THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART FOUR)

DEC 11 2010 – 7.15PM

From the way she sounded on the phone, we were terrified that mum had had another stroke (although ultimately she hadn’t) and basically told her to ring for an ambulance immediately. The beloved and I then dashed around the house grabbing our stuff and got into the car and I drove like a madman towards my mum’s flat, fully convincing myself that “this” was the proverbial “it”.

Despite variable mobile phone signals we managed to call 999 ourselves and confirm that mum had been able to make a call herself and be reassured that help was indeed on the way. I’m not sure whether you would agree that getting her to ring the ambulance herself was the wisest move, and looking back I’m not convinced myself, but at the time I just thought that there was more chance of an immediate response if she told them what she’d told me in that very ill sounding voice, and, if things got worse, the computers would have the right address without me adding to the confusion and maybe delaying things.

We arrived at mums in surprisingly quick time, and mum was already being attended to by two rather fabulous paramedic ambulance crewmen, who had already decided that mum needed readmitting to hospital. A neighbour was sitting with her, as mum had managed to pull the flat's emergency call cord and some of her rather wonderful neighbours had come down and got her to her feet. Later on mum would tell me that she’d taken 20 minutes to climb out of the bath (I would later find that the clamp-on extra bath handle had slipped off in the process) got a nightdress on and crawled across the floor to call for help, and also managed to unlock her front door, and her neighbours had come down and at least got her into her armchair.

The paramedics got mum into the ambulance on a bitter cold evening and explained that they were going to do a few more things and we should head off to the hospital ourselves, which, after pausing to lock up the flat, we duly did. The ambulance arrived at the hospital with its blue lights blazing at around the same time we did, the traffic not being quite so chaotic at that time on a Saturday night, and, after mum had been safely delivered to the resuscitation unit, the paramedics took the time to reassure us that the flashing lights were not due to any sudden deterioration in my mum’s condition, but just protocol, and I really did appreciate them taking the time and having the care to do that.

Another long, long evening followed in the resuscitation unit until mum was admitted back onto the assessment ward that she’d first been on two weeks earlier at around midnight, which is when, of course, all the “midnight parking/clamping angst” that I mentioned in my previous post was addressed. Eventually, after a long and worrying evening, and various long phone calls to both my sister and the GMF, mum was finally settled in a bed and we said our goodnights and headed home in the thickest fog seen in these parts for many a year, getting there about 2.00AM and we gratefully went to bed and even managed to grab some sleep.

DEC 12-13 2010

The next morning, the phone rang about 8.00AM. During her crisis the night before, mum had left a rather alarming sounding message on her neighbour’s answering machine. That neighbour had been out for the evening and had got the message at about 11.30 when she got home. Naturally, she’d worried all night and left it as long as she dared before ringing me.

You may find it hard to believe, but,
Once upon a time, there was a Princess...

I wearily returned to the cycle of hospital visiting that afternoon, but it was a very low point for both of us. Mum was having a lot of “bowel problems” which become a humiliating issue for her. It’s very hard to see her like this when you remember the person she used to be. Those who have only known her in recent times won’t even be aware of how glamorous she used to be in her youth, and how dreadful an emotional fall it must be for her.

As I got hastily ushered out of the curtained areas by nurses having to deal with things they truly do not earn enough to do, I kept getting horrific visions of my own future which are, quite frankly, terrifying. For once I was genuinely feeling a certain amount of empathy for her plight. It must be truly terrifying to be sitting there with your body breaking down so that you no longer feel you can reasonably depend on it. There must be so much of a sense of loss when you realise that all those people you knew who used to hold your hand and tell you it would be alright, people like your mum and dad, or your husband are all gone now. Now you can’t even trust your own bodily functions to behave themselves and strangers are having to clean you up.

God, it must be awful.

Eventually, mum asked if I would leave. Apart from the horrible humiliation of what's happening, it can’t be easy to be seen like that, either.

I didn’t see her again until the Monday evening when things seemed a little brighter. She had been moved to another ward where the tea flowed more freely. The beloved and I had a few problems co-ordinating our visit that night as she had to work late and then we had a lot of trouble tracking each other down when she disembarked from her train at an unfamiliar station somewhere near to the hospital. She also had a touch of ’flu which meant that she needed to keep a reasonable distance from mum whilst I visited, so she chose to be left waiting in the chilly car that evening.

DEC 14-16 2010

Work announced that we needed to have a meeting in Wales the following Monday. This might have caused a problem if they chose to let mum home that day, but we started to prepare ourselves subtly for that possibility.

The beloved’s ’flu was now so bad that she was not going to work (and remained  bedbound for the rest of the week) and the next few days proved difficult for all of us. I know this because some of the thoughts I wrote down in the depths of the night are occasionally less than charitable:

“I am just fecking sick of it. Sick of trying to juggle work and hospitals and home visits and food and fecking Christmas…”

“I know it’s not fashionable but I resent every brain-mashing fecking minute of it…”

“I resent that there is no one else... That I’m expected to step up to the plate, because it simply isn’t me…”

Ah well, at least I’m being honest about it.

Occasionally, at the darkest moments (of which there are plenty), I did imagine that any notions that society might have these days about the deification of “motherhood” might have to be rethought if they had my mother. Small problems seemed to escalate that week. I got angry with the hospital because mum’s water infection that had been diagnosed three times since we first went to the (not a) Walk-In clinic – once by her own GP during her five days at home - still seemed to be being pretty much ignored in the hospital. I got my sister to ring and play a tiny amount of havoc. According to mum, the night nurses seemed to be getting more impatient with mum’s hourly visits to the lavatory throughout the small hours and she was starting to worry that she was losing control of her continence. Because of the sudden admission at the weekend, she also didn’t have her walking stick with her to make it easier to go on her own, and I remain flabbergasted that no-one in the hospital seemed to be able to provide one for her. These nocturnal visits then got even more complicated by the addition of a Magnesium drip being prescribed, so she couldn’t then go alone anyway, although the nurses I saw were always rather fabulous with her, so I began to suspect that any crabbiness was born out of mum’s own frustration rather than any intentional unpleasantness.

Eventually, I returned to the flat to get the stick, alongside some other items, for her. I crept in, did my collection thing and flittered away like a shadow in the night, unfortunately forgetting to lock the letterbox in the post room correctly. I also managed to bring the “wrong” notebook, which led to an unfortunate row during one visit, as my fatigued and frayed temper finally snapped.

When mum still failed to be sent home, another online order needed to be received at the flat, so I returned, only to find that she was so very confused by the times that I’d missed the delivery anyway, and her own mind was so out of it when she made the order at home those few days, that she ordered two of everything. I quietly rang the customer helpline and cancelled the order, which led to another row as mum was now worrying about getting Christmas cakes and suchlike, and my protestations that she shouldn’t worry fell on deaf ears.

This was also the period in which my own back chose to start to spasm after last week’s fall, which didn’t help my own mood.

Mum then started throwing up one night and was swiftly shifted into a “private” side ward and, with the addition of such lovely things as commodes into the routine, and more peaceful night’s sleeps, things started to improve a little.

DEC 17 2010

I arranged to have a day off from visiting as I had a prior evening engagement, my one and only Christmas event of the season, a drink with a few former colleagues. This got severely curtailed as the snows returned and the general consensus of those of us with any distance to travel was to try and get home. My “partying” lasted precisely one hour. Before this I had my hair cut at the same place my mum goes to have her hair done and they send her their very good wishes which was terribly nice of them. I then headed alone (and stupidly early) to the pub where I battled amongst all the office parties to find a lonely table for one to eat at, and – hang the expense - upgraded my solitary chicken burger to a “gourmet” one (I suspect it meant extra cheese).

On my way home through the blizzard, which ironically faded as I got nearer to home, I saw many terrifying sights in the snow of ill-dressed partygoers with bizarre hair presumably on their way out for the evening, and I had to remind myself once again that it was very nearly Christmas, as, despite all the “best wishes” and handshakes as I left the pub, I had somehow failed to make that connection.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART THREE)

DEC 06 2010

The phone rang in the middle of a Monday afternoon. It was mum telling me they’ve told her she can go home and asking whether the hospital have rung me to tell me so yet. I told her no. Ten minutes later she rang me again to ask the same thing. At this point I was starting to question the wisdom of them sending her home, but I imagine they know what they’re doing.

Mum had also told me the day before – Sunday - that there was a prescription to collect. I was required to collect a high toilet seat and a bath seat from a local mobility equipment supply shop, and I had picked up the necessary paperwork during that night’s visit, fully intending to go and get it that afternoon.

I looked outside at the gathering dusk and decided that I’d better head off immediately as I’d rather be trying to get mum into the car in daylight when there’s ice on the ground, than leaving her standing on a cold and slippery kerbside whilst I tried to manouvre the car to a nearby space, assuming of course that there were any to be had at that time of the day.

After a brief stop off at a supermarket to buy her some essentials, I arrived at the hospital and the staff told me that they’d been trying to ring me – after I’d already set off - to tell me that there would be some delay, as mum’s medications needed to be dispensed from the pharmacy and that might take a few hours. This has been a bone of contention with me for some years now. What is the point of saying someone is released to go home and then making them wait several hours for their drugs to turn up? Is it beyond the wit of modern computer systems to look at release lists and tally them with dispensing lists and send someone down a few corridors to get the wretched things? I know that there are procedures to be followed and that hospitals are very busy, and I’m sure that there are many valid reasons why it can’t be done, but surely, surely, someone could sit down and give it some thought and come up with a slightly better system that doesn’t mean that everyone else has to waste a colossal amount of their time and patience on waiting around for hours on end…?

There was a brief discussion amongst the staff and it was agreed that it would be wisest to take mum home immediately, rather than hanging on until around 7 o’clock when the pharmacy cart “usually” showed up. A decision was taken that the drugs would be taxied over to her flat later on that evening. Very much later as it turns out. So, with that decision sorted, and with a certain amount of fuss and bother, we gathered mum’s bits and pieces together and headed off out to the car park. After walking her across the icy surfaces, I got her into the car and we swung by the mobility shop just before it shut to collect her prescription items and I  also had to buy a non-slip bath mat. This was all part of a minor plan to save on the need to do that visit the next day and to ensure she has all she needs at home as soon as she gets there. Sadly after I get mum home, I discover that one of the legs is missing from the bath seat packaging so she still can’t have a bath anyway and I will have to make that extra journey the next day.

Men plan…

The arrival home was not much fun. Mum still seemed confused and, as I tried to set up the bathroom equipment, seemed convinced that there were three of me to do all the other things she thought needed to be done the very second she thought of them. I know that the ordeal was confusing for her, but I’m tired and get rather exasperated at this. During all that bedlam is when I discover the missing foot, which I also start to get frustrated by, and then there was a slightly horrible and ultimately poignant moment when I discovered a rotten sausage lying on the kitchen floor. This was, of course, a remnant of that forgotten meal that had triggered my concerns back on that first Sunday morning and which fallen unnoticed to the ground after she’d served it up the evening before, and is a symbolic reminder to me of how ill she’s been.

I cooked a swift meal of scrambled eggs on toast for her as it’s all that seems to appeal to her that evening, and my technique for making perfect scrambled eggs was frowned upon as I don’t use butter, but the olive oil I’d bought with me from my supermarket splurge. I struggled with the electric hob, too, being such an analogue “gas ring” kind of cook. One slice got eaten, with most of the eggs being scraped on to the uneaten slice. As a sign of how well mum was going to eat whilst at home, this really wasn’t good.

I stayed as late as I could, but the “drug taxi” failed to appear even after I rang the ward to ask where it was, because, to have any chance of getting home in the weather, eventually I had to leave. I was, quite frankly, knackered. I staggered home in my now constant “brain-mashed” state and made a few calls and then got a call from mum around 9.30 saying that the taxi had just been and she’d been trying to sort out her pills and she was off to bed.

DEC 07 2010

At around 4.30AM I woke up thirsty and went down the stairs to get a glass of water. For some reason I managed to fall down them instead, landing in a heap at the bottom having bashed my back on a stair about half way down. It feels as if I’ve cracked a rib, but I have never found out for sure whether I actually did as the real pain didn’t really start for a week and the thing never bruised. Anyway, there was no time for me to worry about me, so I went back to bed.

On my way to mum’s that afternoon after work , I returned to the mobility supply shop and gratefully received the missing leg. The visit to mums that evening found me fitting that and then putting up the Christmas decorations and discovering that the fibre-optic Christmas tree that she is so fond of was no longer working as the bulb has gone. It’s a tatty old thing that has served her a decade of Christmases but is now definitely past its best (but then, aren’t we all?).

DEC 08 2010

Another visit to my mum after work. I’d promised to buy fish and chips on the way so that we’d both have a hot meal, but she ate so little of it that it really didn’t seem worth it. I worry that not eating will trigger a relapse, but she says that she’s suffering from her usual stomach “issues” and that it will be fine. She did, however, seem unwell, and had no toilet paper in the house to cope with this. Her much postponed online shopping order wasn’t due until the morning after and such things would be arriving with that, but I got terribly angry inside about the fact that she’s even considering just using Kitchen Roll overnight and stomped off through the ice to the nearest “Metro-style” supermarket to buy a pack, half wondering whether I would return to find her slumped in the chair.

My mum also suggested, despite me having already completed my Christmas shopping, that I might like to buy her a new Christmas tree, a thought which hadn’t occurred to me.

DEC 09 – 11 2010

We decided between us  that I could have a couple of nights off and so, apart from the odd telephone call, I didn’t have a lot to do with my mum for a couple of days. She rang often to assure me that she was fine and that people were coming to see her and that she was, most assuredly, eating properly, despite having no appetite. She was even considering heading over to the church coffee morning on Saturday if she felt up to it.

I planned to visit mum on Saturday afternoon after the beloved and I had done a major “pre-Christmas” food shop, and during which we also grabbed a few bits and pieces of fresh fruit and veg and a few meal items for mum that we thought should be fairly simple for her to prepare. After blitzing the supermarkets, I parked the car in town and headed off to the nearby temporary Christmas shop and spent a slightly ridiculous amount on a like-for-like(ish) replacement tree for her and then drove over to her place for a couple of hours chat over a cup or two of tea. She had indeed attended the coffee morning, but found it "a bit much" dealing with all the people. She seemed happy enough with the tree at least, although I was more concerned that she was not drinking enough, and during my visit I insisted she drank two cups of tea, two glasses of water and a glass of orange juice, all of which helped to improve her speech for a little while.

We bid our farewells and I headed off to collect the beloved from her parents house and we went home. Later on, there was a brighter moment when mum rang to tell me she had made and eaten egg and chips for tea, which we all saw as a definite sign of improvement, and we really started to wonder whether the crisis had passed.

The beloved and I settled down to watch “Airport” on Channel Five. I know that it’s a bit of a cheesy old disaster movie, but I’m still very fond of it. The rather tragic figure of the mad bomber trying to get the insurance for his wife – his sense of failure and lack of self worth being the quintessential example the other side of the “American Dream” and something I may well write about some other day - was about to get confronted when…

The phone rang.

It was mum, speaking in a very slurred voice:

“I can’t move my legs!”

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART TWO)

The last month has been something of a blur really as I have juggled trying to continue doing my work with an endless stream of hospital visits and the looming monster that was the coming of Christmas. I know I get a bit of a reputation for being less than unduly festive sometimes, but this time round it was positively ill-timed and passed by in a necessarily low key kind of a way.

A month has now passed since that fateful Sunday morning that I described to you all yesterday, and we have settled into the routine of hospital visiting. Generally during the working week, I leave the 2.00PM-4.00PM slot to the GMF and other friends of mums, not least because many of them are getting fairly elderly themselves and the December ice has been lethal hereabouts. I tend to use the 7.00PM-8.00PM evening slot for myself (and sometimes the beloved). It’s not the greatest of timings when you’re trying to juggle meeting delayed trains, eating some kind of an evening meal and travelling in through treacherous weather, but you have to do it, don’t you?

Nowadays I’m very familiar with where the various hospital car parks are in relation to the wards to reduce the required walking which in turn reduces the risk of slipping on the ice. The fees are £2.00 for up to 2 hours, £3.00 for 3-4 hours, and £5.00 for 4 hours or more, although as a calendar day clicks around at midnight, all the fees reset to zero and you have to start piling in the cash again. This can be another little anxiety to add to your worries as you sit and wait for answers late into the night (about which more later). No matter how many staff might tell you that it’ll be fine, you still have visions of the hospital clampers whizzing out into the car parks at 00.01 hours and earning the NHS a small fortune in release fees.

I’m also now overly aware of how the combined phone/TV/Internet machine works. It’s a fine little gadget that hangs over pretty much every bed (in many ways I wish I could get one) and gives the patients free telephone calls to certain numbers, free radio and paid access to internet and TV services. The patient is designated a telephone number which remains active even if you’ve changed beds of been discharged and readmitted (about which more later). Of course to ring in on this number is not free to friends and family. It works out at about 50p per minute which would be fine if you didn’t have to spend nearly two minutes listening to messages telling you this and other statements that tell you what you already know, like “You are calling someone who is in hospital” (No sh*t, Sherlock) and “This number may have appeared on your phone because they have tried to ring you”. If I ever meet that bloke who reads those messages, I may well feel inclined to threaten him with harm…

And I had actually wondered for a while how they could afford to give free calls to the patients…. oh, I can be so naïve.

For the TV or Internet, you have to buy cards from a dispensing machine in £5, £10, £15 or £20 combinations which buy the services in £5 (one day), £10 (three day) and £15 (six day) chunks (amongst other package options I have not yet investigated). The card is then inserted into the device and credit is added to the account and, by a fiendishly simple method of pushing buttons that have been known to utterly bamboozle even brain-mashed computer literates like myself, and are most definitely almost certain to befuddle the elderly and infirm, you get your choice of service set up for those lengths of time.

Oh, and by he way, a four finger Kit-Kat is 52p in the hospital shop. This shows what a "cost of everything, value of nothing" kind of a guy I am...

Mum keeps telling me she’ll pay me back, no matter how often I tell her I don't want her to, and I’m constantly trying to reassure her it’s not about the money. Although, on moodier days, she’ll wonder why it is that she has to ring everyone and nobody ever seems to ring her, and I’ll feel the need to explain that maybe it IS sometimes about the money when the GMF is trying to survive on his pension and my sister staggers along on her invalidity benefits.

So, where were we…?

NOV 29 – DEC 05

Having left my mum at the hospital in an actual bed at 8.00 PM the day before, I headed home and spent a couple of hours on the phone with my faraway sister and mum’s GMF and staggered to bed. Monday dawned and it was my sister’s birthday, although I’d not really slept all that well, but my spirits were slightly lifted by a reader sending me a very uplifting email response to “Zero”, that I read about 4.00 A.M. Monday morning.

I spent much of that Monday feeling quite angry about the events of the day before, because I still think that letting a suspected stroke victim wait in a chair for the best part of eight hours after being sent there by a GP isn't really the best way of treating it. Eventually, mum rang me and told me that a Senior Doctor had turned up about 11.00 and she’d been whisked off for tests and had indeed had a stroke (albeit a comparatively minor one).

Over the course of the next week, there was a relocation to the specialist stroke ward and, for mum, things slipped into a rather tense routine of tests and readings and the general routine of life on a hospital ward and for those of us on the outside, our own little routine of work, visits, phone calls and worry. Then, of course, on Tuesday the 30^th we woke up to the first “proper” snowfall that proved so disabling to much of the country and added to the fun of getting to and from the flat and the hospital no end, but we generally managed it without too many problems. There was one horrible evening when I was visiting and they decided part way through my visit to move her from the high risk to the lower risk areas of the ward. This, of course, should have been seen as progress. However, instead it led to a lot of confusion as mum had just settled herself in and seemed to feel “safe” and “comfortable” just where she was, and had even decided that a bit of TV might be a nice thing to have available and, having spent a couple of days getting used to being where she was, absolutely hated being moved and disorientated again, and there was a lot of fuss about where her things precisely were on her bed-table which got a little bit unpleasant.

I suppose I should have expected a certain amount of tension as mum adjusted to the change in her life and lashed out a little at the unfairness of life and the devastating holes that had been punched in her meticulously organised pre-Christmas planning. Sometimes this meant the staff and her fellow patients were the subject of her displeasure, and sometimes it was me for not being able to buy the right magazine or bring the right thing from the flat. After all, one address book with flowers on the cover can look very like another when it’s not yours.

During that week I found myself writing phrases down in my diary like:

“I feel so utterly out of my depth today”

“I’m not by nature a natural carer, this does not mean I don’t care, but the whole world of hospitals and stuff is something I find no pleasure in having to deal with…”

“The worst thing about visiting the wards is the sense of your own future it can bring. A lot of the people you see in such misery aren’t really that much older than I am in real terms. Add thirty years and I’m there and it’s quite frankly terrifying…”

Thirty years ago seems like the blink of an eye some days.

Then, after a week or so, it was decreed (with a fair amount of unfriendly  persuasion on my mother’s part I’m sure) that she was fit to go home…

But that’s another story.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART ONE)

This was written a few weeks ago now, shortly after the event, but didn't easily fit into the ridiculous notion I had of telling an ongoing narrative for the period of advent, and so it has had to lurk, wait and fester on the perimeter of snowy Lesser Blogfordshire for the opportunity of having its moment in the sun (or weak wintry sunshine if you prefer).

This is the start of a story (which I will probably much return to - be warned!) that has been taking up much of my free time this last few weeks and might in some small and inadequate way help to explain why, having bashed out a large chunk of my "Not Very Christmassy" tale in the early part of December, I stuck with sharing that - sadly unedited - with you rather than the events unfolding in my little life. Somehow, my bleak and bitter reflections on the ongoing story of my mother's illness didn't seem very festive, and my brain was so mashed and there was so little other time available to think of other things to tell you, that it was either go with that or spew out more of this kind of stuff to share with you in the run up to Christmas.

I hope you'll agree that I made the correct choice.

So what actually happened on that fateful recent Sunday to drop that bomb in my life? Well, in some ways not much and in others a huge amount, it depends on how you look at things, I suppose.

The phone rang at 7.20 A.M. as I mentioned, but I was up and about, tapping away at the keyboard having composed a little piece for my sister’s birthday whilst listening to the final session of that day’s test match activity. My brain was in the process of switching over to thinking about my “spectacular” ambitious plans for December’s venture into the world of Lesser Blogfordshire and quite whether I was capable of managing what I thought I wanted to create, and whether anyone would really be interested if I did. After all, linking a load of bits of fiction, in various styles, together as a kind of Blogging Advent calendar was a bit of a daft idea at best, and I could hardly expect to take anyone else along on what might not be the most fascinating of journeys, could I? My previous attempts at fiction on these pages has hardly been the most keenly received of my mutterings in the past, and successful bloggery does tend to wards the “true life” I find.

So, the phone rang. It was my Mum telling me she’d felt unwell and called the emergency doctor who’d issued her a prescription and could I collect it? Otherwise her Gentleman Friend (hereafter known as the GMF) wouldn’t be able to get it to her until mid-afternoon. So I muttered and grumbled my way around the house getting dressed and grabbing a quick “Brunch Bar” (other high energy biscuits are available) out of the biscuit tin, said my fond farewells to my dozing beloved and headed reluctantly out into the icy morning.

I shoved a CD into Blinky’s ancient player and trundled along the treacherous roads in search of the obscure little building that calls itself the “Out of Hours Emergency Clinic” knowing full well that, whilst I’d been there one unpleasant Christmas morning over half a decade ago when Mum had previously felt unwell, I wasn’t really sure where it was. Never-the-less shortly afterwards I was able to pull up at the side of the main road outside the chemist’s that I had thought would be filling the prescription and notice that its shutters were firmly down, sealed up tight against the frozen Sunday morning air.

Happily, hidden behind the roadworks, a short walk away was the clinic I sought, and I strolled in and asked for the vital slip of paper I was after and was handed it. “Job done,” I thought, “Soon be able to get home.”

“When does the chemist’s open?” I asked the receptionist.

“Ten o’clock.”

“Are there any others open?”

“No, even the one in Sainsbury’s doesn’t open until ten on a Sunday.”

“None at all?”

“No.”

“I see…”

Now I know we live in an age of austerity and cutbacks, but even I’m old enough to remember a time when there was always ONE chemist’s that stayed open 24 hours. Mum, I knew, would not be best pleased, but I thought I’d go to her place anyway, maybe have a chat and a coffee until the shuttered emporium opened its doors in a couple of hours.

To me Mum did not look well. Not awful exactly, but really just not herself. I still can’t quite grasp what seemed wrong exactly, but she seemed a bit away with the fairies and was slurring her words more than a tad. I found myself asking questions to make sure she’d eaten properly, because that sometimes affects her that way, and started to get more concerned when she had no recollection at all of what she had eaten for her evening meal the night before. I quickly leapt onto her ancient P.C. (silver surfer, my Mum – we’re so proud) and looked up that F.A.C.E. thing that I vaguely remembered, but it was inconclusive, but time ticked along and we had a chat filled with the awkward silences you get when someone really doesn’t feel quite well enough to be bothered with a bit of a natter.

Now I’m not remotely qualified to make any medical decisions, but I truly felt it would be wrong to just leave her there on her own and I really wanted someone who did have some medical insight to have a quick look at her, to reassure me more than anything else, I suppose. I decided that seeing as the clinic was next door to the chemist’s and I was heading back that way anyway, I might as well take her along with me and see if she could be seen. So I got her all wrapped up, grabbed the walking stick and we headed out across the frozen car park and climbed into Blinky, and headed off.

Then I unpacked her and took her across another ice rink into the clinic to ask whether someone could just check her over. There was a nurse at the reception desk and as I explained the situation, she did point out that due to recent cost-cutting, this was no longer a walk-in centre, but she realised my concerns and told me it would be fine. Then the receptionist returned and started telling me off for not ringing first to make an appointment. Perhaps, I was thinking, it is in her job description to protect the medical staff from the unreasonable demands of the sickly of the parish, after all if we all just walked in to what used to be a “walk-in” centre, chaos would no doubt ensue. I was about to offer to ring her on my mobile to make that very appointment when, luckily, my growing ire was sidelined by the nurse who interrupted her and said it was okay. I know there has to be a system, but Mum had indeed rung that very place that same morning, and I am not a resident of the area and really wasn’t to know the current intricacies of the local healthcare system, although I do now have in my possession a two page document explaining how it all works courtesy of that very same receptionist.

Anyway, Mum was seen by some very lovely folk who did all the tests they could and told me that if I’d rung they’d only have told me to bring her to that very place, so no-one seemed too annoyed at my bucking of the system that day.

Ultimately it was decided that she needed to go to the hospital for further tests and probable admission and, all in all, my concerns had been valid ones. I was asked if I wanted to drive her myself or wait for an ambulance. I decided on the self-drive option and it was only after we’d set off that I remembered the parking nightmare at the hospital and that I wouldn’t be able to pull into an ambulance bay like an ambulance might, even if, technically, I was momentarily an ambulance by proxy.

So I dropped my ailing Mother at the kerbside on a cold and frosty morning, pointed at the wrong double doors and told her I’d meet her inside after I’d parked the car. As quickly as I could, I returned and tracked her down as she’d last been seen staggering off towards the correct double doors and was now comfortably sitting in a bleak waiting room waiting for assessment, the preliminaries of which were swiftly handled by a kindly, if a touch harassed, nurse.

The following seven hours sitting underneath a TV set tuned only to the horrors of an ITV Sunday afternoon waiting for a bed to become available will stay with me a long time, and I didn’t even have to endure it as much as Mum as I disappeared off to her flat for a while to collect her stuff and was back and forth to the car park a number of times to feed the meters (the things I do for fun). A potential hopeful high point came when some senior doctors appeared after six hours only for us to be plunged back into a trough of despond when they disappeared again almost immediately because none of the patients had yet been seen by the (ultimately rather wonderful) junior doctor.

Watching one amazing nurse having to run around supervising the entire ward alone whilst a number of upset and confused elderly ladies, obviously suffering from various types of dementia, tried to escape into the bitter evening convinced me that those making any cutbacks to the NHS should really be forced to spend some time in a ward like that one, and also that, if the time ever comes that the government do decide that I’m finally allowed to retire, maybe they should just put a bullet through my head, rather than letting me decline to that extent.

Sorry, it was a rough day.

MEN PLAN… GOD LAUGHS

Oh, I had such great plans for December. Such wild possibilities to make this dark corner a light and fluffy place to spend these icy December days. I won’t spoil it for you, some of this may yet come to pass and I wouldn’t want to completely ruin the surprise, and, as you all know, hyping things up in advance only leads to disappointment.

Sunday morning found me poised over the keyboard ready to start working on the bare bones of these delights.

New month, new approach.

Then the phone rang. 7.20 A.M. Sunday morning. This is never a good thing in my experience. Ironically, I was up and about (did I mention the insomnia – and the cricket?) so I picked up fairly quickly and a small crisis on the world scale, but nevertheless something of a bomb in my life exploded.

Ultimately the events of the following 24 hours of brain-mashing occurrences means that my plans have had to falter. I’m not yet in a position to share all the details and the consequences are yet to play out, but suffice it to say that there is an unexpected family illness to tackle which is requiring much to-ing and fro-ing from our not-very-local NHS facility and a certain amount of stress, worry and general brain-mashing insomnia.

Now, of course, I wake up and find unexpectedly early snowfalls have arrived to complicate that very to-ing and fro-ing, possibly quite severely, and even the broadband connection is choosing to throw a wobbly since yesterday’s sudden power outages. Not in itself the hugest of problems, but another little addition to the complexities of the situation when I may have to upload or download work later on.

Sadly, I just feel utterly out of my depth this morning.

I even thought the central heating boiler had decided to throw in the towel overnight when it wasn’t on this morning, but my brain is so away with the fairies I simply forgot that I’d set it back on the timer.

So, something’s got to give, and that means that, for the moment, our strange little relationship is going to have to pause, hopefully just for a short while.

I’m sure you understand, you’re all very fabulous people.

Ah! Loyal citizens of Lesser Blogfordshire! What a tale I planned to weave! Sadly my interconnected narrative telling a fantastic tale involving a number of the fictionalised citizens of this humble community has now turned to dust. Part one did get completed and because I tend to do these things a couple of days in advance (You see? I even have to organise my “fun”…) I will share that with you tomorrow, but after that we might be in limbo for a little while.

After you’ve read it, you might well think you’ve had a lucky escape, but luckily we don’t have to worry about what the critics think here in our warm and cosy world of Bloggery.

Stay tuned!

I shall return…