THE LONGEST DAY...?

April 23rd, 2013 7.30am

It turned out to be a very long day.

I arrived at work, ready to start and was in the middle of writing an email when my mobile phone rang. It was a nurse from the hospital who had finally managed to track me down, as I would discover hours (days...?) later when I finally got an opportunity to check for any messages on my landline.

Of course, when the hospital rings you and demands your presence because "the doctors want to talk to you" you do think that this is some sort of code for "something we're not allowed to tell you over the phone" and so I immediately assumed that the worst had already happened and got rather upset (even surprisingly so) as I packed up the office, made a couple of telephone calls, dashed off an explanatory email to my colleagues, and got into my car and headed off stressfully through the morning rush hour traffic, assuming that the brutal parking problems at the hospital would make a bad ordeal worse. (Pauses to consider whether a "dire emotional stress" car park should be made available, or at least an amnesty for the lousy parking of those on mercy dash or similar...)

They mentioned that she'd had a number of seizures in the night and that kind of sounded to me like a preparational precursor to "We did everything we could... but..."

But I got there, and pumped as many pound coins into the parking machine as it would accept (although it rejected one of them, but my sanity was saved by finding two 50p coins in my other pocket) and dashed to the ward after stopping for a "comfort break" after my two early-morning buckets of coffee did their usual job on me. Minutes later, I strolled into the ward and was swiftly directed to the waiting or "family" room, and turned left instead of right and ended up opening the door of a mercifully empty staff changing room until I realised my mistake and worked out where I was supposed to be going.

After a nurse had settled me in and offered me the first of many rejected cups of tea, then the first of four conversations that I would have with doctors that day occurred. This was with a lovely young girl who looked barely old enough to be out of sixth form, but who obviously knew her stuff and explained what had happened overnight, what they were currently doing to combat the seizures, how they were just about to give mum a CT scan, and that remained optimistic and hopeful about the possibility of a certain amount of recovery. I was told that I would be able to see her in a few minutes, and so I sloped off to dispose off more coffee, and got back just in time to see the staff wheeling her off down the corridor for the promised scan...

She looked dreadful, and, after dashing to the car to get my phone charger because I'd spotted a handy plug socket, I parked myself in the waiting room, and wished that I'd brought a book with me because I was getting far, far too upset sitting there just thinking. Happily, I noticed a small selection of books on a table (rather tactlessly I thought,  they seemed to be mostly murder mysteries), and started reading one for a while until they all returned and I relocated to the bedside.

Sitting with mum on a very noisy and claustrophobic ward (I heard "I'm a believer " by the Monkees at one point which seemed somewhat surreal) was very, very upsetting, because she is, as the cliche goes, a shadow of her former self and I really began to feel that there was no "dignity" in this existence. The feisty, sometime annoying, always opinionated woman seems gone, replaced with a sleeping husk who can barely talk whenever she does happen to surface, and I suddenly found that I was missing her old, "spirited" and curmudgeonly self rather dreadfully.

As I read the paperback I'd chosen, her eyes would flicker occasionally and she would wake up in need of the loo and I would be dispatched back to the waiting room to read a little and await another recall, and this happened a few times until one of my absences corresponded with another seizure, and then she had yet another one whilst I was waiting for the nurse to do her checks.

Those are not pleasant to see, and as a team of doctors arrived, I was bustled out of the way and meandered back to the waiting room again, convinced that this might very well be the proverbial "it..."

Someone promised to come and get me when whatever the procedures that they wanted to do to control the seizures were done, but as I sat there for another two and a half hours unable to concentrate enough to read the book any more, I kind of got the impression that they'd forgotten I was there, and would have believed it if they hadn't kept sending people to talk to me and ask me to make decisions that I felt rather unqualified to make.

The second doctor came in and ushered some other people who were nattering out before closing the door behind him. This was my second experience of expecting the "We did everything we could... but..." conversation that day, so what he did talk about kind of washed over me, was all rather bewildering, and I pretty much forgot everything he told me almost immediately, but I got the distinct impression that he was a neurological specialist and many of the other issues of her medical history were of little interest to him. He went away, and accidentally locked me in, a fact which I didn't even notice until the third doctor tried to get in to talk to me and couldn't.

She was a very understanding consultant stroke specialist (I think) who talked a great deal of sense and had been the first person to diagnose mum's stroke the previous week, but she was also someone who had a terribly pragmatic air about her which was, at least, refreshingly frank. To be honest, talking to all three of them had managed to make me feel like I was totally stupid but, last time I looked, I wasn't actually stupid, even though I'm probably not as clever as they are, otherwise I might have been a doctor too.

This is not a criticism, by the way. I'm just very easily intimidated by intellect, and that day was no exception.

After she left, my long period of suspecting that I had been forgotten about started, and included nearly the entire period of afternoon visiting hours as people came into the room, grabbed chairs that were "too heavy" and went away wondering who that strange man must be, sitting there for no very good reason. I filled the time by ringing my sister for travel updates as she drove back north after only driving home the previous day, and working out that the room was just over eleven of my shoe lengths long by just over seven wide.

I hadn't been forgotten though, because a visitor from mum's church was pointed in my direction and we had a nice little chat until she had to go and complete the rounds of her visiting list and my refusal of any cups of tea seemed to leave her a little nonplussed by me.

After she'd gone, I wondered - I still do, to be honest - whether I was being to bleak about the outlook. I mean, I know that the outlook is bleak, but I wondered whether I should have been putting a more positive spin on things...? I wondered it again later on that evening when I spoke to another of mum's friends on the telephone when she rang for an update. The problem is that you can't really lie to people and be too optimistic, but equally, you don't want to turn out to be the boy who cried "wolf" either...

Equally that friend was the one who first mentioned "pathways" which seemed to get mentioned quite often that day once I'd picked up on the term. I thought that it was a charity, but it might be a system for helping people to just "slip away..." which sounds quite distasteful if you have to be the one making the call to allow it, but seems to make life "easier" for everyone else and makes me think of how the hospital were able to "time" another acquaintance's recent passing so that his family could be around him at the time...

This church friend was also the first person that day to remind me of the "cause and effect" problem with regard to my mother's condition, in that the mistake made in her discharge prescription from the last time she was sent home led to her being admitted four days later with stomach bleeds which meant that they had to withhold the Warfarin, which increased the chances of her having a stroke, which then, of course, actually happened and which then couldn't be treated with the usual blood thinners because of the ulcerated stomach...

Something to ponder upon there in the long, dark nights, I fear...

Meanwhile, my mother continued to sleep and my sister got ever closer and I kept on expecting the inevitable "it" to come but somehow it never did, at least not on St George's Day, as my mother continued to sleep and come around and sleep again, but to look at her really was just heartbreaking when I remembered how she usually is...

My sister arrived having made astonishing time (we'll draw a veil over quite how...) and went into full throttle "raging whirlwind" mode in a way that my passively sitting in a waiting room hadn't, so very quickly after that, my fourth conversation with a doctor that day happened, and it was once again the child-like first one I talked to that morning. I was surprised to find her still on duty as my sense of time was unravelling fast and I'd also got the impression that the lunchtime shift changes are what led to my slight sense of abandonment.

So, after another heartbreaking bedside visit, it was my sister who finally dragged me to a canteen for a cup of tea and a council of war, after I'd been refusing the drinks at least all day and, after one more return visit to the bedside, we decided to leave for the day, fully aware that we might be called back at any moment and knowing that the longest day might very well now be followed by a very long night.

I arrived home utterly exhausted and spent the evening dealing with messages and less than optimistic chat with the various old ladies and church ministers who wanted to know about what was happening. The minister had visited, he said, and prayed without knowing whether she could hear him, but I assured him that I was sure that it was some comfort to her, and meanwhile I found myself still wondering if I should be less "honest" with mum's friends when they ring, because there's always hope of a recovery, I suppose and I might still be painting far too pessimistic a picture I fear, and upsetting frail old ladies isn't something any of us ought to do...

So now we enter a strange kind of limbo... a waiting game where you want the situation to be over, but also don't want it to be over, if that doesn't sound too strange or heartless...? I want to return to my desk because I feel slightly less useless there than I do just sitting around in the hospital, even though sudden disappearing acts are still a possibility. Meanwhile, I dread the phone ringing, but also dread being too far from it in case it rings...

But then... Well, the doctors still talk of her having more scans in "a couple of weeks" so I'm kind of aware that we're not out of the woods as yet, and recovery is still an option, but also that this year's distractions might yet continue for some time to come...