CARE HOME (3)

Tuesday, July 16th, 2013

Every so often I like to at least try and put the needs of the beloved first. God knows, she's had to play second fiddle to my mum's priorities for six months of this year already, so, when Graduation Day (which is a big deal in her job) came around, I decided that it would be rather nice to go out for the evening and have a nice meal and generally try to make a little bit of a fuss of her for once. I think that she deserves that, at the very least.

I think that she deserves to be made a priority.

I think that I deserve the right to make myself "unavailable" every once in a while.

After all, I reasoned, with mum now well on the road to recovery and safely settled in to life in the Intermediate Care Home, it might just be nice to plan an evening out for once, because I ought to be allowed to have just one sodding night out every once in a while, oughtn't I...?

I mention this only because I need to justify my response to what happened over the course of the evening. I arrived home and got myself ready before dashing out to meet the train and, after picking up the beloved, already dressed in all of her finery from the day's events, we popped home to drop off a few bits and pieces before heading out to the restaurant for which we already had reservations.

Just as I was leaving I thought that I'd better check the phone for messages and, unfortunately, there were two.

It's mum claiming that she's had "a really awful couple of days" (although I saw her only yesterday and she'd seemed fine...) with her "stomach problems" and that the Care Home (I emphasise the word) had been really horrible about it and refused to clean her up saying that it's not their problem" and that she "shouldn't have been let out of hospital" in her condition.

Interestingly, I'd like to know what her condition actually is, because, after three months on a Gastric Ward, you'd think someone might have diagnosed an actual condition if it existed... Strangely enough and coincidentally, today it was announced that 11 hospital were being put into "Special Measures" and having teams sent in, and I was rather surprised to find that the one my mother had been in wasn't one of them.

The second call is to tell me that she can't get the hang of "this stupid phone" and that it was telling her she had "no credit" left but that "You or your sister will have to ring them and find out what's going on..." because they are "refusing to give her any Diarrhoea tablets..."

She sounded really miserable and yet, there I was, literally on the last minute and on my way out of the door, and that is when I did the wickedest thing, the thing for which I will no doubt be damned forever; I rang my sister's house and left her a message, and then I rang my sister's mobile and left her another message, and then we went out for the evening.

Granted, the evening was already ruined, with my mind being both distracted and worried (but not worried enough to actually do anything about it...), and simultaneously furious with the system for letting us down, my mother for just being so old, ill and feeble, and, perhaps, myself for not being stronger, and yet, somehow we managed to have something approaching a reasonable time.

When I did eventually get home there had been no further messages from my mother, from my sister and, perhaps most significantly, from the Care Home demanding my responses as the "Next Of Kin" which I never wanted to be.

And so, being an utterly wicked person, and assuming that all had been dealt with satisfactorily, I went to bed to sleep the sleep of the damned, and it was only much later on, when I woke up in the wee small hours, that I realised that my sister might have been out for the evening, too...