I know that I’ve whined and moaned and
complained about my experiences visiting the hospital over these past few weeks
but, when I think about it, in some ways I really am so lucky. Don’t get me
wrong, the situation is still an utter nightmare when the entire burden must fall as it does upon the shoulders of just one person and isn’t able to be shared around a
little, and I’m still feeling frustrated and angry and exhausted at the whole
wretched business, but I do realise that it could be far, far worse.
After all, it doesn’t take a genius to look
around a ward and see slices of other lives which appear to be falling apart
just as chaotically, and, believe me, the grinding glacial slowness of the
average hospital visit when you’re desperate to think of something new or
interesting to say, gives you plenty of opportunities to look around and see
what’s going on.
The man quietly sitting and holding the
hand of an old lady who doesn’t even respond; The endless buzzing of an alarm
from someone who needs help getting out of the loo but which the staff all
ignore until they get a chance to respond to it; The old lady sitting in the
wheelchair endlessly repeating “help me” to which no-one who will listen; The
bewildered looking wanderers who drift into the wrong ward and just sit down at
the first available bedside and then can’t be found by the staff supposed to be
looking after them; The incredibly shouty lady in the next bed who was just as
rude, if not more so, to her entire family than my mother is to me; The lady
who apparently wanders around in the wee small hours and goes and sits on other
people’s beds in the middle of the night; The lady who wandered in and got
violent and angry with the staff who tried to get her back to her bed,
bellowing that “I’ve worked here for twenty years!”; And the others who are
just basically so far away with the fairies that you wonder where it is they
think they are…
Alzheimer’s disease really is such a cruel
thing to have, and when the patient becomes violent as well, it’s really hard
for everyone else who has to deal with it, so, despite the little spats I have
with my mother, I should be thankful that I don’t have to cope with any of
that, for the moment at least.
Some of the nurses are just so kind and so
understanding despite the most dreadful of provocations that I really, really
don’t even begin to understand how they have the patience to put up with it,
because I know that I can’t.
It seems that I can’t even manage a simple
visit without provoking some kind of mutual hostility, and yet, to be perfectly
honest, my tetchy battle over a bag of crisps pales into insignificance compared
to some of that stuff, even though it was infuriating at the time.
That particular storm in a teacup went
something like this:
We arrived to visit and were greeted with a
less than cheery “Hello. Did you bring
me any sweets? Any cheese?” There then followed the usual discussion about diet
and bingeing on foodstuffs that are very bad for you when the main problem
seems to be to do with the digestive system.
After that I got the usual “You don’t know
what it’s like you get so bored…” to
which the solution is, apparently, not to read your book, make a few phone
calls or watch telly, but to stuff your gullet with any and all of the
available snack food whilst not selecting much off the menu.
There then followed a soliloquy about
crisps which we again discussed the appalling nature of, nutrition-wise and
tried to steer the conversation in other directions. After about ten minutes of
trying to make conversation about the things going on in our lives, none of
which seemed to be of any interest whatsoever, she turned around, looked me straight
in the eye and said:
“Do you think you’d like to go and get me
some crisps from the shop…?”
Well, no… I wouldn’t actually, but then I
did because, quite frankly, it’s just so very much easier to just do that.
We could talk about a sense of entitlement,
or whether I don’t know what it’s like being so bored, or the inadvisability of
stuffing your face, or what’s bad for you until we’re red in the face and
furious as hell with each other, but sometimes it’s just so much simpler to
stroll off to the shop, let off a little steam as I do so, and buy the damned
crisps.
In the end I just go because it’s the
easiest option which is either very courageous of me or, more likely I suspect,
completely weak…
Equally, my delayed and ultimately
temporary collection of my mother on that Sunday afternoon was messed up and
that was also, apparently, all my fault.
Instead of doing what I arranged with the
ward and heading there for three o’clock, I did what my mother suggested and
rang the ward beforehand, at about 2.30, just as I was due to leave. They told
me to hang on and wait for a call, because mother was being transferred to a
different unit in “about ten minutes” and they thought I might need to wait for
an hour or so after that.
At 3.20 the hospital rang me and asked
where I was because they’d been told I was coming at three o’clock, which, of
course, I would have been if I hadn’t followed my mother’s instructions.
Later on, in the car, I was told in no
uncertain terms that I ought to have rung the ward because “They’d have known
what was going on…” and any suggestion I might have made that I was only doing
what the ward told me to do was simply not believed.
I know… Whingeing again… I’m sorry… Other
people have it far worse… Yada, yada, yada…
Sadly, I still can’t help but get the
impression that the hospital were merely clearing the decks on Sunday before
the changes to the NHS came in, but I don’t suppose anyone would ever admit to
that…
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