Hello, I’m Pat, for my sins I am Terry’s wife and I want to tell you about the type of man he is. Having been married to him for 41 years and his partner for some years before that, nobody knows him better than I do. Like all human beings he has his good points and some not so good points.
He has a bulldog tenacity and once he starts something he will finish it to the very end. He never gives up. This can be a blessing but it can also be a curse because he never knows when he has reached his personal limit. He has tunnel vision, which he disputes, preferring to call it concentration. I am backing him all the way with the Charity Walk fund but I am also responsible for his well-being and making sure that he comes to no harm, mostly from himself. His general attitude is ‘no pain, no gain’ and ‘you can’t know what your limits are until you reach them’.
He is infuriatingly argumentative and we argue like cats and dogs but he will always have the last word. Yes, there are times when I would love to throttle him, and then what does he do?, he makes me laugh.
Even in his darkest moments his sense of humour will shine through. The first time I was allowed to see him after his operations was in H.D.U. He was awake and I stood at the end of his bed not believing what I was seeing. I remember seeing tubes coming out of him from all angles, later I counted twelve, and was distressed to say the least. I didn’t know what to say. ‘How are you feeling?’ just didn’t seem appropriate. He saw me and the first thing he said was ‘I suppose sex is out of the question?’ I knew then that he was going to pull through.
There were times during his treatment he hit absolute rock bottom.
His treatment was stressful but he was managing, it was all the other seemingly minor things that were going wrong that nearly broke him.
He is the first person people turn to when there is a problem and need help and he will help anybody, even total strangers, but if you let him down there are no second chances. Life with him is a rollercoaster and I never know what ‘cunning plan’ he is going to come up with next.
He has waited a long time to show his gratitude to all the people at Queen’s Hospital and that gratitude is unbounded, which is why this Charity Walk fund is so important to him. For Terry it is now or, possibly, never, and that’s what makes him the person that he is.
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