Having lost my father in August this year, we had a call last night from the Ulster Hospital to say that Pauline's father had just died. He'd been in the hospital since September with water on the knees, which had become infected. He'd then deteriorated over the following month to become bedridden and unresponsive, not eating and losing 2st in weight. Pauline had flown over to see him for a week in October and it wasn't looking good, though the doctors admitted that they were just treating symptoms as they arose and had no idea what the cause was. A couple of weeks ago they took him off the antibiotics to see if that was a factor and he started to improve. Last Sunday he rang Pauline, asking for her to make arrangements for some new pj's, as his old ones didn't fit anymore. It was great to get the call and Pauline was able to call and speak with him every day since. However, last night while the nurses were changing his bed and talking with him, he just went quiet and had passed away. It looks like we'll be flying out from Stansted to Belfast tomorrow to make arrangement for the funeral, etc, assuming they release the body as the doctors were talking about a post-mortem to determine cause of death. I've been off work for the last month with anxiety and depression, and sign-off for a further two weeks from last Friday, so it's crap timing in one way but at least work isn't expecting me in. 2008 has been a bad year....
