The Ultimate Nightmare

This book is a true account of what should have been the simplest of operations but turned out to be a disastrous result for Jim, the author.



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At the age of four, because of the Easter bombings in May 1941, my family was bombed out of our beautiful home and evacuated to a farm thirty miles north of Belfast, Northern Ireland. A year or so later, we returned and lived in a very deprived area in the city. My father, an old soldier, was an alcoholic and a heavy smoker, who smoked in the region of a thousand cigarettes a week; the cupboards were bare and family life broke down. My mother had little or no money for food, or even necessary items. I became something of a problem child and at around the age of ten, was convicted of theft for stealing food. I was put in the care of an extremely tough children's home until the age of sixteen. Because of the problems in my early life, I never did smoke or drink, and at the age of twenty-six, I married, and subsequently, my wife and I went into fostering which we did for many years, along with our six children. We finally retired over forty-five years later.