CRY "WOLF!"

9 September, 2013

In many ways, it was my mother's own fault.

After eight months of us living on the edge, not knowing when she was going to ring having had yet another (perhaps) imagined crisis and then being told that there was nothing wrong with her, a certain amount of inevitable fatigue had set in.

So that this time, we were not really disposed towards leaping into action for the umpteenth time.

My sister received a “bewildered and not feeling very well” call at 4.30am, as did my answering service five minutes later. In the intervening time, and in direct opposition to what my sister had suggested, my mother had phoned an ambulance.

When I finally checked my own messages at around nine o'clock, after my sister had rung my mobile and asked whether mum was back in hospital, I found the short message explaining that she'd done this from about 4.35am and I also found a message from one of the carers who had arrived to find an empty flat at 8.40am.

A couple of calls from my sister and we discovered that mum was once more on an “assessment ward” and that they had “all the telephone numbers they needed” in order to contact us. A later call suggested that the hospital were less than pleased with my mother because they couldn't find anything wrong with her and were going to send her home... There are also starting to be implications (at least according to what my sister is telling me) that she may have actually attempted to “cry wolf” once too often. As ever, when you sit down and talk to her, she remains in a state of denial about this, but the doctors seem to have become aware (at last) that they’re dealing with a very stubborn personality who simply will not be told anything because she knows best.

And then...

Then there was nothing.

Not a thing.

For twenty hours.

The next morning, concerned by this angry silence, we called the hospital to find out that she'd been transferred to another ward and that they'd been “trying to ring the contacts all day...”

These contacts were, it transpired, to a man who has been dead for over a year and a church minister who has now moved on to another job.

So, despite the number of months my mother has spent in hospital this year, and the number of times I've given the hospital ALL of our contact numbers, and the number of times that they've actually rung me, it seems that for this particular admission, all of that had been lost or forgotten and somehow become detached from her records....

Kind of gives you confidence, doesn't it...?

Not only that, but then they wouldn't accept my mobile number from my sister over the telephone but told us that they could only take contact numbers from the patient themselves...

This did, of course, finally all get sorted out when the paperwork caught up with the patient around about twenty-four hours after admission, and we were able to start having conversations about the current crisis. There was much talk to us about how they were stressing to my mother that it is really, really important that she takes in enough food and fluids when she's at home, although, when I finally got around to visiting that evening, more than 36 hours after admission, she seemed to be in a state of denial about this.

It might have been due to the severe back pain I was struggling along with, but I went with the intention of being quite stern with her, only to find her in the middle of being cleaned up after another catastrophic bowel "incident" and about to be pumped through with another drip full of magnesium, facing up to the prospect of "at least a week" of further tests. The fact that the cannula was hurting her arm, and that the ward itself resembled some vision of bedlam, meant that I ended up being polite again in the face of some interesting exchanges:-

"This hurts!"

"You may have pushed the needle in when you pressed your arm against your body..."

"You always find a way of making it my fault!"

and...

"I feel as if I'm being a bloody nuisance!'

(Amiably, without malice) "Yes... Yes you are..."

"You're supposed to come here and cheer me up not tell me what a nuisance I'm being!"

"Well, you said it first and I've found that it's generally easier just to agree with you..."

Happy days are here again...

SNAP, CRACKLE... (POP?)

Let me set the scene.

I'm currently living in a building site. The bathroom has been stripped bare so that whilst there is still a toilet, there is no bath, shower or even washbasin. Meanwhile the bedroom is being plastered and all of our clobber which has been removed from those two rooms is currently clogging up the landing, the kitchen, the living room and the attic room, and you have to push your way past the upended mattress to get through the landing to get to the doorway leading up to the crowded attic room where a fold out sofa bed is serving for our sleeping facilities, so that we too are currently cluttering the attic room overnight with our dozing forms.

The dust is everywhere and, during another unexpected hot spell of weather, I can just about wash my face and brush my teeth in the kitchen sink, and doing that and indeed dealing with any other calls of nature involves pushing your way through the landing and down two flights of narrow rickety stairs in the darkness whilst trying to find something to slip over your feet to protect them from the unseen bits and pieces lying there waiting to wound them. My shins are already more than intimately acquainted with the new toilet bowl which currently resides in the kitchen awaiting its new life.

I have not been sleeping well, and, despite actually being "on holiday" for a week, I feel utterly exhausted, not least because it's just so much simpler to get out of the builders' way during the day and leave them to their mayhem whilst we sit in cafes and other eateries, or trudge the streets buying more of the kind of tat that we really don't need to fill the house with and, since a massive bill is looming, probably cant afford anyway.

Meanwhile, I have to resume my professional life next week and, because the office was burgled last weekend and can no longer be considered "secure" it looks as if somehow I'm going to have to find some way to work from home amidst the ongoing chaos and dust and, of course, occasional shut downs of the power supply.

So much you may have already known... and this is currently what is passing for "fun" in my supposedly stress-free lifestyle.

This means that, when I'm sitting sweating in a car park far away from home at the end of a long, long day which started long before the builders arrived unexpectedly early, and waiting for the beloved to emerge from her latest bout with her osteopath, having just had another telephone conversation with my manager about the insanity of people leaving expensive deliveries in a corridor in a still vulnerable building, and how I'm going to resume my duties under the circumstances, and knowing that the computer equipment currently in my car boot is essentially uninsured, what I really, really didn't need was a telephone call from my sister informing me that, after three whole days in her own home, my mother has called the paramedics again and they are sending for an ambulance to take her to the hospital.

Update 1 - Dateline August 23rd, 5.00am.

I finally arrived home at about 7.45pm having briefly called in at mum's flat where she was sitting and being attended to by a paramedic whilst they waited for the ambulance to arrive. Mum looked a lot better than I had expected, to be honest, and suggesting that she might be able to return to the care home despite that not really being what it's for. After this, I headed home and waited for the call after somehow getting the massive computer box into my house and through the obstacle course in such as way that implied that taking it daily to and from the office next week as I had planned to might not actually be the most practical solution after all.

A long telephone conversation with my sister did not help my mood, with regards to my mother's long-term situation, although I suspect the woman herself might have found it to be largely uncomplimentary, given that we've come to the conclusion that much of her current status comes from laziness and a desire not to do things for herself.

The overnight message telling me that the hospital sent her home at 11.00pm might just imply that they agree...

Update 2 - Dateline August 23rd, 7.30pm.

Despite the fact that I have been out of the house since 8 o'clock this morning, it is somehow all my fault that I have failed to hear any of the messages left after 8.34am telling the sad and pathetic story of (Ta-dah!) my mother being readmitted into hospital. I rang the ward at 7.30pm, after trawling through the abusive messages but, because of patient confidentiality, they are unable to even tell me why she has been readmitted...

So it begins again...

CARE HOME (7)

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

I am, you might recall from the previous posting in this particular series, someone to whom nice things ought to happen, but I maintain that there's precious little chance of that, as proven by the telephone call I received from my sister at about 10 o'clock this morning explaining that there had been a leak from the flat above mum's and that there was significant damage that was now in the process (at least) of being dealt with.

Sigh...

It could have been worse, I suppose...

Wednesday, July 31st, 2013

With that all in the process of being sorted out, my sister then deals with the arrival of a plumber to sort out some of the oft-ignored problems of mum's flat, and takes mum out on a afternoon's short excursion to the hairdresser's which is all very lovely for them, but which, of course, she has the time and the opportunity to do on week days when she's in the area. I, meanwhile, now anticipate many comments of the "If your sister were here she'd do these things" variety, but that's my burden to bear as I suppose I must...

So, after work on Wednesday, I swing by the care home via the supermarket and make another visit which all goes rather well. Mum is on her best behaviour and, because it is the three of us talking, nobody manages to get frustrated or irate. Most of the conversation is about future plans and whatever recent achievements have been done to make that more possible, so it does turn into a bit of a practicality session (or perhaps a "council of war"...?) which is sensible if not very entertaining.

Still, there's always "Sparkles" for that, which seems to have gone well, and mum is, at least, managing to be more aware of the far greater problems that some of her fellow inmates actually are living with. Meanwhile, I hand mum one of my "book lights" to hopefully aid with her reading in her gloomy and electric socket-free room, which does, at least, prove that I am occasionally capable of thinking about her.

My sister is still heading homewards tomorrow (urk!), but plans to return briefly next week to supervise the decorator at the flat. The ongoing problem with this "Studio" online card company and their financial fleecing of my mother ably assisted by the "Data Protection Act" remains ongoing, but we've had to defer dealing with that because of mum's "can't be bothered" factor, but, all-in-all, most things have been dealt with by the practical whirlwind which my sister can be whenever she's around.

We depart and regroup at the flat so that I can see the damage for myself and inspect the plumber's work which all looks fine. My sister is thinking of asking for further decorating quotes, but i think that we'll just have to see how much that is required.

After that, with a few more bits and pieces of practical to-ing and fro-ing to be worked out between us, her visit is all but over bar tomorrow's long drive, and we bid our farewells in the driving rain whilst standing at the back door of the flats and I head back out into the traffic...

Thursday, August 1st, 2013 ("White Rabbits!")

Another day without a visit, although i do get 'progress' texts from my sister as she travels back down south, so that I am aware that she is safely home at about 2.15PM and heading off for an afternoon nap.

Not that it helps because mum still rings me in a bit of a tizzy whilst I'm having a bath because none of the three messages that were left seem to have actually reached her.

Ah well... At least returning her call gave her a chance to successfully answer her mobile phone "for the first time..."

Friday, August 2nd, 2013

And so the depressing cycle begins all over again.

On another hot, sticky day, I reluctantly swing by the care home after work whilst really not wanting to and knowing that this really, really isn't something I want to have to be dealing with. I know that this is wicked of me, but I've really just had enough and it's getting harder and harder for me to hide it, especially in the absence of my sister who's just far better at dealing with mother than I ever will be.

Mum's in the dining room so, after letting her know I've arrived, I go and wait in her room and flick through a scary old copy of "Cheshire Life" whilst waiting for an audience and thinking that I ought to have brought along my radio so that I could continue to listen to the test match.

When she arrives it's a bit of a miserable visit, to be honest - a long list of things which are making her unhappy and about which I can do very little. The mobile phone is "too complicated"; The meals are "awful" and "not enough" (especially for "the men" who I noticed that she sits with in the dining room, the old floozy); Her drugs have run out and the replacements don't arrive; Another nightdress has gone missing.

That last is an issue that she's particularly reluctant to let go, even though I suspect that they've been incinerated as a health hazard. Meanwhile she's already telling the powers that be that I will be able to fetch her and take her home whenever the time comes, forgetting that I'm at work all day unlike my sister was. She doesn't think that they'll let her go home, however, until the flat is sorted. When I point out that this will only be next Wednesday, that little fact seems to get blanked out. This is also evident when, having decided between them that there's no reason for me to visit at weekends, I'm handed the phone to charge the batteries and it's casually mentioned that I could just "pop in" with it... which is, of course, a two hour round trip...

Ah well, at least she's getting visitors most of whom are unknown to me but about whom she thinks I must be fascinated... and she's still able to criticise those of her friends who are in similar circumstances to herself for not being prepared to put the effort in.

I head homewards, once again thoroughly miserable about having to deal with any of this. At 7.00 PM I get home and find that Social Services rang me there at 11:17AM and asked me to call them back, so, given office hours, that won't be happening until at least Monday...

They've rung me at work before, so I don't know what's happening there...

Another friend of mum's rings later, wondering if mum would appreciate it if she took around some strawberries and cream from the "strawberry tea" they're having tomorrow.

I'm sure she would.

I wonder if I can get mum adopted...?

CARE HOME (6)

Monday, July 29th, 2013

Whilst I found it very difficult to agree (because I know what I'm like), it was suggested recently that I deserve to be a person to whom nice things ought to happen. I'll grant you that, at the time this conversation occurred, I was in a pretty low place emotionally and it might just have been the sort of thing which needed to be said in order to buck me up a little, but it was a kindly thought and one which was gratefully received.

At least on the inside.

I probably just brushed it off when it was mentioned because I've seldom been very good at accepting a compliment (if that, indeed, is what  it was...?)

Of course, the horrifying reality of my actual life is that I know that things are, in fact, never going to get any better. I know almost certainly that they're just going to get worse and worse forever and ever and ever, but somehow I keep on battling on regardless and getting wearier and wearier and ever more depressed by the burden of it all.

Strangely enough, and for one, brief, glorious second, as we were bowling along in the car on Saturday, I actually genuinely forgot about it all.

Everything.

All of the hospitals and care homes and illness and everything.

For one shining moment, when mention was made in passing to what I'd been through in this past half year, I actually had to think for a second about what was being referred to, and it was a very beautiful moment which, of course, couldn't last.

Arriving home I checked my messages. One was one I'd failed to delete about a hospital visit being planned by mum's colleague, two were from mum in a flat panic about not hearing from my sister on the day she drove up (I was at work and then in a cafe with the subject of all that worry), one was wishing us a happy holiday, two were from a friend of mum's confused about where she now was, and another one was to tell me how pleased mum was that we'd chosen to add the extra day to our holiday.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, by the way... (Don't ask...!)

And so, after the slightly depressing process of returning to work after a week off, I reluctantly bit the bullet and went to visit mum on my way home.

Having managed to get into the building, which is no simple task, I went upstairs to find that she was in the dining room having her evening meal, so I went to wait in her room where my sister was lurking, so we were able to have a bit of a chat and an update of how things had progressed in my absence. She's off home on Thursday, once the plumber's been to sort out the flat and its many water-related problems, and then, I fear, the fun will really begin...

In between mum's meal and an interesting idea called "Sparkles" which gets the elderly folk to chat and reminisce (God alone knows what horrors she'll be dredging up and telling the world about...) we managed to have a twenty minute chat involving a minimal amount of manipulation and curmudgeonliness, and I got a birthday card (Don't ask!)

As the "Sparklers" were gathered, I found that I had twenty minutes to fill before I needed to head off and make my rendezvous at the station, so we sat in the car and moaned a lot at sis whilst we discussed some of the murkier areas of our family history which have begun to get stirred up recently due to the odd ill-thought-out comment that mum has made.

After that, I headed home (via the station) for an evening of tea and telly which finished (because I deserve nice things to happen to me) in me having a back spasm...

Reality really does bite, it seems, to welcome me back into its wicked web.

CARE HOME (5)

Thursday, 18th July, 2013

My sister drives up on the Thurday and we have a "council of war" (which amounts to little more than we whingeing about my recent lot in life) over an evening meal at a local cafe, although I appear to have arranged for us to meet up at an eatery that has closed (or at least changed hands) since we last met up there, but the one we meet up in is pleasant enough, if a little hot. The main purpose of the exercise, other than the social one of course, is the more practical matter of handing over the keys to mum's flat and her purse, and the vital cash card codes.

This accomplished and the "baton" that is mother passed over into other hands for a while, I then stay up late enough to be able to ring my sister for a "post-visit" update via the telephone and find out that the visit went fine, with the positive signs of mum being up and about and dressed being a good sign, although my sister did have to have one of those dreaded "confrontational" conversations with the staff about mum's dietary requirements, and, of course, was finally able to get the mysteries of the mobile phone properly understood, and is left to make more calls, although the device will have to be taken away for recharging fairly soon, triggering an extra visit.

Meanwhile, some points arose during our little late night chat:

1. Mum is essentially "very lazy" in the sense that she sometimes "can't be bothered" and, with things like the mobile phone, would just prefer it is "someone else" does it for her, which does rather go against the principles of "Intermediate Care..."
2. Mum is now "quite keen" to go home, possibly because my sister is actually there. She pointed out to mum that in that case she needs to put in the effort to get herself stronger because, now that the "infection risk" restrictions have been lifted, there's no reason for her to not move about the place a little more. But, well... See (1) above.
3. Mum is still on a "toast" diet, despite the fact that the doctor said that she could return to a normal diet. Interestingly my sister was told that the doctor might have approved that, but the Care home Manager had not, which is kind of interesting. This might be because the after effects are easier to deal with or it could be more about being ignorant about mum's underlying health issues which are not infection based.

My sister's return to mum's flat afterwards is more of a worry and speaks volumes about my neglect of the place because I haven't spent any real time going there for months. The plumbing needs some attention because there's been a leak under the bathroom sink which is causing problems, all of which I was blissfully unaware of and now feel rather bad about.

It has, however, been a tough few months and I am utterly exhausted and so, whilst we can't officially call that chapter "closed" as such, there is an opportunity for me to present something of an interlude.

Friday, 19th July, 2013

Stuff to do... Things need finishing off at work before my week off, and then there's all of the packing to think about. With another person to do the running around, this is far, far easier for me to deal with, he said selfishly.

However, I do have to field a couple of calls with regards to my sister staying in mum's flat, mostly about forgotten passwords and TV settings due to long-ignored retuning issues...

Saturday, 20th - Sunday, 28th July, 2013

I am officially "on holiday" and therefore officially "care free" for a week whilst lurking in the top left-hand corner of Wales, spending an extended week in "Joanna" (which I'll explain later... probably). For one week I don't have to think about illness, or hospital visits, or Care Homes, or other people's bowel movements, and can just relax and enjoy myself whilst keeping my Ostrich-y head firmly in the sand and going "La-la-la-lah!!!" a lot if ever thoughts of home attempt to come to mind...

PARKING FEES

Rather unusually, I had a little bit of a clearout of the car the other day, and this tiny pile of dashboard tickets represents some (but by no means all) of the cost of having to park at the hospital for the majority of the first six months of this year.

Visiting hours were between 2.00 and 4.00PM during the afternoons, and between 7.00PM and 8.00PM during the evenings (and NEVER during meal times!!!), although, during the couple of weeks that mum was in "the other place", visiting was between 6.00PM and 8.00PM, which actually worked better for us because it was twice as far from home as the usual venue. Also, when the patient is in a more critical condition, like mum was for a while, visiting hours are classed as "open" (depending upon which staff member greeted you) so that you could go any time and think whatever bleak thoughts were required of you.

Generally, at two quid a time for the minimum period of up to two hours, this represents a considerable investment of the many pound coins that you constantly find yourself scrabbling around to acquire and ensure that you have about your person, especially when occasionally a machine would take your money, refuse to give you a ticket, and refuse to respond to the coin return button either.

Sometimes, for those longer, trickier visits, it would be £5.00 for "all day"parking, assuming, of course, that you'd managed to find any parking at all at the time you arrived at the place, but at least it would never be a higher amount than that, not unless you had one of those unfortunate visits to make which passed the witching hour of midnight, and would see people, otherwise known as "the children of the night" sneaking outside at a crucial moment to feed the machine all over again as the rest of the country slipped into another day.

Occasionally I did use the supermarket across the road to park up outside of, so that, whilst one of us was shopping, the other would hop and skip their weary way the quarter mile or so over the road and into the hospital for an hour or so...

This was the kind of "money saving exercise" that I'm sure the supermarket tends to frown upon, but, given that it tended to cost us at least thirty quid in shopping, I think they kind of got their own back. And it's not as if we were just using them as a convenient nearby free parking lot... We were actually playing the part of paying customers for the duration, but we also happened to have other business in the area.

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...

CARE HOME (2)

Monday, July 15th, 2013

I did, at least, get a Sunday to myself, although I did very little with it apart from listen fretfully to the anxiety-inducing end to the cricket match whilst sitting in the garden.

There is always a price to be paid for such self-indulgence, of course, and that was the many hours spent awake during the stifling Sunday night when all the things that I ought to have attended to, like checking through mum's mail, suddenly loomed large in my mind and kept me awake.

Oh, how did I become so lazy...?

So, Monday dawns and we have a plan in place. I am going to swing by and see mum after work, delivering the cordial I bought her in the supermarket on Sunday (You see, I did manage to do something...) and explain the wonders of the new mobile phone I bought her, before heading home later and picking up the beloved on the way.

After a long, hot day in the office, which includes more bill paying for her by telephone, and for purely geographical reasons, I head straight to the Care Home from work and, after negotiating the "Wet Paint" signs and finding that the entry bell has been fixed, I find it far easier to get inside than it was at the weekend.

I bound upstairs to mum's room (thirty five), and find that she's not here, but that she's written up a lot of little notes which I expect are jobs for me to do. Assuming that she's in the loo, I unpack the cordial and scribble a few instructions about how the phone works, before inspiration strikes and I head off towards the dining room and find her anticipating her tea with mum having taken to eating in the public areas for the first time today, which is, of course, progress.

To be honest, after all this time, it's great to see her dressed and out and about again, and already she's looking much better than she did in the hospital only last week, and a heck of a lot more healthy than many of her fellow inmates, so it comes as no surprise that the "Lovely Doctor" see saw this morning doesn't think that she'll ned to be there all that long.

Meanwhile, her list of stuff to do includes an urgent trip to her flat to pick up supplies of sanitary wear because such things are not provided in the home itself which she thinks is "Disgusting..." although I mutter something about budgets. Still, I think it's best to leave them to their meals and head off to battle my way to and from the flat during the rush hour.

Half an hour later, I'm back, "products" in hand, and they're still waiting for dessert because all the staff are trying to deal with a bad fall which has happened somewhere. This means that we are able to have a nice little chat over a dinner table and I make the first demonstration of how the phone works before slipping away to ring my sister's message service with it so that she, at least, has the number. Mum seems less than impressed with the Care Home in general because one of her neighbours "Buzzed for an hour..." to get any attention earlier and she herself was "Stuck on a commode" for ages.

Given mum's unusual understanding of time these days, I remain slightly sceptical, but you never know.

After the jelly trifle and the evening pills, we head back to the room ("You're supposed to walk with me in case I fall!") and, amongst other bits of chat, I try to explain at great length how a mobile telephone works with no obvious success, but I do stress the importance of switching it off at the end of a call so as not to use up all the credit, and mum seems happy enough as I head off into the evening with the happy prospect of arriving home and knowing that I don't have to go out visiting again.

I ring my sister for a natter and council of war, and find out from her that telephone communications have been successfully achieved. After half an hour of that, I put down the phone and it rings to tell me there's been a message. Mum has left one, telling me that "a nurse" showed her how to use the phone and that she'd briefly rung her friend Doris, and also my sister, but now she thinks her credit's run out...

Twenty quid... Pfttt!

Just another thing, like Tic-Tacs and biscuits, to splurge upon I suppose...

CARE HOME (1)

Friday, July 12th, 2013

Mother was transported to her latest place in the world by ambulance, and delivered there alongside another patient at some point in the early evening.

After various attempts, I manage to get through and the telephone handset carrying the call from me finally gets handed to mum at about 8.30pm, and I get to find out what a "Nice room it is", and so forth.

The staff member leaves mum alone with the handset and one of the things that emerges from the conversation is that mum has not been "assessed" yet, and so doesn't even have a walking frame, after which she then heads off outside into the corridor to shout "Hello? Hello!" to return the handset to the staff member on duty.

I'm on the other end of the line saying "Don't try finding them... you haven't got a walking frame..." but she tells me that there are handrails everywhere (although there aren't, I find out later) and, as I get a few details about visiting times and so on from the carer, this doesn't make for the most auspicious start.

Saturday, July 13th, 2013

One of the things mum mentioned is that I would "have to" get her  a mobile phone because there are no patient telephones available. So, as I head over to make a first visit on Saturday afternoon, i pop into Tesco to get as basic a one as I can find.

Typically, all of the really cheap ones are "out of stock" and so, with the addition of twenty quid's worth of credit, I walk out of there fifty quid down and not in the best of moods on a hot afternoon. despite the young salesperson's "uplifting" tales of his own experiences with his family and intermediate care.

I arrive at the prison Care Home at about one o'clock after finding the only parking spot right next to a bus stop. An elderly lady is sitting on a bench outside and tells me to ring a bell that doesn't, it transpires, actually work. Happily, I am eventually noticed by a passing member of staff and let in, although when I mention parking, I am advised that this is "at my own risk" and decide to move it.

Then I have to wait for another member of staff to key in a code to let me out again and, sure as eggs is eggs, have to start the whole "getting in" process all over again five minutes later, after having left the car at the tender mercies of the local housing estate.

I do finally get pointed in the right direction for mum's room and have to endure the bawdy banter which accompanies the sharing of an elevator with one of the nurses, but, eventually, I tap upon a particular door and an greeted by a jolly "hello" by my mother and a far more scary "who's there" coming from another doorway not so far away.

Almost immediately I get "the list" of stuff that mum has thought of for me to do, most of which involves taking some of her clothing home and bringing others back, so, after a brief conversation about the mobile phone which goes along the lines of "Do you want me to charge it and set it up and bring it back another day?" "Yes, do that..." I head off with bags of clothes ("You don't have to put them in bags!" "Well, I've got to carry them out to the car, so... yes, I do...!") I try and make my second escape from Stalag Luft Pflegeheim, whilst muttering about where the tunnel is to the exasperated nurse...

To mum's flat where I try and make sense of the list of clothing she's requested, leave a message on the church answering service explaining where she's been moved to, and grab mum's walking trolley, walking with which is always an uplifting feeling for a bloke just on the right side of fifty.

And so I return once again to the Care Home, and this time I find a slightly more convenient spot to park, and head back inside with bags of clothing ("Oh, can you fill out the list of her stuff as you unpack it...?" says a passing staff member "we started to fill one out, but..." - Gee, thanks!) and a walking trolley. I have another desperate attempt to get spotted so that I can be let in, another ride up in a lift with another nurse ("You get used to it" she says wearily when I wondered which floor to press for, found out that there was only one and had to sheepishly explain that I'm new here...)

Anyway, my clothing choices prove to be at least adequate, and mum seems very happy in her new environment, although it turns out that there are no power points in the room itself so that charging this wretched phone is going to become a bit of a chore.

There's fifty of my quids well spent, eh, boys and girls?

Still, we manage to have a little chat and mum seems happy enough, even though she claims not to have slept well because the hospital didn't add the sleeping pills she says she has to her prescription, and there was a strange reference to a "dreadful smell" in the room that someone on the staff had mentioned before vanishing.

Mostly mum seemed most impressed with the amount of storage space that there is in the room and, after a bit more chat, and with a promise to try and remember to bring a bottle of cordial next time I visit (possibly on Monday after work because it's far more convenient to get to from the office than from my home), I head off back to my home.

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 070713 (PART TWO)

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

A phone call about 11.45 (just about the time the first wicket fell, apparently) is from my mother telling me that she will be going to Marbury House on Friday. She didn't want to go to Marbury House, she says, but if she wanted to go anywhere else "You'd have to pay..." Meanwhile, she's "left a message" for my sister which basically means that she's out.

"So" I say "You've not actually spoken to her, then...?" I ask.

"No, but you could ring her..."

If only I had the time, mother. If only I had the time...

Thursday, July 11th, 2013

Well, here we are.

Exactly six months in.

I don't look forward at all to tonight's visit but it does, at least, have the possibility about it of being the last time.

For a little while, at least.

My sister rings for an update, but there's little I can say other than to complain about how ghastly I imagine things are likely to get. Still, she's due to arrive for a visit next Thursday, so we'll have to see if that can take the edge off. Given how much I complained about the entire hospital experience with the beloved's parents over dinner yesterday evening, I'm beginning to think that it might take a while for those memories to fade...

After another blisteringly hot and (professionally) exasperating day, I wend my weary way through the traffic to that most familiar of car parks, feed another £2.00 coin into the meter, and head onto the ward once more. "As far as I know" says my mother ("Because they never tell me anything", "You should ask them", "If only people took a bit of an interest", etc.) we are still "on target" for her to be moved on come Friday, but nobody seems to be holding their breath or betting the house on it.

Controversy of the day has been mum's reaisation that all of the nightwear she has with her is "Winter nightwear" to which I plead ignorance, telling her I just grabbed a load out of the drawer.

Her pithy "You would!" is immediately followed by her departure for the lavatory leavig me alone to listen to the other activities on the ward ("Urgh!") as ward life goes on ("Urghh!!") around me both in front of and behind closed curtains.

Mother returns and asks me if I have scissors on me to cut her nails, and then, because of this massive failure on my part, manages to borrow a pair so that I can cut them for her, although her complaints that I can't hell flesh from nail might mean that she doesn't ask me again any time soon. This is all done to the soundtrack of the most piercing and endless whistles as a machine somewhere sounds its alarm and is ignored by everyone for five minutes until a nurse turns up and switches it off. She leaves and the thing goes off again and sounds for another five minutes until it is, thankfully, finally silenced again.

Mother's conversation after this is mostly to do with "suddenly" feeling "old and useless" and pondering cheerily on whether "It would have been better if I had died..." but at least this prompts the nearest thing I can manage to a pep talk and we discuss (in that one-sided way we have) the benefits of her going into intermediate care, even though I insist that it doesn't matter where it is.

After all, once I know where they're sending her to, I'll be able to find it.

When prompted, I find out that the church Minister did visit on Wednesday (not that she recognised him again), but her tales of his visit to Amsterdam are interrupted by a nurse making a cannula check who promises to "find out" about mum's imminent release but who then fails to reappear.

Instead, as I pack up for the evening, I reluctantly approach the desk and am pointed in the direction of the one nurse I had a bit of an issue with, all those Thursdays ago. Ah well, she seems to have forgotten me as we discuss the fact that mum leaving the ward is "Still the plan, but..." as they'll be waiting for a prompt from social services before they order up an ambulance, but she won't be needing me to bring any clothes or anything like that, but they will "keep me informed" as to what's happening.

I return to the bedside and bid my farewells to both mum and the patient in the next bed and her father, both of whom have been very kind, and head away, perhaps for the last time, at least for a while, and then I spend a hot half an hour waiting in a car park for the beloved to meet up with me, such is the excitement of my life beyond those hated doors.

Friday, July 12th, 2013

I'm so very exhausted now that I struggle to find the energy to actually get up at all. Even writing up these notes has become too much of an effort, but there you have it.

Meanwhile, Friday itself turns into a bit of a waiting game. I spend the day constantly on edge and wondering quite when the telephone will ring, and, by the end of the working day, when it quite blatantly hasn't, I'm rather at a loss as to quite what to do.

Typically, I arrive home to two messages from mum from around about lunchtime and directed at precisely where I am not. The first states that her drugs have arrived so that she can be packed off but "no doubt" the hospital will be letting me know where she is. The second that she's (helpfully) terminating her hospital telephone account and I should let my sister know this.

Also very typical is that I have heard nothing else whatsoever on any of my three phones, but I doubt that my mother will believe any of that. When I finally do manage to get through to the ward, they tell me that they've been "trying to contact me" but I refuse to believe much of what they are telling me any more.

So mother is now in the mysterious hands of "intermediate care" and, also typically, I can't get anyone to answer the phone there, either... at least not for a while. When I do manage to get a reply, the person answering the phone promises to take the phone up to mum in "about half an hour" but then doesn't and, after another hour of no replies, I do get someone to do precisely that and we finally have a conversation and I am able to find out whether there are any restrictions upon visiting.

There are none, so a hefty chunk of Saturday looks as if it might be spent running around in a brand new (but also somehow slightly familiar from our lives many years ago) part of the world, and, it seems that I might have to buy mum a mobile phone because otherwise that's going to become a brand-new bone of contention...

Let this new phase of joyfulness begin...

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 070713 (PART ONE)

Sunday, July 7th, 2013

Well, here we find ourselves at the start of the week in which this entire saga will slip past the six month mark, from the very darkest depths of winter to the heights of summer, and still, it seems, there's no end to it in sight, unless you count the bleakest one which could, of course, still happen.

And so we get a bright, sunshiny day and our plans change and the cinema doesn't get our money because we don't want to sit inside a dark auditorium on such a fine day but, perversely, spend the day indoors watching old documentaries instead because it's simply far, far too hot for outdoors.

In the midst of all this debilitating heat and stickiness, I drag myself out to the hospital via the supermarket and find mum spark out fast asleep. My arrival wakes her but she fails to really come round for the entire duration of my visit, failing to even summon any enthusiasm for the tennis which is going on somewhere even as we speak, although the fresh cut rose from her neighbour's garden does spark some interest. Other than that, however, she remains "dozy" instead, and the depression of thinking that "she might never get home" is returning, so that when she does (briefly) turn on me again, it is with the familiar notion that I "never ask" about what they're planning to do with her, because the proposed endoscopy still hasn't happened, and this time around, they "never talk" about sending her home again. I remain convinced that asking, of course, wouldn't make the slightest difference, because they do what they do despite me, but I may be wrong about that.

I tell mum that I've noticed a "party" going on outside the next ward along, in the sense that they've got the emergency exit open and a number of people are chatting outside. Mum says that they had their fire door open all night, too,  just to help keep the place a little cooler. This is, apparently the "coolest spot in the whole hospital" but I doubt it, and mum constantly exposing her underwear from under her blanket would tend to imply that she's still far too hot. My sister has (apparently) suggested that I ought to get a wheelchair and take her outside, but this is, of course, far more easily said than done and so I decline the offer.

The nurse comes to take her blood pressure and is concerned that it is a little low, perhaps because mum  hasn't been drinking enough in the stifling heat. One of those yoghurty supplement drinks miraculously appears which seems to improve mum's spirits, especially as she'd mentioned that she'd not had any today, although she did have two bowls of porridge for breakfast.

She feels as if she's "not with it", "living in a maze" and "everything's blurry" that she "can't see straight" or "hear properly" but none of these things are new or sudden developments and come mostly from feeling tired and, understandably,  more than a little sorry for herself. Her legs feel very wobbly and it annoys her that she still has to ask for help to walk anywhere, but her legs are likely to be weak as she hasn't really used them all that much for nearly six months now.

Mum is very sleepy and, whilst I am concerned by a sense that her health's deteriorating again, I decide that it's best to let her doze off and I bid my farewells and drift off home again, feeling in need of a bit of a doze myself.

Monday, July 8th, 2013

Whilst I'm not planning on any dealing with the hospital on this hot, sticky Monday, I wake up feeling very gloomy as if I can sense we're approaching, for good or ill, some kind of an "end game". I don't know, perhaps seeing mum looking so frail and ill yesterday has troubled me, even though I know that it was mostly due to fatigue, heat and possible dehydration, and I start to believe once again that we are on a slippery slope towards darker times.

A phone call at just before ten. It's mum saying that the Doctor has just been. She asked him about the biopsy results and was told that the haematologist would discuss the results with her... Mum wonders whether they would ring me if it was anything bad, points out that it's not my day for visiting, and makes some small talk about it being a nice day. I say that I don't really get to see it and have to confess to not really having lunch breaks to speak of, that my sister has disappeared (presumed to be at the beach) so she's left a message, but that's as far as our conversation goes.

Tuesday, July 9th, 2013

A bad night's sleep, lying awake thinking that, one way or another, I really need for this to be over. I had, rather jokingly, said a few weeks ago that if mum was still in hospital by the end of July, I'd most probably have gone mad and yet, here we are, already well into the month and with no signs of her leaving that wretched ward any time soon, and, if you'd told me in January that this would still be going on in July, I really don't think that I would have believed you.

Still, the 2.40PM phone call from mum is encouraging, or at least as encouraging as "I think I'm on my way out" can be. She does, of course, mean that the hospital are now actively seeking out a place for her in intermediate care and not any other meaning that it might have, and no, they haven't rung me...

Meanwhile, the haematologist has said that the biopsy showed no sign of that "cancer thing" returning, although they'll be keeping an eye upon that as an out-patient.

So... Could it be...? Could it really be possible...? Is this endless round of tales from the hospital finally approaching its end...? As a hot, sticky day draws to a tetchy conclusion, and I make a few tactical errors in professional terms because of some late-in-the-day confusion over messages, and with the beloved's mocking imitations of what my evening might have in store (a la "Boycott Bingo" but I really can't bear having to put up with the same criticisms twice in the same evening), I head, once again, hospitalwards, wondering quite how many more times I'm, going to have to...

I wearily arrive as beds are being rearranged to be faced with the question as to whether I've listened to my messages, which is "confused-speak" for the conversation we had this afternoon, because there aren't any. But, in a quantum environment where she both has and has not spoken to my sister, anything is possible.

This leads to the "It would be nice if people (i.e me) showed an interest" conversation which is coupled with the "There was a time when your sister rang every day" aside which all grows out of the fact that the hospital are preparing to discharge her, but there's the tiny matter of our disagreement about how best to handle it. I maintain that they will let me know when they need me to know things whereas mum thinks that I should constantly pester them for more information.

I would say that we agreed to disagree over this, but there was precious little agreement involved in it to be perfectly honest with you.

Still, the breeze coming through the window is pleasant enough, as are the other patients and such visitors as there are. The doctors think that her health is generally okay enough for her to go into intermediate care, even if she herself believes that she is neither better nor ready to go anywhere. Everything, from getting out of bed to eating is "an effort" and her legs are wobbly, but all of these are things that will be helped by intermediate care if she'll only put the effort in.

Meanwhile the doctors were apparently unsympathetic about the fact that mum might need new spectacles despite having pain "over £300" for a pair recently, and they didn't think much of her complaints about feeling "light-headed" either (but then it is damned hot at the moment, so we probably all are...)

Other topics include what day it is, my work problems (not really interested), my friends who are abandoning the country (not interested - except to tell me of her own history with her friends in Canada), and the fact that she did actually read the Stockport Express I bought her before giving it away, but there wasn't much in it. The fact that a nurse is off to Egypt tomorrow is far more interesting, although my tales of the current troubles over there, and more tales of catastrophe and woe from around the big wide world don't seem to be of much interest either.

So much for having things to talk about when I go, eh...?

Anyway, on that jolly note, I make my excuses and drift off into the ether, bidding my farewells to whichever staff want to say "good evening" to me... and head homewards to eat and sleep and sweat, get miserable all over again about "wanting my life back" and fret about what the next chapter in this jolly little saga is going to bring along with it.

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 300613 (PART TWO)

Thursday, July 4th, 2013

Not that I was planning to, but a telephone message from mum's former work colleague telling me that she's planning to visit mum today, means that I don't actually have to, and that I can instead drag my weary carcass through another working day without having to face dragging myself to the hospital in the evening or even having to think all that much about the place during the day.

At least, that's the plan and, amazingly, that's what actually happens.

Friday, July 5th, 2013

I'm already shattered as the day begins, so that, as I head towards the hospital again at the end of a hot, sticky day, my mind can only think that thought that never bodes well on the harmony front: "I don't want to go!"

I had set off early, planning to pop into the supermarket on the way because we needed a few bits and pieces of food for the weekend, and I'd finally capitulated to mother's demands for packets of crisps and realised that her Rich Tea biscuit supply needed restocking. These, along with a copy of the local newspaper, I shoved into her bag of washed and dried clothes and, running a few minutes late because of the supermarket, I pulled into the hospital car park at about five past the start of visiting hours.

I was delayed yet again by the technical shortcomings of the parking pay stations, having to walk to find a functioning machine and then having to wait for the bloke who was far too lazy to walk to pull up in his car and rattle through an entire pocketful of change in order to find coins that the machine would actually accept, and so it was gone ten past when I finally got onto the ward, having already waved at the anorexic and her father as they sat in their car allowing her to escape for a smoke.

The duty nurse was eager to stop me as I arrived to tell me about mum's "makeover" because she'd had her hair washed today and her face plucked at "Salon d'Adrian", and this was the hot topic, repeated to me several times, as I entered the hot, noisy, sticky bedlam that the ward seemed to be on that Friday evening.

There was a certain amount of chaos from a woman who was obviously one of those people who exasperates. She was currently exasperating the staff, and my mother's exasperation would also increase as the hour progressed because, despite my advice that she should try to ignore it and focus on her own visitors, I am sternly told "I don't ignore people and their problems" (although she does have a tendency to pontificate from her pillows...)

When prompted, I get tales of her two visitors yesterday, the woman from the church and the former work colleague, neither of which knew each other but who both overlapped slightly. I'm also told that mum has been for a walk "to reception", there's talk of her going home again (an improvement upon Wednesday's "They never talk about me going home" I point out), that the Magnesium levels are a lot better and that mum's been feeling very dozy. She's also "not spoken" to my sister for "a few days" but I don't find out what's happened to trigger that particular falling out of favour.

I ask whether she'd heard anything about the Diamond Wedding Party that she missed, which prompts some happier thoughts. She received a slice of cake (creating a sea of raisins on the floor I'm told...) and a couple of cards which pleased her and which I am shown. It transpires that mum was even mentioned in the speech which also pleased her, but leads to the inevitable history of that family and a long, long list of their achievements, none of which me or my sister have ever had any hope of living up to.

As tends to happen with these situations and people, the entire focus of the ward seems to revolve around the troubled woman and her constant need for attention after the exasperated nurse had "fallen out" with her over some incident with some flowers.

Flowers, and the activities which surround them, it seems, are the real troublemakers in that environment...

Saturday, July 6th, 2013

Another day off, this time, at least, in the sunshine.

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 300613 (PART ONE)

Sunday, June 30th, 2013

A lengthy conference call to my sister after yesterday's visit does little to alleviate my concerns, but at least it got a few things out of my head and into the world, even if one or two of my comments did little to improve things at home, but, happily, Sunday turns into a "hospital-free zone" of a day which I mostly spend catching up with documentaries that have lurked on the DVR for far too long.

Monday, July 1st, 2013

We break into yet another month and the second half of the year with little change in prospect and, perhaps as a consequence of this, I spend Monday in a very dark place mentally, which possibly does me few favours with anyone I come into contact with, but, hey... even I'm allowed to be a little bit moody from time to time, I hope.

I spent much of the day absolutely dreading my evening visit, because I really, really didn't want to go today, and when I set off I feel enough like a broken toy that when I actually get there, the chap who greets me with a friendly "Did you hear about your mother's fall? She banged her head..." gets a rather flippant "It might have knocked some sense into her at last..." before I manage to process quite what it is he's telling me...

Mum has indeed had a fall overnight and cut her head and bruised her elbow after getting up in the night to go to the loo without calling for assistance. A nurse comes over to explain what happened whilst subtly implying, in a very friendly way, that it's all her own fault for not buzzing the buzzer. Still, as we all put it at various points during the hour "It could have been worse..." and they've observed her regularly for signs of concussion and aren't aware of any other concerns...

The chat is fairly amiable. We discuss the fact that mum missed out on some friend's Diamond Wedding Anniversary celebrations; "Macbeth" and other Shakespeare; and I read her a card which she received from a neighbour. Most of the chat is about whether or not mum's ever going to get home and the poor lady in the bed opposite who was released to go home at 10.00am but is still waiting for her prescription to arrive at well past 7.00pm...

I head home exhausted and confused and wondering why it is that mum can always be far more pleasant with me after she's had a bit of a shock. Typically, I arrive home to a message that tells me that she forgot to give me the washing to bring with me.

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013

A lunchtime call from my mother tells me that the flowers have arrived (huzzah!) and that people seem very pleased with them despite all my efforts to sabotage the process. Mum, meanwhile feels "better than yesterday" and still a bit wobbly on her legs (and still sounds more than a little woozy if you ask me). A doctor said that they were still trying to solve the mystery of her digestive system, and that the biopsy results are still not back having been sent off to a special somewhere for analysis.

Meanwhile she hopes to see me tomorrow, and, of course, it's always when she's sounding most vulnerable that I feel the most guilty, and promise myself that I'll try and be more understanding. Although with the feelings of rage, anger and depression that all ran through my mind after the weekend and the previous week, that sometimes proves damned difficult to actually achieve.

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013

A low-key. mid-week visit which is mostly uneventful. I arrive on time, but my visit is of no surprise after having been recognised by the father of one of the other long-term inmates, despite me finally having found the time to scrape the stubble from off my chin. "It knocks ten years off you" I am told, and they are kind enough to lie that I don't look it when I mention that I'll be fifty next year. This was all after I'd settled in, because after I immediately upon arrival asked mum what had been happening, the reply is "not a lot" so at least there have been no more misadventures.

Mum claims to have mostly been sleeping, and, judging by that and her lack of aggression, I suspect that the fall has knocked her recovery and confidence back far further than she would care to admit. There is, apparently, still no talk of her being released to go home, or of her biopsy results, but the occupational therapist who took her on a "long" walk to see the infamous flowers where they lurk in the staff room, as ever, said that she's doing "very well..."

I try to keep mum up-to-date with the tennis game which was still going on as I arrived, but the telephone connection is sporadic, but I am able to work out that the local lad is still in the tournament.
 which seems well received, assuming she heard me. The ward seems very busy and noisy this evening, and the nurses have already intimated that they might all be in for a noisy night.

Other things have occurred. There was another midnight attempt to fit another cannula to mum's arm last night, and one of the Church Ministers visited, saying that he much appreciated mum's weekly calls asking after his wife's well-being. Mum had forgotten to ask about the big party, but had received a letter from her wartime evacuee friend, which I read to her.

There's a small "moment" when she asks if I've brought her any crisps (I hadn't) but on the whole it all remains rather amicable, even though she talks rather too loudly about other patients having alcohol, smoking and drug related problems, and I head off into the night carrying the oft-mentioned washing.

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 230613 (PART TWO)

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

At 12.20 I receive a phone call at work telling me that "flowers are allowed on this ward" and that my sister had told mum that "I was going to order them today...", although God only knows where she got that idea from, and asking me whether I'd done it yet and whether I had the details and oh-for-f***'s-sake-will-you-just-shut-up-about-it-woman??? (Which I think, but don't actually say...)

She signs off with a cheery "Well, it's important to me and I want it doing! Bye!" [CLUNK!!!] which led to a lot of internal swearing and an almost pathological desire to dig in my heels and not do it.

Ever.

Two further messages await me as I stagger through the door in the late evening after crossing half the county to get the beloved to and from another urgent appointment with her osteopath.

The first concerns mum's former work colleague who mother suggests I should meet up with if we're going to Tatton this weekend (we aren't) because she's exhibiting some cacti. The fact that I wouldn't recognise this woman if I fell over her is, of course, neither here nor there.

The second is to tell me that she's now been put back on the main ward next to her friend the anorexic and that they're now talking about sending mum home again... "So that's all good news..."

Full of absolutely no joy whatsoever, I finally get to do the washing up that's built up since the weekend before staggering off to bed.

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

After lying awake half the night with a mind full of anxiety and worry, I finally just get up at 4.30am to face another working day almost belligerently determined to tell anyone from social services who might ring up about my mother to go and take a running jump, whilst pondering upon the "Flowers" situation and the further complexities it triggers when I think about online accounts, passwords and the legality or otherwise of using "third party" debit cards...

I ponder long and hard this morning upon whether being old and ill gives anyone the right to be rude to people, although I suspect that it's just me, because I couldn't imagine mum ever speaking to her other visitors (including the Minister) in quite the same brusque tones as she uses to address me. The prospect of her being at home again fills me with utter dread, to be perfectly honest with you, even though it ought to be our ultimate goal. Ah well, at least the washing is now in the car so I can't forget to take it next time I go.

The working morning gets interrupted by another lengthy "flower ordering" based chat, this time with my sister, and, as that conversation ends, the thought of driving to the coast and just drifting off to the soft chugging of Carbon Monoxide poisoning suddenly seems ever so appealing.

A brief (1' 50") call from my mother implies that the plan is that she's going to be sent home soon, that she doesn't want to go somewhere where she's going to be waited on hand and foot, but that will encourage her to fend for herself, that she's still on the magnesium every other day and they had three attempts to put in a cannula, and that "I might want to enquire" when I visit tonight, although she knows that I'm "not too fond" of the staff...

Mercifully, there's no mention of flowers...

Of course, after all of that build up, the Thursday visit passes almost without incident and is generally remarkably civilised. After I walked from the supermarket in the rain, carrying the washing in a bag, including her slippers which the staff, at least, were very pleased to see, and I arrived just as mum disappeared into the loo, after which she snapped at me quite loudly enough to draw the attention of the rest of the ward as she tried to get herself back into bed.

It's about her difficulty in moving her leg, of course, and comes from frustration, but it's still the same old problem that we're supposed to be telepathic when it comes to her immediate needs so instead of telling me what the problem is and asking for help, we end up in this pitiful situation.

After that shocking moment, things calm down and she tells me of the suggestion that she goes into rehabilitation for a while upon release, despite the fact that her "brain doesn't work" and about her visit from the now "lovely" other minister (she used to say that she didn't like him...) who she didn't even recognise at first, she said, and who (once she worked out who he was) then told her all about his adventures in both Amsterdam and Scarborough, and which led to mum's tales of visiting Italy both as a child and later on with an architect friend which was "the best way to visit Venice" apparently, so, the next time you go, be sure to grab hold of a passing architect...

I countered with stories of being shown some holiday snaps by the beloved's parents, although she just stated that "other people's photographs aren't really interesting" and so we moved on. I then tried to get her to explain the cacti show message which she left me, because she sees that as an opportunity for me to get to know one of her friends. I'm also cross-examined about why I don't go to Cornwall more often because "they'll be the only family you've got after I'm gone" to which my explanation of only having a limited number of annual holidays, many of which get chewed up by running around about family matters, doesn't seem to be an adequate reply.

I manage to discuss in more civil tones the wretched flower order, getting the missing addresses and whatever online password requirements there might be and promise to do it on Saturday... "I might be home by then!" she suggests, but I really don't think so...

In the meanwhile I read her a card she'd received, and was able to head back into the rain to meet the beloved who was waiting patiently back in the supermarket car park and report that "she's been worse..." in response to the question "how was she tonight...?"

Friday, June 28th, 2013

Nothing...

Instead, I have another busy day all to myself, although I do call in at mum's flat and pick up the post, I'm far too tired to actually run through it and add it to my planned "Do mum's admin on Saturday" pile...

It does appear, however, that mum was not sent home.

Saturday, June 29th, 2013

I struggle to get around to all the admin. It just stares accusingly at me and I stare back, like we're having a Mexican stand-off in one of those old westerns.

In the end, when I finally summoned up the energy to do it, writing the covering letter for the hospital and ordering the flowers only took fifty minutes, so it's just as well that I didn't try doing it at work, eh, boys and girls?

With that out of the way, I looked at the pile of mail, which includes another "overdue payment" notice from that wretched online card company who's bill I thought I'd cleared two weeks ago, which leads to another long and frustrating telephone call which I could have done without.

Later on, I drive in on a sunny afternoon, stopping to pick up the promised local paper on the way. She's asleep when I arrive but, unfortunately, someone wakes her up, and so forty minutes or so of unpleasantness was not avoided.

Mum feels "not bad" today after having had low blood pressure yesterday and this morning, and she's been told that she should drink more fluids, despite her now being on food supplements again. I hand over the newspaper alongside some other free sheets that were in her mailbox but she doesn't want those because they take up far too much space. I then get asked whether I happen to have any crisps on me because I'm obviously a walking supermarket, and then get the inevitable "You never bring me anything" which leads to another great cheese debate, prompted by a patient in a bed opposite who I'd rather not bring myself to even look at.

Meanwhile mum "doesn't suppose" that I know whether they're sending her home because "they'll only tell you if you show an interest" or, indeed, when they want to send her. I do get her to read the letter that I was trying to sort out this morning, but this doesn't prompt her to take any action about it. Finally, I try to describe - in "light-hearted terms - the problems I had putting through the flower order, but that just turns into a long list of criticisms about my lack of common sense, and when I try to describe the flowers that I actually ordered, it seems that I've done everything wrong with that, too.

She decides she needs the toilet, so I take the opportunity to head off early and go home, part of me going to that place where I really think that I'd rather not ever go and visit her again...

HOSPITAL UPDATES W/C 230613 (PART ONE)

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...