FINGERS CROSSED

It might be tempting fate, but I'm going to cross all of my fingers and all of my toes and go forward in the belief that my mother's condition has "stabilised" as we head into another holiday weekend, and keep these updates for those days brief, as I expect them to start having a mercifully consistent and (dare I say it?), predictable and perhaps even slightly dull air about them.

May 3rd, 2013

Friday morning begins rather chilly again after the warmth of Thursday, and I trawl through mum's paperwork at last and find little that causes any immediate concerns, am able to pay off one outstanding invoice via telephone, and my regular morning call to the ward was connected to a staff nurse who was brief and to the point: Mum had a very comfortable night with no alarms, no problems, and no new developments, or anything else of an unexpected nature to be concerned about.

Why is it at this point that I'm always expecting the other shoe to drop...?

And so Friday progresses. For the first time in a while I don't speak to my sister, mostly because it's become an exchange of exactly the same nugget of information over the past couple of mornings. I finish work a few minutes earlier than usual in order to give myself time to get to the bank, where I am as honest about the situation as I can be, am given some forms to fill in, and am advised to get a doctor's letter.

I also pay in a cheque that I found in mum's mail, and I then visit the flat to send an email confirming its receipt and chat to a couple of mum's concerned neighbours about the current circumstances. After that, I find myself a little early for my haircut appointment and slope into the charity book shop and manage to pick up yet more clutter for my house, but I also realised that the second-hand audiobooks they seem to have in stock might be just the thing mum needs if her eyesight doesn't improve.

And so I roll my way into the hospital car park gain as the nursing shifts switch into "Bank Holiday Weekend" mode and many of the more "familiar faces" escape for a few days respite. It definitely feels as if the "B Team" are now in control, which is troubling, but I'm sure that they're fine. It's just that you very quickly find the people that you're most comfortable with, the ones that appear to have the time and patience to listen to your banal questions, and it's hard to try and work out who they are all over again.

But mum seems jolly enough, and happy about the nuggets of news that I've manage to glean about what they're actually treating her for, what actually happened to her when she was taken ill (I prefer to say "seizures" rather than her use of the term "fits"), and what the plan is for her recuperation and eventual return to the world outside. She has been out of bed though, and has promised the therapist from Occupational Health that she will continue with her efforts to walk over the holiday weekend. She also says that she felt "comfortable" in that bed for the first time in a long time, but still seems confused by the red button alarm system.

By the end of the hour, mum seemed very tired and was getting rather vague and could hear the children chatting to their relatives in the main ward, but then also claimed to hear music that really wasn't there, which I joked had better not be a heavenly choir of angels, which made her smile. I took her sense that she thought she needed the toilet (and buzzing to summon a nurse) as my cue to depart and returned my chair to the storage area before bidding my farewells and asking if she wanted me to find a nurse for her.

When she said "He's been" I did begin to worry that she might be hallucinating as there'd hardly been time, which led to a slightly troubled journey home as I wondered whether these were the early signs of another "incident" and I eased my conscience with a telephone call to the ward once I arrived home, where the assurance that "she's fine" did not exactly fill me with confidence...