wendy house

The constant nausea and depression as side effects of drugs to keep you alive, or high risk of death by a stroke at anytime?

Dilemmas faced by the elderly are far beyond difficult

I phone Mumsie regularly, try to visit at weekends if I find that she will welcome a visit. She’s beginning to prefer to be alone, finding reasons to send dad out of the house.

You can hear so much more than what is said in a mother’s voice.  In the last 2 months mum’s has changed dramatically from fluid bubbly chatter through a slow jerky rap to a slower monotonous drone.

The doctor took her off the drug that was depressing her and replaced it with Aspirin.

I want her to be happy, this gift is sometimes easy with little things like a family afternoon sleep-over.

This year Mumsie’s suffered 2 strokes. They have mainly affected her ability to access word meaning. Only slightly, but noticeably so. She’s scared, both her parents and one elder sibling died of strokes. I’m scared. A little example of the minimum longer term impact of the strokes in a conversation with mumsie this weekend:

Mumsie: dad’s bought one of those things like a computer with no keyboard, I don’t know what it’s called, but if you say it I’ll recognise it

wendy: I-pad?

Mumsie: No

wendy: Tablet?

mumsie: Yes! A tablet

Both strokes happened while mum was doing crosswords, she loves crosswords. It was so sad to hear her say that she could see all the words but they didn’t make sense, she could hear dad talking but it didn’t make sense. She’s on all sorts of drugs, fingers crossed there wont be another Stroke soon and the modern drugs will keep her on top of the crosswords.

9pm 17th August: check-in

Friday night on a Trauma ward was set against a background chorus of quiet crying, distressed mumbling and snoring. A blanket of private sadnesses reverberating through the ward.

The lady at Ward reception wasn’t expecting a patient to checkin. She went off to find someone who might know about me. A 2 inch thick folder of patient notes lay on the reception table facing me. I read my name on the cover. Mainly empty forms, no X-Rays, no notes, a couple of interesting letters from my GP. The lady returned.

Bed 26, follow me

The silver haired patient in bed 24, opposite, smiled and nodded in a silent welcoming way.

4pm 15th August: RBH are not expecting me.

I wandered to the Royal Berkshire Hospital (RBH) to

• find out where I needed to go.
• personally doublecheck tomorrows appointment time.
• hand-over my Worthing Hospital CD of notes and X-rays.

The Royal Berkshire Fracture Clinic weren’t expecting me.  They had no appointment booked and no record of a phonecall about me. They didn’t want my CD to check my notes in advance of the non-existent appointment. I felt betrayed by Worthing hospital not having clearly established the appointment with RBH.

The RBH Fracture clinic reception staff were not happy at my turning-up, unannounced. They tutted and huffed at the inconvenience. I quietly cried. They ignored my tears making it easier to let those tears flow.

They double-booked me into the a clinic on the morning of the 16th.

8am 14th August

A flock of Doctors swoop into the ward and bounce from bed to bed with the senior Doctor asking the more junior doctors for thier opinions and quizzing the patient.

By listening to thier garbling I managed to find out that:

• I need surgery.
• Worthing will not be able to operate on me before Thursday and most likely after that depending on what other emergencies arrive.
• Worthing want me to go to my local Hospital (Royal Berkshire) because it’s more convenient. I cried, I felt like I was merely being shifted off thier lists…to start again on another list…
• Doing the paper work to let me physically leave the hospital takes 5 hours.

midnight 13th/14th August

By midnight I’m tired, in pain, lonely, nowhere to go, no book to read and with the prospect of 10 more hours of this.

Barely holding back the tears of temporary, pure, sadness.

I’ll feel better after a good sleep. I’m a talented sleeper. I can sleep almost anywhere. I lay my jacket on the floor against the wall in a quieter part of A&E, then gently lay myself on top of it and started drifting into much needed sleep.

This action removed my invisibility-to-hospital-staff cloak. Staff started waking me up to ask me what was happening.

I don’t know….

mumbled between my tears

Within 10 minutes they’d moved me to a ward and a bed.

8pm 13th August

The unnamed Australian is about to go off shift.

He explains that I need an operation to ‘pin’ the arm. It’s a tricky operation and he wants a good night’s sleep before doing it. They’ll be keeping me in over night for “Obs”, but there are no beds available so I’ll have to stay in the A&E waiting room.

Broken arm. Dead cell-phone. I wonder what more the night holds.

The surgeon injected some drug into the fracture before pulling my arm to ‘reduce’ the misalignment of the broken pieces.

It hurt a lot.

I screamed a bit.

He gave me a lovely hug, just like a parent with a hurt child. That moment of thoughtful kindness was wonderful and helped keep my spirits from crashing dramatically across the next 4 hours. Instead they slowly spiralled downwards

4.30pm 13th August

After two and a half hours waiting – Triage was disappointingly short. The nurse asked exactly the same questions as the paramedic. Both people wrote copious notes on everything I said. This felt reassuring, more scribblers!

2 hours after triage a young female in one of the many hospital uniforms asked me to tell her what had happened. She also took notes and aked familiar questions.

I started crying.

Are you in pain?

Just normal broken arm pain, I’m crying because I’m upset and don’t know what’s happening.

Do you want some pain killers?

No, I just had some at 4.30pm, thanks, I’d like to know what’s happening (blub)

Everyones’ notes were on paper, on different clip boards. The notes never seemed to get collated, read, or used. I was beginning to get the impression that different specialists weren’t sharing inormation terribly well.

the bar staff,   2nd yr University of Limerick student, sold me Smithwicks beer  and told stories about how Limerick is known amongst the Irish as ‘Stab city’  illustrated with details of deaths amongst the people he’d met at a local the Boxing gym.

The stone buildings are grey suggesting a  gloominess to match the mood of the weather

sixtieth  in an occasionally dark Wednesday series of posts explaining  my singleness.

Reason #60: enjoys occasional gloom.  

I like being melancholic,   occasionally.   Overcast skies,   drizzle,   cold,   damp, and the like provides a familiar comforting feel.   I enjoy this occasionally.     Not all the time, just sometimes.

Post relationship clutter has invaded my dining-room table.   A space that was previously under control has subversively developed a magnetic power for things that normally live elsewhere.  

What things?  

If you’re feeling extremely bored spend a few minutes trying to spot  the following things  in the photograph.  

• birthday card & present for Swedish friend
• housewarming present for recently moved friend
• Package of summer from eastcoast friend
• open book (Marilyn Monroe quotations,    sharp lady)
• camera-case
• UK adapter power  plug
• mug of tea
• beer bottle (Samuel Smith’s Nutbrown Ale)
• pile of unopened mail from organisations
• collection of documents providing guidance on how to review papers for a conference.
• print-out of conference papers I’m reviewing.   This helps me  to make colourful doodles on them.   More satisfying than scrolling through a .pdf file.  
• vase of roses.   Hooray,   how pretty they look.   How sweet they smell.   I have to keep an eye on the kitties though.   Kitties love to eat roses.   I’ll try and catch a picture of them browsing the blooms…
• 2  closed books (Adam Nicolson,   really must start reading it again…) & Mervyn Peake’s ‘Letters from a lost uncle’.   Great bedtime story…
• 2 sketchpads sat on their carrying-case
• 2 plastic bags of legal documents (preparing a will)
• 2 Laptops (Tinkerbell on your left  & Work supplied)
• 2 bowls of ‘produce’ (green & orange – like the roses).   Produce is beginning to fascinate me….
• 3  colour pens.

Wendy making-lists-rather-than-moving-clutter