At this point in our story life really does leave reality. I no longer remember what days anything happened but I have vivid memories of events and a general idea of a time line.
Whilst we were still in ICU and everything was a major drama my sister and my father had to return to their home towns because they had to go back to work. The thing you learn about family dramas - life doesn't stop for them, life goes on.
They both came in to see Cameron and say goodbye to everyone and then I had to stand at the door of the ICU and watch them walk away. It was a horrible sinking feeling. You want your family with you at times like these and I knew they wanted to stay. I now know that family members thought Cameron was going to die so it must have been so hard for them to walk away. They were heading home to deal with their trauma on their own without any of the family to support them. They both also had very long drives, in opposite directions - which would have given them a lot of time to ponder life and worry.
On reflection everybody needed support and understanding but Michael and I were incapable of supporting anyone except Cameron and ourselves, there was nothing left, the trauma was too great. The extended family had to support themselves. Luckily both of our families get on very well so that would have helped.
I have now learnt that by day nine our families had given up hope. They started to phone our friends and warn them that Cameron was possibly going to die. However they asked our friends to not visit because they felt we couldn't cope and they wanted it to be just the family. Michael and I have no memory of this, we didn't comtemplate Cameron dying. We were scared but it was a fear of the unknown we didn't lose focus on Cameron getting better. We were planning our life for when we got out of the hospital. We had to, we needed a future to focus on and move towards.
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