Da

As I write this I am sitting on a chair beside my father in University hospital Galway. He is having his first nights sleep in nearly two weeks.

This has more to do with palliative care than an improvement in his health but I am hopeful that a night's sleep will be good medicine and a foundation for his recovery.

The staff here are wonderful and have made an enormous effort to make my father comfortable and smile nicely when he flirts, which he does outrageously and brazenly in front of my mum, whom he then flirts with.

We kids are worried my father is one of those men who is never sick a day in their lives but now he has pneumonia a collapsed lung and an as yet undiagnosed infection. We have been warned that he is in grave danger and that if he does recover from these complications that he is also displaying signs of early Alzheimer's and will no longer be able to be my mother's carer.

It is hard sitting here listening to him breathing with great difficulty knowing that there is very little I can do to help him. The obvious pain he displays when he coughs is heart rending and yet the fact I am here listening to him is great we really didn't think he would survive the day. My da takes great pleasure in being a defiant and somewhat perverse character, I should know having lived and worked with him for many years he is my best friend and I love him greatly.

The pamphlet we have been given says we should be planning his funeral.