Sunday, June 23rd, 2013
Yet another week has gone by and another Sunday afternoon rolls by. My decision about quite when to visit remains a little vague right up until the moment of departure. The weather is lousy so a midsummer day in the garden becomes increasingly unlikely; The start of the cricket final I want to listen to is delayed and delayed again so that I run the risk of missing the finish if I visit during the evening; The film we think we might like to see isn't quite tempting enough. Eventually the clincher is needing to get to a supermarket to buy something for our evening meal, so I head off into the dreadful afternoon traffic and arrive at the bedside a few minutes late.
Mum is asleep but immediately wakes as I arrive to ask about the flowers she wants ordering. This is the latest obsession and my various objections about flowers on wards, and it being too early to mark the anniversary of the gentleman friend's demise, are invalid it appears, as well as my excuse that it's proved a tad difficult to get hold of my sister this weekend.
Other than that, mother is "feeling a lot better today" and ate both her breakfast and her lunch, and even managed to wash herself this morning, whilst her stomach appears to be behaving itself a little more. She is being advised to "walk more" but as she is being kept in isolation, this seems to be proving difficult.
The chat today is about how wonderful "Bijou" the nurse is, and how mum talks in French with him, the fact that she wants to buy herself a mobile telephone whenever she gets home, the difference between "worrying" and "caring", me forgetting to bring the washing back and having had to put the heating on two days after midsummer's day in order to have the vaguest hope of drying it, the fact that I have "no interests" (because cinema and theatre don't count as interests in comparison to taking the kids to the beach apparently), and about my fateful history of not being married or having children, despite my life having "gone wrong" at all of the moments when that might once have been an option.
I'm such a disappointment I suspect...
Still, before I leave, she does ask me to bring a local paper with me some time which is, again, a step in the right direction and further evidence of taking more interest in the world which is probably a good sign.
Monday, June 24th, 2013
A rare day on which I hear nothing and have no contact whatsoever with the hospital, my sister, my mother or any of her friends, although a chirruping bird that happens to make a sound almost exactly like a slightly muffled and distant telephone ringing did rather fox me after I'd headed off to bed early.
Tuesday, June 25th, 2013
Halfway to Christmas... Although, after five-and-a-half-months of this, I'm still waiting for 2013 to get properly started...
A mid-morning call from my sister fills in the gap of yesterday but adds to the complexities of trying to make a complaint to a hospital where six different emails go to six different people, all of whom insist on being filled in on all of the information they've already had so that they cam "make a start" on their investigations. Investigations that they have claimed to have made a start on on each previous occasion, too, by the way.
I'm now confused because I don't know quite where certain paperwork might actually be after the intervening weeks, and so that's something else to have to deal with when I get home, although, when I do it' is actually found eventually after a bit of a hunt.
Meanwhile the "flowers" debate has also caused ructions in Cornwall... so, it is with a certain amount of trepidation that I head towards the hospital for the latest of my evening visits. As I arrive, the first thing I hear is the nurse who got everything wrong when talking to me a few weeks ago giving her name out over the telephone, so that goes into the notebook.
I'm feeling rather exhausted today and possibly not in the most receptive of moods, but the subsequent fifty minutes or so won't ever go down as the finest hour in my relationship with my mother. It wasn't that it was awful or anything, just utterly depressing and debilitating. It starts with her telling me that she felt much better than she had been, that she had eaten more, and started listening to her radio, all of which are positive signs, and that she had slept for most of Monday, and that her stomach was behaving itself a lot more. The Doctor had told her this morning that there had been a bug in her system but it had cleared up and, if the latest sample is clear, they might put her back on the main ward.
So far, so good...
Mum then starts to tell me that my sister is out on a National Trust visit but I don't hear her properly which triggers a raised voice of the "I SAID..." variety which implied that I wasn't actually bothering to listen to her words in the first place.
This is how an avalanche begins...
Tales of visits from the Chaplain and mum's Minister trigger a row about the infection risk and whether or not I should report to the nurse and get myself bagged up in plastic before I venture into the room, like the sainted Minister and "all of the nurses" do, (even though they don't...). As if to prove my point, a nurse then pops in with the lunch options for tomorrow without gloves or plastic apron, so I begin to think that my mother either just wants me to look even more ridiculous or that this dreaded obsession with "the rules" is resurfacing. Of course the fact that I did ask at the desk on the first day she was returned to the side ward and they said it was fine to go in as I was is irrelevant, of course, because she has to know best and "they put up these signs for a good reason, you know..."
With that fractious moment behind us, the talk returns to her wanting "a block of cheese" to keep in the fridge for the nurses to bring her the occasional slice of (not going to happen), the fact that a camera still hasn't been put up her bottom (for which I thought that she'd be grateful, to be honest with you), the use of the commode (such a joyful topic), how much more she "reckons" the beloved's family ought to be doing to help us because "if it was the other way around she'd be helping us out a lot more" (Yeah, right...! No wonder the beloved is getting impatient with my "wanting a quiet life" approach to my mother...), how "bloody useless" she feels not being able to wash herself (although she did on Sunday), or walk very far because she's "restricted" to this tiny room, although later on she says that she's not looking forward to being on the main ward again either, despite her complaints when she was moved away from her "friends"previously, because you really can't win with this woman. I also note that her instructions to me to draw the curtains and switch on the lights before I leave are things that she could have done herself in an effort to be more mobile, but instead she chooses to get me to do them for her instead.
I then realise that I've forgotten to bring back her washing. A genuine moment of forgetfulness which triggers a rant of the "These things are IMPORTANT! You don't UNDERSTAND!" variety and which then reminds her about the f***ing flowers all over again...
Bah!
Interestingly enough, just before I leave, because she's worried about me and worried about my lack of sleep, she suggest that I take a "week off" from visiting her and whilst I feel like that wouldn't be the worst idea, I still find myself wondering "But who else is there?" and assume that she might just go stark staring mad if she felt quite so forgotten by the world.
And so I drove home feeling thoroughly depressed and like I just couldn't bear it any longer because it's simply wearing me out. I drive along the road and all of the people that I see seem to be allowed to have lives of their own and I don't feel as if I have any more.
I arrive home and ring my sister for a long and weary chat, interspersed by the occasional "tut" from the beloved whose patience with me is wearing a bit thin as she worries about what it's doing to me. My sister is promising to come up for a couple of weeks to shift the burden for a while, but that's still a month away, and God only knows what state I'm going to be in by then...
Tuesday, June 25th, 2013
Halfway to Christmas... Although, after five-and-a-half-months of this, I'm still waiting for 2013 to get properly started...
A mid-morning call from my sister fills in the gap of yesterday but adds to the complexities of trying to make a complaint to a hospital where six different emails go to six different people, all of whom insist on being filled in on all of the information they've already had so that they cam "make a start" on their investigations. Investigations that they have claimed to have made a start on on each previous occasion, too, by the way.
I'm now confused because I don't know quite where certain paperwork might actually be after the intervening weeks, and so that's something else to have to deal with when I get home, although, when I do it' is actually found eventually after a bit of a hunt.
Meanwhile the "flowers" debate has also caused ructions in Cornwall... so, it is with a certain amount of trepidation that I head towards the hospital for the latest of my evening visits. As I arrive, the first thing I hear is the nurse who got everything wrong when talking to me a few weeks ago giving her name out over the telephone, so that goes into the notebook.
I'm feeling rather exhausted today and possibly not in the most receptive of moods, but the subsequent fifty minutes or so won't ever go down as the finest hour in my relationship with my mother. It wasn't that it was awful or anything, just utterly depressing and debilitating. It starts with her telling me that she felt much better than she had been, that she had eaten more, and started listening to her radio, all of which are positive signs, and that she had slept for most of Monday, and that her stomach was behaving itself a lot more. The Doctor had told her this morning that there had been a bug in her system but it had cleared up and, if the latest sample is clear, they might put her back on the main ward.
So far, so good...
Mum then starts to tell me that my sister is out on a National Trust visit but I don't hear her properly which triggers a raised voice of the "I SAID..." variety which implied that I wasn't actually bothering to listen to her words in the first place.
This is how an avalanche begins...
Tales of visits from the Chaplain and mum's Minister trigger a row about the infection risk and whether or not I should report to the nurse and get myself bagged up in plastic before I venture into the room, like the sainted Minister and "all of the nurses" do, (even though they don't...). As if to prove my point, a nurse then pops in with the lunch options for tomorrow without gloves or plastic apron, so I begin to think that my mother either just wants me to look even more ridiculous or that this dreaded obsession with "the rules" is resurfacing. Of course the fact that I did ask at the desk on the first day she was returned to the side ward and they said it was fine to go in as I was is irrelevant, of course, because she has to know best and "they put up these signs for a good reason, you know..."
With that fractious moment behind us, the talk returns to her wanting "a block of cheese" to keep in the fridge for the nurses to bring her the occasional slice of (not going to happen), the fact that a camera still hasn't been put up her bottom (for which I thought that she'd be grateful, to be honest with you), the use of the commode (such a joyful topic), how much more she "reckons" the beloved's family ought to be doing to help us because "if it was the other way around she'd be helping us out a lot more" (Yeah, right...! No wonder the beloved is getting impatient with my "wanting a quiet life" approach to my mother...), how "bloody useless" she feels not being able to wash herself (although she did on Sunday), or walk very far because she's "restricted" to this tiny room, although later on she says that she's not looking forward to being on the main ward again either, despite her complaints when she was moved away from her "friends"previously, because you really can't win with this woman. I also note that her instructions to me to draw the curtains and switch on the lights before I leave are things that she could have done herself in an effort to be more mobile, but instead she chooses to get me to do them for her instead.
I then realise that I've forgotten to bring back her washing. A genuine moment of forgetfulness which triggers a rant of the "These things are IMPORTANT! You don't UNDERSTAND!" variety and which then reminds her about the f***ing flowers all over again...
Bah!
Interestingly enough, just before I leave, because she's worried about me and worried about my lack of sleep, she suggest that I take a "week off" from visiting her and whilst I feel like that wouldn't be the worst idea, I still find myself wondering "But who else is there?" and assume that she might just go stark staring mad if she felt quite so forgotten by the world.
And so I drove home feeling thoroughly depressed and like I just couldn't bear it any longer because it's simply wearing me out. I drive along the road and all of the people that I see seem to be allowed to have lives of their own and I don't feel as if I have any more.
I arrive home and ring my sister for a long and weary chat, interspersed by the occasional "tut" from the beloved whose patience with me is wearing a bit thin as she worries about what it's doing to me. My sister is promising to come up for a couple of weeks to shift the burden for a while, but that's still a month away, and God only knows what state I'm going to be in by then...
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