HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 190513 (PART ONE)

Sunday, 19th May, 2013

In the end, I did actually get my perhaps rather selfish Saturday "off" from hospital visiting, even though it turned into one of those summer Saturdays when I didn't achieve very much apart from listening to the test match and battling with the growing mountains of washing up. In the evening, I was so determined not to have my "fun" disturbed that I even felt confident enough to unplug the phone so that nobody who knew me, most especially my mother, could possibly telephone me during the "Doctor Who" finale, or our annual tapping of the pencils on the teeth as we scored the singing sections of this year's Eurovision Song Contest...

Cheese and wine and cheesy music... Excellent stuff, to be endured enjoyed without a care or a worry intruding into it...

So, after our Sunday drive-around, somehow managing to miss all of the more crucial parts of the final day's play in the first test against New Zealand whilst mooching around in department stores, supermarkets, garden centres and cafes, we eventually pulled up once again in the car park adjacent to the ward in which my mother seems to be almost permanently housed.

She was, of course, completely asleep when we got there, and so I had to gently wake her up for the dubious pleasure of our company. This might not have been as cruel as it seems as she was going to be woken up anyway a couple of minutes later as it was time for her go at the latest round of blood pressure and temperature taking anyway.

And so, after we'd given mum a few moments to come around (her first words: "There's some washing for you to take with you...") a brief(ish) visit followed in which she complained about another broken night so loudly that the poor unfortunate who had broken it felt the need to apologise, in the middle of a chaotic visit of her own, and the same old tales about wanting to sleep came around again.

Yesterday had not been in any way eventful, it seems, although mum is now at least attempting to read and make telephone calls, although the phone credit had run out mid call, and we did have to take out another £15 bundle in order for the "free calls" to actually start working again which seemed a tad suspicious to me in terms of trades descriptions, if nothing else...

I also got a couple of signatures so that I could attempt some official paperwork, and made a call to a friend of mum's in order to get a telephone number for another friend of mums... which sounds weirder than it actually is, but sometimes she works in mysterious ways.

Anyway, our chatting lasted just under an hour and I was able to suggest that I might start to cut back on the daily visiting for a while, and we headed back towards the car park with the bags of washing, just in time to have missed the final few overs of the game...

Monday, 20th May, 2013

A day off, at least from visiting. Instead, I trotted off to bed at a time which would have frustrated a toddler and as a consequence had the best night's sleep I can remember having in a long time...

Tuesday, 21st May, 2013

A telephone call at work about 9.00am from my mother indicates that things are starting to return to normal. She tells me that she had a couple of visitors on Monday anyway, an old work colleague and the chaplain who is also an old family friend, so my absence was not a problem, although I detect a little of her old criticisms in the casual question "Will I see you today?" that "she hasn't seen me for a couple of days..."

Returning to the hospital visiting treadmill after a 48 hour gap, I find that I am no less inspired in terms of what to talk about, but at least I got to return the washing. Mum had had another visitor from amongst her church friends anyway during the afternoon, so my miserable face was rapidly becoming redundant.

Still, we had a pleasant enough chat about this and that, and I was able to find out that the "physiotherapist/optician" who appears to have been looking at mum's eyes (which looked "brighter" to me today) has been discussing her "post-hospital" respite care with her again, that they are talking about looking at her liver and that they are still pushing magnesium into her at every available opportunity.

Mum is also reading "but not really" and still has little interest in the world beyond the confines of her own head, which probably isn't all that good her her, really, especially as she's not even bothering to watch TV, either. As my sister put it later, it really is a case of "use it or lose it" but... ah, what can you do...?

I had a long chat with a tiny nurse with bright red hair (once she got a moment), because I'd not had an "official" conversation with anyone for quite a few days and, whilst they remain "pleased" with mum's progress, there's a lot of stuff planned for Thursday (if possible - they have to ring and see if there's a slot available apparently) which she reeled off lots of technical terms for but which is most probably a procedure involving a gastroscope and a possible insertion of a "stent", whatever that is... We also finally began talking about plans for what happens after mum is released, but these were slightly different to what mum had been telling me, so I suspect that little is actually set in stone as yet, because it's still quite some way off.

In the car park as I left, a gentleman tapped on my window and waved a fiver at me, asking if I had any change. I did, but not for a fiver (pound coins having become quite precious in this car park heavy life I'm living), but I was able to give him my ticket which still had forty minutes or so left on it, so he went any happy enough and not completely convinced of my selfishness.

I headed home but, despite the exhaustion, ended up ringing my sister and nattering for an hour or more. One of the things that emerged was that a friend of mum's has offered to visit on the days that I don't which will, at least, lift some of that commitment from my shoulders for a few days...