Sunday, May 26th, 2013
A day "off" from hospital visiting was spent in the garden and, for a few short hours, I was actually able to almost forget about this entire ongoing saga and just relax a little in the sunshine, read a couple of books, and listen to the test match on the radio.
Monday, May 27th, 2013 (Bank Holiday)
After two whole days of not thinking about the place, it really was a wrench to drag myself out into the rain and take myself back to the hospital once more on that Monday evening, and I misjudged the timing dreadfully, forgetting completely that the Bank Holiday traffic which snarled me up last time would be much dissipated by the rain. Instead, after popping into the supermarket to get some perishables for my lunches during the working part of the week, I sat in the car park as the end of the day's play fizzled out due to bad light and then listened to Aggers and Geoffrey Boycott review the day's play before grabbing mum's washed nightclothes out of the car, paying the parking fees and trudging once more unto the breach, so to speak.
Of course it didn't help that the lady opposite had at least half a dozen visitors surrounding her. You could almost smell the seething resentment that was emanating from the other "less popular" patients. Still, I arrived at my mother's bedside once again and she seemed cheery enough, although obviously disappointed that I wasn't being her Milky Bar supplier today, once she'd told me how much she'd enjoyed such a forbidden fruit.
Meanwhile I talked about my weekend activities, or lack thereof, and then did it all over again when, then minutes later, she asked me whether we'd we'd been anywhere this weekend. Because of her back, mum has a great deal of trouble getting comfortable, so we jiggled pillows and manoeuvered the bed for a while whilst we discussed her lack of interest and ability to concentrate upon anything.
Other than that, the talk was mostly about her stomach being "off" again and the lack of doctors seen during the three-day Bank Holiday weekend (although "Jonathan" from OT is "lovely", apparently), which didn't quite make sense when she started telling me about the "infected lumps" in her stomach and the "things they want to remove from her groin" so I kind of, as the saying goes, let that pass...
I also found out that she has to share a walking frame with the lady in the next bed, because there's only one available between the two of them but luckily their bathroom trips have, so far, not coincided.
Mum was obviously flagging, energy-wise, so I drifted off back to the car park, with the knot which seems to form in my own stomach whenever I go to that place returning after its two day break. Still, there was an excellent Blues track playing on Radio 2 as I headed home, and mum's former work colleague had apparently telephoned in my absence and offered to do the Tuesday visit to give me a night off...
Tuesday, May 28th, 2013
Back to work after the Bank Holiday and I have the kind of day that leaves me feeling so stressed, exhausted and anxious that it was just as well that i didn't have to think about the hospital, or about visiting it for a while...
Wednesday, May 29th, 2013
Mum rings me at about 10.00am to tell me that they're going to do "this biopsy thing" which is apparently what the "groin" thing was that she was referring to the other day. This had, apparently, been rescheduled from yesterday afternoon when mum woke up and "forgot" she was supposed to be "nil by mouth" and ate a biscuit...
I'll bet she was popular, then... as, no doubt, was the fiendish biscuit supplier...
Anyway, the upshot of all that is that she might be spark out when I get there for evening visiting, so she thinks that I ought to ring first, not realising that, to be honest, it's far easier to just show up than to try and get some kind of sense from the system...
And so, when the evening rolled around, despite being far too exhausted, I dragged myself back to that dreadful place and, because I was early, stopped in the shop for another Milky Bar because it's just so much easier if I avoid the sulks I would have got if I hadn't.
I don't know whether its fatigue or that vague sense of light at the end of the tunnel, but the place seemed very odd to me that evening - I kept getting flashbacks to "Carry On" films combined with a sense of institutionalisation, as I watched porters in uniforms running through routines that were so familiar to them that you could almost touch the over-familiarity and inevitability as they almost reluctantly carried a piece of equipment to wherever it was needed.
It's hard to describe what I mean by that, but the feeling was very vivid at the time...
At the bedside, mum was in her chair, having survived the afternoon's procedure. She'd only had a local anaesthetic and had been allowed to eat, despite the "nil by mouth" sign which was still in evidence and meant that she'd not been given any water, a fact which I soon remedied. I then took down and returned the "nil by mouth" sign on the obvious assumption that if it was left in place, mum might not get any breakfast, which I didn't want to become my fault. "That couldn't happen" I was told, (although recent events have convinced me otherwise), but I was told that mum would have been very "vocal" about it if it had, which was an interesting way of putting it.
Perhaps they are ready to see the back of her, too.
Actually, mum's main preoccupation tonight was the fact that Social Services have decided that she's better off going home after being discharged, rather than into a care home, which is an interesting decision which was, I'm sure, in no way financial... (Ahem!). Well, it's their call, but with the boomerang effect of the last few times she's gone home, I fully expect that they'll find her back again fairly soon if they try that one... She'll need extra help, they admit, and a handle to help her to get in and out of bed, but it does seem that they are preparing her for release fairly soon.
The rest of the visit was a whirlwind of talk about biscuits, me being mistaken for a farmer (a visitor on that woman's previous ward had been one), tales of a visit by "Pauline's daughter" (a neighbour's child who mum hadn't met before), mum putting more money on the telephone account herself, waiting whilst she made another long visit to the loo, and the inevitable decision to get back into bed on her return.
Still, at least everyone has their own walking frame again, and, despite claiming not to be interested in anything, mum's observations of life in the ward, a kind of "all human life is here" moment, would seem to suggest otherwise, and I headed back to my car convinced that we are about to enter a new, post hospital era (however briefly) any day now...
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