THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART ONE)

This was written a few weeks ago now, shortly after the event, but didn't easily fit into the ridiculous notion I had of telling an ongoing narrative for the period of advent, and so it has had to lurk, wait and fester on the perimeter of snowy Lesser Blogfordshire for the opportunity of having its moment in the sun (or weak wintry sunshine if you prefer).

This is the start of a story (which I will probably much return to - be warned!) that has been taking up much of my free time this last few weeks and might in some small and inadequate way help to explain why, having bashed out a large chunk of my "Not Very Christmassy" tale in the early part of December, I stuck with sharing that - sadly unedited - with you rather than the events unfolding in my little life. Somehow, my bleak and bitter reflections on the ongoing story of my mother's illness didn't seem very festive, and my brain was so mashed and there was so little other time available to think of other things to tell you, that it was either go with that or spew out more of this kind of stuff to share with you in the run up to Christmas.

I hope you'll agree that I made the correct choice.

So what actually happened on that fateful recent Sunday to drop that bomb in my life? Well, in some ways not much and in others a huge amount, it depends on how you look at things, I suppose.

The phone rang at 7.20 A.M. as I mentioned, but I was up and about, tapping away at the keyboard having composed a little piece for my sister’s birthday whilst listening to the final session of that day’s test match activity. My brain was in the process of switching over to thinking about my “spectacular” ambitious plans for December’s venture into the world of Lesser Blogfordshire and quite whether I was capable of managing what I thought I wanted to create, and whether anyone would really be interested if I did. After all, linking a load of bits of fiction, in various styles, together as a kind of Blogging Advent calendar was a bit of a daft idea at best, and I could hardly expect to take anyone else along on what might not be the most fascinating of journeys, could I? My previous attempts at fiction on these pages has hardly been the most keenly received of my mutterings in the past, and successful bloggery does tend to wards the “true life” I find.

So, the phone rang. It was my Mum telling me she’d felt unwell and called the emergency doctor who’d issued her a prescription and could I collect it? Otherwise her Gentleman Friend (hereafter known as the GMF) wouldn’t be able to get it to her until mid-afternoon. So I muttered and grumbled my way around the house getting dressed and grabbing a quick “Brunch Bar” (other high energy biscuits are available) out of the biscuit tin, said my fond farewells to my dozing beloved and headed reluctantly out into the icy morning.

I shoved a CD into Blinky’s ancient player and trundled along the treacherous roads in search of the obscure little building that calls itself the “Out of Hours Emergency Clinic” knowing full well that, whilst I’d been there one unpleasant Christmas morning over half a decade ago when Mum had previously felt unwell, I wasn’t really sure where it was. Never-the-less shortly afterwards I was able to pull up at the side of the main road outside the chemist’s that I had thought would be filling the prescription and notice that its shutters were firmly down, sealed up tight against the frozen Sunday morning air.

Happily, hidden behind the roadworks, a short walk away was the clinic I sought, and I strolled in and asked for the vital slip of paper I was after and was handed it. “Job done,” I thought, “Soon be able to get home.”

“When does the chemist’s open?” I asked the receptionist.

“Ten o’clock.”

“Are there any others open?”

“No, even the one in Sainsbury’s doesn’t open until ten on a Sunday.”

“None at all?”

“No.”

“I see…”

Now I know we live in an age of austerity and cutbacks, but even I’m old enough to remember a time when there was always ONE chemist’s that stayed open 24 hours. Mum, I knew, would not be best pleased, but I thought I’d go to her place anyway, maybe have a chat and a coffee until the shuttered emporium opened its doors in a couple of hours.

To me Mum did not look well. Not awful exactly, but really just not herself. I still can’t quite grasp what seemed wrong exactly, but she seemed a bit away with the fairies and was slurring her words more than a tad. I found myself asking questions to make sure she’d eaten properly, because that sometimes affects her that way, and started to get more concerned when she had no recollection at all of what she had eaten for her evening meal the night before. I quickly leapt onto her ancient P.C. (silver surfer, my Mum – we’re so proud) and looked up that F.A.C.E. thing that I vaguely remembered, but it was inconclusive, but time ticked along and we had a chat filled with the awkward silences you get when someone really doesn’t feel quite well enough to be bothered with a bit of a natter.

Now I’m not remotely qualified to make any medical decisions, but I truly felt it would be wrong to just leave her there on her own and I really wanted someone who did have some medical insight to have a quick look at her, to reassure me more than anything else, I suppose. I decided that seeing as the clinic was next door to the chemist’s and I was heading back that way anyway, I might as well take her along with me and see if she could be seen. So I got her all wrapped up, grabbed the walking stick and we headed out across the frozen car park and climbed into Blinky, and headed off.

Then I unpacked her and took her across another ice rink into the clinic to ask whether someone could just check her over. There was a nurse at the reception desk and as I explained the situation, she did point out that due to recent cost-cutting, this was no longer a walk-in centre, but she realised my concerns and told me it would be fine. Then the receptionist returned and started telling me off for not ringing first to make an appointment. Perhaps, I was thinking, it is in her job description to protect the medical staff from the unreasonable demands of the sickly of the parish, after all if we all just walked in to what used to be a “walk-in” centre, chaos would no doubt ensue. I was about to offer to ring her on my mobile to make that very appointment when, luckily, my growing ire was sidelined by the nurse who interrupted her and said it was okay. I know there has to be a system, but Mum had indeed rung that very place that same morning, and I am not a resident of the area and really wasn’t to know the current intricacies of the local healthcare system, although I do now have in my possession a two page document explaining how it all works courtesy of that very same receptionist.

Anyway, Mum was seen by some very lovely folk who did all the tests they could and told me that if I’d rung they’d only have told me to bring her to that very place, so no-one seemed too annoyed at my bucking of the system that day.

Ultimately it was decided that she needed to go to the hospital for further tests and probable admission and, all in all, my concerns had been valid ones. I was asked if I wanted to drive her myself or wait for an ambulance. I decided on the self-drive option and it was only after we’d set off that I remembered the parking nightmare at the hospital and that I wouldn’t be able to pull into an ambulance bay like an ambulance might, even if, technically, I was momentarily an ambulance by proxy.

So I dropped my ailing Mother at the kerbside on a cold and frosty morning, pointed at the wrong double doors and told her I’d meet her inside after I’d parked the car. As quickly as I could, I returned and tracked her down as she’d last been seen staggering off towards the correct double doors and was now comfortably sitting in a bleak waiting room waiting for assessment, the preliminaries of which were swiftly handled by a kindly, if a touch harassed, nurse.

The following seven hours sitting underneath a TV set tuned only to the horrors of an ITV Sunday afternoon waiting for a bed to become available will stay with me a long time, and I didn’t even have to endure it as much as Mum as I disappeared off to her flat for a while to collect her stuff and was back and forth to the car park a number of times to feed the meters (the things I do for fun). A potential hopeful high point came when some senior doctors appeared after six hours only for us to be plunged back into a trough of despond when they disappeared again almost immediately because none of the patients had yet been seen by the (ultimately rather wonderful) junior doctor.

Watching one amazing nurse having to run around supervising the entire ward alone whilst a number of upset and confused elderly ladies, obviously suffering from various types of dementia, tried to escape into the bitter evening convinced me that those making any cutbacks to the NHS should really be forced to spend some time in a ward like that one, and also that, if the time ever comes that the government do decide that I’m finally allowed to retire, maybe they should just put a bullet through my head, rather than letting me decline to that extent.

Sorry, it was a rough day.