WEEKEND WOES II

Another update to my jolly little unfolding tale of the story of my hospital visits in the weeks following my mother's stroke. I think that I can firmly cross my fingers or "touch wood" (which I'm sure has now rather alarmingly changed its meaning, unfortunately) or indulge in whatever other superstitions that we all indulge in that are not-at-all guaranteed to mean that we're not tempting fate to come along and kick us in the nethers and say that the immediate crisis has passed, and things seem to have improved enough for me to be able to think about moving "off-topic" on some mornings and just knock out some occasional bulletins on a semi-regular basis.

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

Sunday came along and once again I was able to go about my day without feeling the need to be making a call to the ward in the morning. I know that my sister is still making those regular calls and I tend to believe that if there was a setback, she would let me know, and if thee was a serious setback, the hospital would be contacting me anyway.

This meant that I was able to have a relatively normal Sunday as planned, and we headed off to town on the train to meet a friend in a "Pie and Ale" shop for lunch (not that I could have much in the way of the "Ale" option because I would be driving later...) which was jolly relaxing and whilst the whole topic of the troubling sequence of recent events did crop up, we were able to get away from it all for a few hours, which is always encouraging.

By the time we got back, I had to do a pretty swift turnaround and got into the car and headed back - ironically along much the same route as the train took an hour earlier - to the hospital where the parking machine did not, at least, swallow more of my cash than was strictly necessary.

We actually had a jolly hour chatting away, perhaps because I actually had something to talk about today, what with going out and briefly chatting to a neighbour as I put out the bins when I got back. They had a friend staying with them because of a water leak disaster destroying much of their own house whilst they were away on holiday which is, of course, tragic, but did help me to fill a few minutes of conversation with mum, which is, perhaps, not the brightest of silver linings that could be gleaned, but, as I keep telling mum, you really need to concentrate on the positives.

I also tried to persuade her to realise that the things like being made to sit in her chair and not being able to sleep when you want are all things designed to help her to get better, to stop her from getting sores and to improve her circulation to her feet, and are not things to admonish the staff for, and the fact that she gets "angry" (although the staff claimed not to have noticed) comes from her own sense of frustration that she's not getting better more quickly, even though it has still only been just over a week since she surfaced from that deep unconsciousness that was so troubling...

We also discussed her church friends and how significant mum actually is in those circles, as well as discussing her continued improvement (my brief chat to the nurse had her still telling me that they're "very pleased" with her progress - although another gastroscopy is looming on the horizon) although there was a "darker" moment when we touched upon the fact that "she wouldn't want to go on living like this..." which is a line of thought I'm going to have to keep an eye on, even though I was able to "jolly her along" and talk her away from it this time, she does have far too much time to brood upon such things sitting all alone in that side ward.

That said, there seem to be plans afoot to persuade her back onto the main ward, but so far she is resisting those, but I'm not expecting her to win that particular battle, to be perfectly honest with you...