R.I.P. Julie Shute

R.I.P. Julie Shute

 

 

It is with great sadness but with much relief that I'm informing you that Julie slipped peacefully away at 03.20 on 9^th September 2015. She was peaceful and asleep with me by her side. Fluff took her from me but she went with great dignity right up until the end, a very hollow victory Fluff…

It was a very sad day but she's finally at peace, she looked so peaceful, there was no cry of pain, no sign of anything but peace on her face..

As so many of you have recognised she had amazing qualities and a determined grit like no one else I’ve ever known possessed. In fifteen years Julie endured:

1)   A Collapsed lung which lead to the discovery of her having ..

2)   Rheumatoid Arthritis; She is written up in a medical journal as being the first time Rheumatoid Arthritis presented itself in female lung tissue (All this just before I met her)

3)   Not long after I met her she had a tendon snap in her hand requiring a tendon swap operation, during this period she came to stay at what is now known as ‘Shute Manor’ to recuperate, it was during this time our friendship blossomed into a relationship.

4)   Not long after the tendon swap she was diagnosed with an horrendous illness called ulcerative colitis, the condition rapidly deteriorated and after weeks in hospital she faced the prospect of lengthy surgery resulting in a colostomy and faced with having what she called a ‘Gucci bag’ on her side forever, a devastating blow for a ‘fit bodied’, head turning beautiful blonde who was by her own admittance vain. With all of this going on she still thought of others, with surgery agreed for the following day she looked at me and said “If you want to walk away from this, today is the day to do it, I won’t feel any the worst about you if you do”. I’ve never walked away from anything I wasn’t going to walk away from the woman I had fallen in love with! The next day she underwent a five hour operation!

5)   Around a year or so later Julie had gone from declaring in the early days “We will never be more than friends Andy” to falling in love with me who had already declared my love for her to her reciprocating and then taking a huge leap of faith and selling her own house to move in to ‘Shute Manor’, I matched her leap of faith by adding her name to the deeds on what became her palace even though it resembled a partial building site! On moving in we registered with our local Doctors and got her in to see an amazing Consultant Colorectal surgeon called Ciaran Walsh. He explained when Julie’s operation was completed in Grimsby that they had left a short stump of her bowel inside her anus and that if left unchecked she ran a significant risk of getting bowel cancer within ten years, her options were to a) leave things knowing the risk, b) having surgery to remove the stump or c) to have the stump removed but to have the colostomy ‘reversed’ as in re connect what was left to her anus at the same time Kieran creating an ileal pouch/reservoir (google it) inside her body thereby meaning goodbye Gucci bag and being able to use the loo again similar to most of us! We confirmed we’d been told the ‘reversal’ wasn’t possible at the time of the first surgery yet Kieran said he conducted similar operations frequently, Julie jumped at the chance to lose ‘Gucci bag’, a SEVEN hour operation followed and months of recuperation, Julie could go back to dressing as she loved without worrying about a bulging Gucci bag on her side! Ciaran Walsh restored not only my wife’s bowel but also gave her a new found confidence, I’m forever grateful. At this point I offered Julie the option to give up work to become a fulltime stay at home partner and a ‘lady that lunched’ lol with some very special friends, Shute Manor was a fulltime job but I told her after a hard life and periods of illness this was ‘Her time’… She took the opportunity and began to stamp her excellent design tastes onto Shute Manor.

6)    Then Began fluff’s journey…..you know the rest……..

 

Next time you're having a 'really bad day'... Just give Julie a thought

 

Throughout all of the above I witnessed her cry in pain and complain just once! Truthfully just once until her last four days…. She recently as you also know was fourth in the Merseyside Woman of the Year just a few percentage points behind the most worthy winner Angela Samata, to me though Julie is the woman of the 2,000’s.

Whilst Julie wasn’t religious I am to a degree, enough to believe in heaven, I believe our marriage was made there, I am sure one day we will be reunited there and although in a comatose state as I spoke to her Sunday night I asked her to wait for me there…….. Until then Rest in Peace my amazing, Mrs Shute, ‘Foxy’, ‘Princess’, ‘Hunny’, ‘Darling’ ‘Sweetheart’ or ‘just’ Julie….

Julie Shute
17th July 1961 - 9th September 2015

 

Rest in Peace