BACK TO "NORMAL"

April 30th, 2013

And so, the routine returns back to "normal" or, at least, whatever facsimile of "normal" that it chooses to mimic.

I returned to work after my weekend break, opened up the office, and set about the weekend's emails, whilst trying to summon up the courage to ring the hospital. Eventually, I do ring and receive the familiar mantra that mum's had a "restful" night, especially now that she has been moved into a more private space due to a stomach upset which, because they are not certain whether it may or may not be an infection of some sort, requires isolation.

Being asleep and a death's door last week didn't require any privacy, it seemed, but that did.

I then made a couple of attempts at ringing my sister to find out when she was planning on leaving, and finally got through on her "hands-free" set as she was approaching Birmingham, which rather made the question redundant, although I managed to stifle my slight feeling of paranoia that she was ignoring my calls for some, as yet unspecified, reason.

In the meanwhile I received a telephone call from mum's home care company because they hadn't been able to speak to her in person, a marketing call asking if she was satisfied with the service. It was hard to say, given that her use of the service has been very minimal over the past couple of months, but I was able to ascertain that we didn't owe them any money at the moment.

After all, I wouldn't want them sending the cleaners round...

On a more positive note, they were able to point me at the correct department for asking about mum's "alarm button" which is supposed to be hanging around her neck at all times. This, it seems, we do owe money on, although, given the circumstances, I was able to explain the situation satisfactorily enough for them not to be planning on sending out their stern reminders, although that still needs to be sorted out whenever I get the chance.

And so the working day rolled on until I packed up and headed home, grabbed a microwave meal, turned myself around, and headed sleepily out into the evening traffic for my first "solo" hospital visit in a while, something I was not really anticipating enjoying very much, to be honest, as I'm still pretty sure that I will always struggle to find enough to say to adequately fill the time.

But it was jolly enough.

Despite mum being hopelessly vague and confused, we managed to have a decent enough chat, although she appears to have no sense of time passing, as she was convinced that it was mid-afternoon when I arrived, and her opinion that she had sat in the chair at one point varied between whether it had been "yesterday" or "today" when the story and the memory switched to saying that she'd been in bed "all day". I was able to spoon-feed her some fluids, and to get across the notion that her daughter had now gone home - I'd already received a text saying that she'd arrived safely - although mum seemed to think that she would be staying for a week, she didn't quite grasp that the week had already passed and included her four days of unconsciousness.

Of course, her sense of time might have been improved if there had been a clock in the room, or, indeed, if mum's wristwatch hadn't "gone missing" in the transfer to the side ward yesterday afternoon. it had still been on her bedside cupboard during my visit in the afternoon, because I'd noticed it sitting there, but, for some reason, it was now nowhere to be found amongst her belongings.

Mum, of course, had begun to obsess about where it was, which is never healthy, and I rang my sister just to check that she'd not put it anywhere for safe-keeping, but she was as much at a loss about its whereabouts as I was, but you do need to check before you put on your stern face, don't you?

My enquiries at the reception desk found out little other than the fact that they were aware that she'd "lost" it, and they thought that it might have been locked inside her bedside "medicine safe" for safety, but they'd have to wait for someone with an access key before they could check.

Hmmmm....

So, after bidding further farewells to my now rather tired old mum (I have that effect on people...),  I strolled off into the night, and it was only later on, as I endured a sleepless night which rather undid all of the good work that my weekend away had done, that I realised that both her gold cross and her alarm button had not been around her neck.

Hopefully, both of those had been put in the safe for "safe-keeping" too, when they had changed her yesterday...