will know that when feeding time comes around the sound of their squeals can really get to you when the chips are down. Having come so close after Ginger's difficult farrow it felt to me that they would be better off gone. I was sick of seeing pools of water in the paddock, sick of them knocking over water buckets again and again meaning I had to take another bucket to them, at that time it just seemed that life was one huge battle just to keep things ticking over.
At the moment Debbie is back on her feet, and things did seem to be getting back to normal. The crash is becoming a distant memory, we have had our first visitors, and I seemed to have caught up well on the work that needed doing until today. With gales blowing, the polythene on the polytunnel has been blown from its trench on one side meaning a new one to be bought and dug in again. However after getting over the initial despair of seeing the wreckage I can laugh about it with Debbie and think yet again it is only money we haven't got but at the end of the day we have still got each other and that is something we are both thankful for.