LONG, DARK NIGHT... (5)

Sunday dawned and my head was full of memories of yesterday and we had decided that, unless we heard otherwise, both my sister and I were going to try and reduce our "hospital time" to more-or-less "normal" visiting hours that day, because it really wasn't doing either of us any good to be making ourselves as utterly exhausted as we had become when the "final trauma" still might come any day now or, bizarrely, perhaps not at all.

Considering my sister has hauled herself across half the country at the instigation of various grave-sounding doctors to "be there" on at least two occasions now, and yet those two occasions were six months apart, and here we now find ourselves having already spent four days in what is, in an expression that perhaps seems unkindly but is really the best way of getting the point across, "Death Watch Mode" my sister is now starting to get text messages from her various contacts which are hoping that the sender "wishes she would make her mind up" which sounds harsh but, under the circumstances, perhaps trying to retain a sense of humour is the only thing keeping any of us sane.

And so you start another day by mentally trying to prepare yourself for the worst whilst wondering whether she actually is indestructible and that long-quipped saying that "she'll outlast the lot of us" might yet actually come to pass. So, after a relatively "normal" Sunday morning, in that we watched a bit of telly and did some washing because the weather was so nice, at just after one o'clock I once again made the long drive to the hospital whilst listening to another of my audiobook CDs, one which I'm hoping won't be "ruined" by the association in future years.

On arrival, my sister was already in place next to our mother's bed, and the two of them were chatting normally as mum was in the middle of one of her more normal and lucid times. The good news was that, as far as were could tell, mum had actually eaten her lunch for the first time in days, and this appeared to have triggered some kind of adrenaline rush in her mind at the very least.

This also meant that she was far more willing than recently to allow us to administer a much needed manicure and pedicure session, and so we set about her with the nail clippers and files whilst trying not to set off any of the alarms on the drips which were still pumping their drugs into her system as we moved her arms about.

Many of the staff still walking around between two and three o'clock that afternoon were the very same ones who had come on duty at nine o'clock the previous evening, so I did begin to wonder whether they were currently working eighteen hour shifts, but I was assured later on (because I did ask) that this is not the case.

Mum's grand-daughter and almost three-year-old great-grandson, along with another friend of theirs, arrived for a bit of a visit, during which mum remained bright and lively throughout, and pleased to see us all, although she started to fade again shortly after they departed, and the now familiar cycle of the last few days which seems to indicate a bout of tiredness began with "I can't seem to get comfortable..." and "I'm really worried" and other, more basic observations which shouldn't really become anyone's lasting memory of anyone.

We decided that this might be a good time to leave, and so we did, the two of us having a bit of a "family conference" on some chairs in a corridor before heading off in search of our various Sunday afternoon activities.

Rolling back up again in the evening for the second round of visiting for the day, mum had refused her evening sandwich and was complaining of how "dark" the brightly lit room was, despite appearances to the contrary. This worrisome development had us briefly calling for a nurse, who just did what we had already done, i.e. switched the lights off and on again, only this time it seemed to settle mum down again.

That's obviously the professional touch for you.

It was a long frustrating hour, mostly punctuated by the insistence from mum that she was "uncomfortable" and that she was worried that nobody would come and help her to settle down for the night and so she might not sleep. Despite reassurances, she would not budge from this fixed idea in her mind despite several attempts to rearrange her to be more comfortable ourselves so that, in the end, we called the duty nurse in to rearrange her and took that opportunity to say goodnight for another day.

As we left, we met a nurse who had looked after mum on a previous admission and who was keeping an eye on her despite mum not being on her duty roster at the moment. She was the same one who had briefly popped in on the previous evening and assured us that mum is "a lovely lady" before trying to reassure us about what they call the phenomenon of "sundowners" explaining mum's strange cycle of obsessions once darkness falls.

Then my big sister and I sat in her car in the car park for a few minutes, discussing matters of a sad and practical nature and having a much-needed "bit of a chat" before heading off again, planning to regroup again before the efforts of yet another day had to be faced.

And so we came to the end of what had been a long and exhausting weekend with mum still hanging on in there, meaning that we faced the prospect of a "normal" working week beginning again and with my sister having to face driving back to Cornwall at some point after what we hesitate to call another "false alarm" from mum's doctors...