THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART TEN)

Another of my continuing diaries chronicling my mother’s current hospitalisation as we plod on through week nine of our little saga that started way back in November. Again I’ll apologise if you are tiring of them, but there are other funkier musings to be found in other parts of Lesser Blogfordshire if you look for them.

We left off with me in the process of redecorating mum’s flat for her suspected imminent release…

JAN 23 2011

Despite the fatigue, I have a lousy night’s sleep and wake up frequently and finally get up stupidly early. I then wake the beloved at 7:30AM on a Sunday morning and, after a brief breakfast, we head on over to mum’s flat again and spend the entire day wallpapering. By 5.30PM it’s all done and tidied and, whilst probably not up to anyone’s professional standards, it looks pretty good, and a heck of a lot better than it did, even if I say so myself.

We head to the beloved’s parents house to drop off some of the borrowed decorating equipment and they spontaneously feed us, and then, as we were passing by that way on our way home, we decide to pay a quick unexpected evening visit to mum.

The conversation is much as yesterday, wanting to know the outcome, worries about home cooking as it’s generally been another dull Sunday on the ward. The snapshots we took of the decorating are at least a distraction even if, when viewed on a tiny screen, I wonder how much can be seen. Still mum seems pleased enough, although it’s sometimes hard to tell whether she’s saying just what she expects we want to hear or not. Anyway, I optimistically set up the TV for another 3 day stint, and hear the tale of how one of the staff today accused mum of acting like a “spoilt child”, which, if true, seems a little unfair (although I can imagine it). Tonight’s tea (salmon and cucumber sandwiches) was apparently more successful as mum could actually taste it for once…

We head home before the hour was really up because we were shattered and forgot to take mum’s washing. Sis rings later on to ask how it went, which was nice, but the call turned a bit ranty as I poured out my fatigued frustrations of my recent experiences with the National Health “Service”.

JAN 24 2011

Mum rings to tell me that the doctor has been round and the latest is that she won’t be released before Wednesday, so the immediate crisis is averted. I call up sis to give her this information and find out from my elder niece that mum has not remembered her birthday, so a swift call to the hospital (with my anonymous pal doing his usual two-minute sales spiel – I got a shockingly huge phone bill last week) reminds mum of this, otherwise she’d have been annoyed about it later.

A short lunchtime call: Bring sweets and tissues tonight.

The beloved’s tales of other’s woes from work helps to put things a little more in perspective. Kind of. Nonetheless, and despite all that, I really didn’t want to go tonight. But we had to, and we did. Taking the pictures of the great-grandchild was possibly one of our better moves, and mum does seem to be starting to engage with people and think about what it might be like to be at home, so that’s an improvement. We started to list foods that she might enjoy eating, so all-in-all it wasn’t the dispiriting experience that I thought it might be.

JAN 25 2011

Business trip to London. Left the house 6:50AM, got home 10:00PM.

JAN 26 2011

Mum rings early to check that I got back safely. Her cough sounds dreadful, but, despite two of her fellow inmates being released yesterday, and she now has new faces to get to know, her own status remains as per usual, with a rumour that she’ll be sent home “early next week”. Meanwhile a trip to the Urologist seems to be on her agenda.

Sis rings mid-morning for a bit of a chat, telling me much the same with added insight from the ward’s nursing sister. Some of it proves laughable. When asked about what my mum should do about her daily requirements if a catheter becomes a permanent fixture, sis is told that mum should see her GP every day. “How should she get there?” sis quite reasonably asks. “How did she used to get there?” came the reply. “Well, she used to walk the half mile…”

We also consider the knotty problem of whether it is still too soon to consider mum selling up and moving into permanent sheltered accommodation. We both believe that she’s still too independent minded to be happy with this, but equally stubborn enough to make a snap decision that she may well live long enough to seriously regret.

The evening visit finds the beloved and I very wearily trudging in again but it’s happy enough. Mum has definitely started taking an interest in the world again, taken notice of things that we have mentioned and has even started writing lists and making plans for her post-hospitalisation home life. There’s a slight ‘bewilderment’ moment when we ask where the idea that they’re letting her home early next week came from, and for once the GMF gets slightly berated for failing to deliver a TV guide again, which we take as a healthy sign. I do set up the TV for a further 6 day stint, however, which might be pessimistic (but is still more value than daily card purchases – I really could have bought my own TV by now) but as she’s actually watching it and talking about the news again, it seems to be worth it.

JAN 27 2011

This morning, the beloved and I were mulling over the fact that, whilst mum’s life has kind of been in limbo for the past couple of months, in many ways so have ours. You can’t really plan for anything because you never know quite what’s going to happen. You can’t book a holiday or arrange any building work. You can’t book theatre tickets or even a night out in a restaurant. Even the odd pizza has gone past its sell-by date before we’ve been able to find any time to actually eat it, and baths are taken at the oddest times.

A short mid-morning telephone call from mum is okay though, with her feeling well enough having had a good night’s sleep due to her sleeping pill and an extra dose of cough medicine during the night.

An hour later another call: “A lady from Intermediate Care has just been and said “You’re not quite ready to go home yet, so we’ll come and see you again on Monday…” although the call is frustratingly cut off…

Our evening visit finds us running late due to train delays, a desire to eat and a need to stop and buy petrol en route. There is news that mum’s former schoolfriend Ann, who recently visited mum in hospital has died, and mum is now trying to get hold of a phone number to express her sympathies. As we consider this matter, mum’s church minister turns up bearing the very number along with him and stays for a chat about things like the law and jury service which rather distracts us from chatting to mum, but we are subtly and expertly put back on track. Those clergy can be quite impressive fellows to watch in action. I am slightly befuddled by the praying, but if it gives mum some comfort, then why ever not? Mum is also engaging with her fellow patients which has brought the added benefit of her being given a gift of some fresh fruit from one of them. I will go as far as to say that mum was so very much her old self tonight that I can finally glimpse some light at the end of this particular tunnel.

JAN 28 2011

Mum’s mid-morning call today is suitably gushing about her granddaughter’s plans, which I suppose should be taken as a positive sign that the old mum is returning. I do, however, resist the urge to point out that saying that “she’s done all right for herself” is a rather old-fashioned way of looking at things, which is what I might have done in the pre-illness world.

A late afternoon call requesting more tissues and telling tales of cherries and cough medicine is interrupted by a nurse bearing a message, and I am hung up on.

A hospital visit on a cold evening and the beloved is working late so we head straight in after I meet her train, and she does the weekly shop as I do the actual visiting. Mum is positively perky and says that she’s “looking forward” to going home. Her meals have been an issue today as somebody “lost” her meal orders, but a chat he had earlier with a junior doctor means that she believes that the consultant will be ringing sis (“Fat chance” I think). Still she manages to find the woes and wails of her fellow patients and their attendant noisy medical equipment irritating, which is a healthier sign of wanting to be out of there and, when talking about her future, is adamant that a nursing home would not be her preferred choice.

We head home and I wonder whether the sudden death of her friend has brought home to her how comparatively lucky she is…?

Which brings us to the end of week nine (and month two) of our sorry little saga, and we are also now seven weeks, several lifetimes and an astonishing amount of cash down the road from the emergency re-admittance of my mother via an ambulance on that dark Saturday evening in December. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun…?

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART NINE)

As we enter week nine of the saga of my mother’s hospitalisation, I’m sure those of you who “follow” these things are as heartily fed up of reading them as I am at having to write them. They do, however, serve a useful purpose in organising my thoughts, so I’m going to continue on with them as we head towards whatever outcome we eventually reach.

We left off with my sister’s imminent departure after a sterling two and a half weeks away from home and mum seeming a lot better than she has in a while, which just goes to show how much difference the simple things like a good night’s sleep can actually make…

JAN 19 2011

Sis is heading home today. I go to the flat first thing and on my way to the dentist’s to get mum’s keys back and have a brief council of war. The farewells were understandably apparently a bit “weepy” last night, but things with mum’s situation are still much improved from when sis first arrived.

Mum rings for a lunchtime chat and we mull over her options and fears about her own prospects for heading home.

The evening visit is chatty, but for me, the lack of my sister’s presence, doing all those little things she did so well, is a slight worry. Mum  and I chat at length (when not drowned out by the six visitors – the notice outside the ward insists on two – at a nearby bed) about looking to the future. Ah well, at least the fruit flavoured Tic Tacs* she asked me to bring are well received, (as she can actually taste the strong flavours) and it’s nice to see mum enthusing over any foodstuff these days, although I do fret when I notice the sugar content, because I really thought that they were sugar-free. (*Other sweets are of course available.)

JAN 20 2011

Already shattered when I wake up today, and sis has only been gone a day. Mum rings 10.00AM-ish convinced that it’s a Monday and I wouldn’t be in (neither of which are good assumptions to make), although there’s no reason I wouldn’t be or why she would want to ring me if she thought I was out. Both of these things tend to have me (and no doubt the GMF who’s now probably got a couple of hundred messages on his phone for daring to go out) wondering whether today’s confusion is a sign of some sort of regression.

However, a lunchtime call to tell me how nice the Tic Tacs are is almost instantly cut off at her end…

Battling through thick fog for the evening visit and another stilted hour, although mum is generally looking a lot better and starting to take an interest again, asking for television privileges once more after nearly a fortnight of not being bothered. Of course setting up the TV again becomes an almighty tricky thing to do as the bed is still set up for the wrong patient, but we manage eventually. All this really does show the value of how simple things like a good night’s sleep and controlling the fluid retention problem can really make a huge difference to someone’s well-being. The social services assessment didn’t happen again today, but the idea of six weeks of respite care seems to have become more of an appealing prospect.

JAN 21 2011

An early morning call around 8.00AM from mum is slightly confusing, but, considering she had woken up coughing at 4.00AM, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I mention the beloved’s suggestion that mum starts to list the things she thinks she may need if the respite care option comes into play, as, at least, it will give her something to think about.

During another confused phone call at lunchtime asking for a new supply of tissues, I manage to also glean the information that the Doctor sees her being sent home Monday or Tuesday (Tuesday being MASSIVELY inconvenient for me professionally…) and with no mention at all of the respite care that was, as far as I was concerned, high on the agenda. No mention of social services assessment either, so it seriously looks like everything’s going to pot again.

Evening visit is massively frustrating as I try to get some information about the ‘plan’ they might have for mum, and the insanity of trying to get any answers at all, after waiting for everyone else in the world to be dealt with as more of a priority (which does seem to have been a pattern) and then trying to get my concerns across as the now very familiar party line of “medically fit to be released” gets spouted again. When I point out that last time they did that, mum was back there in an ambulance five days later, this doesn’t seem to matter, and is a symptom of the general lack of concern for any specific issues that I am constantly feeling. Respite care now doesn’t seem to be on the table any more, experimental removal overnight of the catheter is a prospect that deeply concerns mum, who thinks that she won’t get a good night’s sleep because of it, and all-in-all, all that I have achieved is to leave her feeling agitated and confused and worried.

Well done me.

Head home, thoroughly frustrated and ring sis to rant for an hour.

JAN 22 2011

Got up early and drove to my mum’s flat where the beloved and I spend the day decorating. The dark paint on the hallway walls is not good for her getting about the place, so I’ve taken it upon myself to try and brighten it up, but with the sudden prospect of her being home as early as Monday, it all has to be done this weekend. Mum only rings twice to see how things are coming along.

Home to a slight (but massively irritating) work problem I have no time to deal with this weekend.

Wearily drove to the hospital for a visit. I’m asked about the decorating, but mum just “hopes it’s not a waste of my time”. Mum is starting to get depressed again and I can’t help but feel that she always seems to get worse on “my watch”. She makes some demands of a nurse for additional cough linctus, but the supply is restricted due to its medicinal content. At least it would appear that someone has apparently been to examine her about the mysteriously returning and awful sounding cough. After bloating up on the experimental day off the catheter, it has been reattached, seemingly now looking like it might prove to be a permanent fixture.

Time and again mum is telling me she can’t see herself ever getting home. Time and again she says she wants to know what they’ve decided to do with her. She does it seems accept that a short stay in respite care might not be the worst thing to try. Time and again I try to tell her not to worry and that she has to remain as charming as she can and not worry, that things will unfold at their own pace etc. I talk again about trying to engage her brain by reading etc., but her interest seems to be waning again.

How she’s going to eat seems to be her main concern about going home. The GMF has “helpfully” suggested that she’ll never be able to cook for herself (although I suspect his emphasis was different to mum’s retelling of it). I tell her that things like that have to be taken a day at a time once she’s home. “Today I’ll try to make myself a sandwich, the next day cheese on toast” and so on, but I’m not sure she’s getting it. We actually have big plans (well, plans anyway) in place to solve the food issue as and when she gets home, but again it’s difficult to get her to see beyond the issue of the initial problem.

Drove home exhausted, but the look I was given at suggesting that I might not go tomorrow – it depends how day two of the decorating progresses - means that I'm ultimately unlikely to allow myself that option.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART EIGHT)

Another of my continuing diaries chronicling my mother’s current hospitalisation as we unbelievably approach the end of the eighth week, something I could never have imagined when I started writing these back in November, so I’m sorry if you are tiring of them (but then, very little of this stuff seems to get read on the average Saturday, so I think it’s safe enough…)

We left off with my mother facing her own long dark night of the soul, but happily, over the course of the few days included here, she seems to turn a corner…

JAN 12 2011

An early morning call from mum because she can’t get hold of either sis or the GMF (although given the reports of their visit yesterday, I wouldn’t blame them for not answering really). I’m obviously third choice. Sounds like she had a rough night although, with large fires blocking roads near to her flat, maybe she is still better off where she is.

Phoned sis again in the early evening, although she’d had a difficult day we were able to discuss her visit of yesterday evening, which involved her trying to prompt a psych evaluation (and getting a promise of “15 questions” that might lead to happy pills), a conversation with a nurse apologising for how awkward my mum is being (“It’s all part of the job”) and how mum won’t even bother asking for painkillers despite her back pain. My big sister apparently sat in the car and wept after that visit.

Our own evening visit isn’t much anticipated, but mum seemed in better spirits than I had imagined, although both the 15 questions and any physiotherapy have both apparently been deferred. I try my best bedside manner with a pep talk (from “Mr. Happy” – I know!!) – mostly about focussing on what can be done over what can’t - which seems not to be ignored as much as I expected, and I am able to ignore my notes made in anticipation of having to be more stern.

JAN 13 2011

Another “day off” from visiting duties – got to take them while I can – and sis’s “post-visit” report is more encouraging today. She took one of mum’s neighbours along and they had quite an animated chat it would seem. Equally there has been positive progress on the medical front (catheter inserted and seems to reduce leg swelling, physiotherapy started, and mum just seems in a better mood). Interestingly the beloved has had a chat with a colleague who says mum’s symptoms are similar to her aunt’s, who was eventually diagnosed with Parkinson’s…

JAN 14 2011

Mum rings early sounding as if she’s feeling a little brighter. The evening visit is a happier time, despite my slight lateness due to someone doing their weekly shop at the petrol station and using a petrol pump to baby-sit her kids. Mum has been relocated to another bay in the same ward, which looks like the place where they start to prep people for release. She received a couple of letters today which cheered her up and she apparently ate properly at last. The rather brilliant physio has got her using a frame to walk with and we have a slight “moment” when we realise mum’s personal walking stick seems to be missing from the move (although it turns up) and mum is generally in a better mood, whilst I seem to be talking myself into redecoration of the flat…

JAN 15 2011

An afternoon visit with all three of us, and things are generally looking up, even if we’re starting to worry about the possibility of such things as bed sores. Mum starts to get tired and tetchy (a good sign that she’s feeling better) and so we drift away after an hour and a half and head off to eat and make further plans.

JAN 16 2011

Spent the afternoon at the flat with sis, trying to assess what might need to be done to make it more “user friendly” for mum’s return home, although sis’s visit to mum last night had her being given strict instructions not to move anything in the living room, so when we look around and think about it, there are few real options when you consider the shape of the rooms and the furniture mum has. Bit of a waste of time really, but it does give us an opportunity to chat about things and assess the decorating requirements.

Persuaded sis that I wouldn’t visit tonight, taking advantage of her presence to get some time at home before her departure puts me on full time visiting duties again.

Mysterious non-phone calls just before visiting time, but that might just have been mum suffering from some confusion about what time it was. Sis tells me that mum is “pleased” that we didn’t move anything around too much and yet at the same time offering to give her her furniture. On the down side, a visit from the Urologist has confirmed that the catheter is to remain for another 5 days and they are then considering fitting a permanent one because the long term used of laxatives during mum’s stay and the unnecessary use of anti-urinary drugs have now made it “unlikely” she’ll ever be able to pee normally again.

Sis is talking litigation if it means a long term financial need for long-term care which scares me a little.

JAN 17 2011

Another Monday morning, week eight, and I hear nothing all day.

An evening visit. Mum looked a whole lot better tonight than I’ve seen in a long time, sitting up in the chair and being positively chatty and animated, almost her old self. This fades with tiredness, but it’s still a good sign. Another Magnesium drip has to be set up, and she still seems understandably a tad nervous about the prospect of being at home, but things generally are looking up today I feel.

JAN 18 2011

Sis’s last day before heading homewards, so I get my last day off from visiting for a while.

Went to a DIY store for supplies for decorating the flat. I rang sis whilst there to warn her that I was going to drop the stuff off at the flat whilst she was at her visit so that she wouldn’t fall over it or wonder how it got there. She tells me some tales of the discussion of mum having a possible short-term nursing home stay after she’s discharged, but all-in-all it’s a quiet day for the continuing saga.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART SEVEN)

JAN 05 2011

No calls at all today, which is a worry. I assume that mum’s sleeping and don’t like to disturb her, assuming that if it were something worse, then I would be told. I call up my sister pre-visit and she has had a meeting with a Doctor today and been filled in on certain matters and voiced our concerns,

My evening visit finds mum looking better than in ages, now they’ve stopped the damned laxative treatments. Lots of positive talk of coming home for once.

An old friend of mum’s rings me at 9.45PM asking for an update and passing on the hopes from her friends from church hoping to see her back there very soon.

JAN 06 2011

Didn’t hear a word all day after my call to my sister to tell her to pass on the message about last night’s call.

An evening telephone conversation – after discovering 25 telephone messages dating back to the start of November and which include the eight (!) that were trying to track me down in between my leaving the house and arriving at the hospital on the day they sent mum home back in early December (I really must get into the habit of checking my messages…) – is not encouraging. How do you help someone who seems to have lost all interest in helping themself? I suspect the turn our conversation took is something neither of us will look back upon as our finest hour, but sometimes these things are just necessary.

JAN 07 2011

Evening visit. Mum’s now giving the impression that she no longer cares and is no longer interested in her own well being, or in doing anything to help herself to get better. This makes me sad but it also makes me rather angry, too.

With her.

Throwing away the grapes I was asked to bring a couple of days back (“I don’t know why you brought them” – Er… because you asked for them…). Worrying about the make-up of my own DNA as I see the sights in front of me and wonder whether I’m looking at a vision of my own future.

JAN 08 2011

Afternoon visit, GMF, sis, self. All a lot brighter today, although the chat all gets a bit too “Top Gear” I suspect, but it kept things rattling along.

Mum to sis: “Isn’t it about time you went back to Cornwall?”

Charming!

JAN 09 2011

04:00AM Mum moved out of her side ward onto a main ward. This is probably a good sign, although you wouldn’t think it to see her response to it. Too much time away from the hoi polloi, I expect, has given her a superiority complex. The rest of us are quite pleased, though as we think that more mental stimulation shouldn’t do her any harm.

The afternoon visit was comparatively brief for the three of us. Mum felt too tired after just an hour although we do discover that there is a CT Scan planned for tomorrow.

JAN 10 2011

Mum rings me 13:00 feeling lousy, and not wanting visitors. She had a “bad night” (although it was actually the morning) having been forced to drink every 20 minutes and consequent calls of nature. Now “nil by mouth” waiting for the scan (and consequently unable to speak clearly). Unable to track down sis to head her off from the visit, but I do try.

The evening visit proves alarming, not least because I get a flashback to my Grandma’s deathbed, but mum looks shockingly pale. However, after we sit her up, she rallies enough to bellow “I wish I was DEAD!!” in what my father would have called her Bette Davis voice. We also get criticised for being too cheerful, told twice about a visit from her friends Ann and John, and the nurse taking her blood pressure gets a kind word, although mum’s sense of quite what the time might be is utterly out of whack.

Sis tells me her plans for the month and she wants to head home on the 19^th as she has things she has to do back home.

JAN 11 2011

I get another day off from visiting duties.

Sis rings around 5.30PM, and it sounds like she’s had a rough afternoon during her visit with mum and the GMF. The consultant had a chat and mum’s basically told him “she wants to die” although he replied that they don’t practice euthanasia on that ward. Mum though has basically given up and looks prepared to die of stubborn bloody-mindedness. Even GMF, I’m told, is angry about this, what with their religion and all…

Meanwhile there is talk of mysterious “returning tumours” which is a surprise to those of us not in the loop as neither of us were aware of any previous ones…

All in all very depressing, but I’m still insisting on my night off, even if I am worried that the fates may choose to punish me for it… Did call sis before her evening visit though, with a couple of suggestions, but all-in-all it’s still very, very depressing.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART SIX)

As we now approach the middle of January, my mother remains in hospital. I've been keeping a daily diary of events mostly in order to keep my train of thought in focus during these very distracting times. At the end of part five, which I shared with you on January 2nd, we had reached some sort of an “understanding” about things...

DEC 30 2010

And yet…

A nice lady from social services did indeed ring around midday and explained that the plan was now to get mum home as soon as possible, just as soon as the care package was sorted out. The hospital were convinced that she was medically fit to go home, so it was now just a matter of shifting the pieces in to place.

That afternoon’s visit was horrendous, a mad whirl of X-rays, toilets and that hacking cough, alongside mum’s sudden fear of being alone in her own home. This did not fill me with any hope, but, as ever, the mantra was “Well, we shall just have to see, won’t we…?”

Meanwhile, during my visit, my sister (apparently) rang home and announced (croakily) that she was planning to drive up this weekend for a visit.

DEC 31 2010

A (very) early morning call from mum, on the day she had decided that they were going to send her home. She was upset about “waterworks” issues, and all my reassurances about drugs in the system and dehydration and trying to relax didn’t seem to sink in. She had packed her bag in anticipation of being sent home, but this possibility seemed to be fading again.

I rang the ward to give them a mobile contact number as we had planned to be out and about during the morning, but didn’t want to be out of reach if a Doctor happened to find himself actually on a ward and decide to release mum, and off to the shops we went.

The phone didn’t ring, but I called into the flat, chiefly to dispose of any three-week old perishables that might still have been lurking within, and called mum, only to find that, no, her release had been postponed once more, and she was naturally sounding disappointed at this development.

We paid a brief New Year’s Eve visit, but she was very sleepy, so we went away again, although I did ring again during the evening to wish her the best New Year she could manage.

JAN 01 2011

 Another day, another month, another year…

It’s turns into a less than wonderful day as I didn’t get my usual morning call from mum (although she later still claims that she made it) and spent a lot of time trying to ring her only to be told by the machine that she’s “unavailable”. Eventually I did get through, but the unpleasantness of her description of her day thus far wasn’t encouraging.

By the evening her stomach problems had returned with a vengeance and our visit was curtailed at her request and I headed home worried sick and depressed as hell.

On a personal level I was exhausted but seemed unable to relax, and was becoming increasingly tetchy with the world in general. The only thinking I was becoming capable of – when I could think at all - did not end in any happy outcomes.

JAN 02 2011

Mum claimed in her early morning call that the night staff insisted on taking the commode from her room at 6.00AM, told her she was perfectly capable of walking to the toilet herself and then were less than gracious at the inevitably disastrous consequences.

I met my sister in the car park after she’d driven all day to be here. Several billion brownie points to her, then. A visit to mum for us both was obviously brighter due to her “surprise” presence, but I could tell that sis actually seeing the reality of the situation made it seem very grim to her.

I took my sister to supermarket for supplies and then back to the hovel for tea and a council of war. She headed off for a further visit and I had the prospect of a rare day off.

Sis then returned to the hospital to endure what was a bit of a tetchy old visit by all accounts, and then drove back to mum’s flat to move in.

Late in the evening, a carer arrived told by the hospital that mum had been released…

JAN 03 2011

According to Sis, in daylight, the flat is in a hell of a state. A call to her from mum in hospital says she’s had another bad night and there are further complications.

Mum rang late afternoon and seemed brighter – certainly the picture she painted didn’t much resemble the one described by my sister, but then our conversation later had more bleakness within. It’s still a bit of an emotional rollercoaster all told, but this was the day designated as my “day off” from all duties, so I didn’t visit the hospital for the first time in an age.

JAN 04 2011

It snowed again. Always fun under the present circumstances. Mum rang twice, the second to tell of three “unfortunate incidents” since the first, report a lack of Doctors, and worry that she’s never going to be able to go home. On her third call she sounded utterly defeated, and I was really starting to run out of encouraging things to say.

A call to my sister had me finding out that she’d “kicked up a fuss” in the afternoon which seems to have got things moving slightly after they seemed rather stalled with regards to actually treating mum’s problem. I looked into mum’s outstanding bills and noticed an anomaly which I also asked my sister (now the family “enforcer”) to look into. I was given a job that was within my limited capabilities: buying grapes.

My sister and I paid an evening visit which started brightly enough, but which took a more unpleasant turn and we spent some time in the “relative’s room” (with the strange graphic that looks like someone serving cocktails) mulling over the whole situation, and, after a final attempt at being encouraging before we departed, ended up chatting in the car park for twenty minutes and I then headed home feeling utterly useless.

JUST GIVING UP

It is becoming increasingly obvious to my sister and me that our mother is just giving up. Some of the things that she’s saying, and a lot of the things she’s choosing not to do are not conducive to the simple process of getting better. It could be that we’ve all reached a low emotional point and things will soon start to improve, or it could be that even lower depths are yet to be explored. Whatever it is that awaits us will I’m sure unfold in time, but in the meantime I find myself in a kind of bipolar state, swinging from anger to sadness and back (and sometimes simultaneously) and sometimes forgetting to be kind and forgiving as I pass through these extremes, which will no doubt cumulate in a kind of grudging acceptance.

The beloved tells me that maybe I should prepare myself for the possibility that it’s because she’s just decided it’s time for her to go, but if that’s true then it’s just starting to annoy me because it seems there’s no real medical reason for it, it’s almost as if it’s become too much bother, too much effort to simply carry on. Then I get angry with myself, and sad for my mum, and the whole wretched cycle goes around again. I can understand a desire to be gone because the pain is too much to bear or something, but to want to go simply because it requires you to try just seems ridiculous, and I don’t want to look back on these days and think she was ridiculous.

When you give up on yourself, who else is there?

This isn’t what I was brought up to believe. This isn’t what I was told.

When I was a spudlet, we were taught to have a bit of faith, and that things would work out all right in the end if you just had a bit of belief in the fact that they would. Now any religious faith I might have had fell by the wayside years ago, but my mother has persisted with her churchgoing and in ramming her christianity down my throat for so many years now, that I’d never have put her down as someone who would just “give up”. I thought that we were meant to “Rage! Rage against the dying of the light!” I genuinely thought that, as a family, we were all made of sterner stuff.

I really don’t have the patience any more for other people’s self-destruction. From bitter experience, I know that it hurts too much.

Many, many years ago, in another lifetime, I rented a room in a house in which there also lived a serial self-harmer who was constantly trying to end their own life. Over the course of a long period of months, various failed attempts were made at all times of day and night, and it turned into a kind of war of attrition, which was ultimately exhausting for everyone living there. However, in those circumstances, when the stakes are so high, you really feel that you can’t just give up, but, in the end, I suppose I did. Perhaps we both did. Because they finally succeeded in their ambition, which was shortly after I’d realised that living in that environment seemed to be slowly killing me too, and I had just completed the process of moving out of there. I now look back on that time as the moment when something in me stopped too. The shock of that event pulled the rug out from under me, and I now believe that I slammed a door in my mind that I’ve only recently been able to begin to think about prising open.

Friendship let people in, and then you would lose them, and that was just too painful to bear. Better not to let anyone else get too close, better to shut myself away and keep the pain out, push the potential hurt away.

It’s taken me a long time to start to think another way. Luckily, despite everything, the beloved and I managed to find each other in the empty blackness, and she has slowly nurtured and cared for me and dragged me reluctantly out of my personal darkness to emerge blinking into the milky dawn light and persuade me into having some glimmer of hopefulness in my life again. Recently, I have managed to tentatively try and rebuild some of those fragile connections with people who I thought I’d lost long ago, and, whilst I clumsily fumble around, trying very hard to manage something that seems to come to others so very easily, I think I’ve made the first step on that million mile journey.

However, my recent dabblings in that cesspit of self-absorption that I persist in calling FizzBok have now also started to make my depression with it all resurface, and make me doubt the worth of such things all over again. Perhaps I’ve come to realise what is blindingly obvious to everyone else, but which I failed to spot in my social awkwardness and clumsiness: FizzBok friendship isn’t friendship by any normal definition of the word. The endless self-congratulatory references to the mundane: “My favourite this! My hatred of that! Don't you think I’m brilliant? No, I really am! Aren’t I bloody marvellous everyone! My kids! My shopping! (My God!) Me, me, me, me, ME!!!” coupled with a tendency to denigrate anything that doesn’t fall within the individual’s own sphere of interest has really made me want to give up on more than one of them at some time or other. There’s that theme again: “giving up”. Just when things were starting to go so well, too. Is there any way that you can quietly stop someone else’s endless self-obsessed postings from popping up without just “unfriending” them, giving up on them? Mind you, it’s not a place for reasoned debate, is it? It’s not a place where you can just have a quiet word with someone and say “too much”.

You could argue, of course – and you’d have a good point – that endless self-obsessed postings from places like Lesser Blogfordshire are just as unreasonable to endure, and have the added disadvantage that they can go on at some length that is mercifully denied to the FizzBok crowd. My only defence to that is that I just post the link, whether you choose to come and read it is up to you. Sometimes something pops up on FizzBok that so irritates me that it quite ruins my mood, but it’s so short and pithy and utterly there that it’s impossible not to read it in the first place.

Nonetheless, I have at many times also considered giving up on this, these daily missives from my own dark side. Certainly at the moment I’m struggling to find the words and the motivation when my days are so bleak and similar. A daily cycle of work – eat – hospital – sleep (with occasional variations) is not conducive to “creative” (or whatever else you might want to call it) thought, and reaching into those gloomy corners to pull out another nugget (or – more often – pile of poo) to share is becoming increasingly difficult for me to manage. I mean, I was going to write something else this morning, but I even gave up on that.

Maybe I’ve been wrong all along. Maybe we are a family of quitters. That’s quite a thing to realise on a damp Saturday morning, isn’t it?

Cue Kate Bush: “Don’t give up now, for somewhere there’s a place where we belong…”

Oh, I give up.

THE WHOLE SORRY SAGA (PART FIVE)

DEC 18 2010

The beloved was still too ill to go out, so I headed off to the supermarket to stock up on the more perishable Christmas fayre and ended up getting out of there early enough to blast down the road to mum’s flat to put some of the “emergency rations” (frozen chicken dinners in case Christmas day proves too treacherous weather-wise for us to visit at all) into her freezer. I was also able to collect some of her post, which helped to pass some of the time during those hospital visits when you’re struggling to think of anything new to talk about.

DEC 19 2010

Mum got relocated to another ward, but still in a side room, and the beloved and I were apparently told off in our absence for leaving the chairs there after our visit as it made the bed move more difficult. Oddly enough, we are sure we didn’t and can only imagine that they meant the ones that were in the room they took her to and not the one she came from. I managed to feel a tad miffed at this slight against my helpful nature, but was persuaded to let it go.

I paid an afternoon visit and chatted to mum and the GMF who was also in attendance, which made it a bit easier. However, the latest TV card was running out and I discovered that you couldn’t set it up in anticipation, you had to wait until it ran out before setting up your next three days. It became clear that I’d have to visit again in the evening to set it up as the controls remained too complicated for mum to think through at that moment and (apparently – although I have no confirmation of this) the nurses wouldn’t do it for you. I suspect they actually probably would, but who was I to argue?

DEC 20 2010

Happily the lousy weather around the country cancelled the business trip I’d been required to go on that day, so things normalised and a straightforward evening visit was attended after a horrible time trying to get into my frozen car involving all sorts of fun with iced-up windows refreezing the moment I moved, so that it took twenty minutes and two near misses after I’d left the house to be still outside my own front door. As I’d had that much fun moving just ten feet, I was very glad at the wisdom of the Welsh for seeing sense and cancelling.

DEC 21 2010

I got up early to watch some of the lunar eclipse. That puts a lot of things into perspective.

However, that night I had a tetchy old visit. “Are you going to ask the nurses when I can go home?” There is no point to this, as they really don’t know. “Your sister would have asked them if she’d been here.”

Ouch!

DEC 22 2010

On the way to my evening hospital visit I called at mum’s flat and salvaged the turkey roast joint (replacing the one ordered – and subsequently cancelled online) I had dropped into her freezer the previous Saturday. The plan is now to cook at home on Christmas Eve then transport and reheat on Christmas Day.

DEC 23 2010

A metaphorical hand grenade was thrown into our plans for Christmas when mum rang me in the morning to tell me that it has been decided that mum was not now going to be allowed home. The  biggest problem came when I responded to her enquiry about “looking after the GMF” that the GMF and what he was now going to do was not really my problem. This was reported in a bitter phone call to my sister in which, she later tells me, stunned silences fall when, for once, my sister told mum she agreed with me.

I maintain that on two minutes notice, as the phone call was still progressing, the GMF was not a priority in my mind as I mentally rearranged the intricate chess pieces of my Christmas plans around in my head, but just another thing to consider when I had a new master plan. I suspect that I shall never be truly forgiven for this.

As the day progresses the GMF rang and told me not to worry about him, as really he would be fine, but the beloved and I managed to come up with a plan that, eventually, seemed to suit everyone. All we all had to do then was sell it to mum, and eventually that storm in a teacup got settled, although mum seemed more than a touch dismayed when I invested in a six-day television card to see her through the duration of Christmas.

On the plus side, my niece gave birth a baby which, despite my own less-than-massive enthusiasm for such matters, did seem to distract mum and make her slightly happier.

DEC 24 2010

Work finally grinded to a halt and I had to dash off to collect a commode (Oh, the glamour!) from the equipment shop before they closed for Christmas at 3.00 PM. As I traversed the ice rink that was mum’s road with it. I decided not to gift wrap it. Whilst I was there, I fixed one of Blinky’s lights as the car had chosen to live up to its nickname again. I headed home again and had a much needed bath whilst listening to “Carol’s from Kings” (although the batteries in my radio faded out) as the beloved roasted the now superfluous but defrosted turkey joint. Evening visiting found mum developing a cough, but apart from that, a Christmas in hospital now didn’t seem quite as foreboding as it once was.

DEC 25 2010 (Christmas Day)

Christmas Day was a bit different, to what it usually is, but we all seemed to get through it okay. The beloved and I paid a morning visit to mum and she seemed sprightly enough and pleased to see us. Token gestures at gifting found me giving her a much-unwanted paperback (the only gift I had bought her that seemed remotely hospital friendly) but it’s a minor glitch.

The GMF was on afternoon duties so that I could sit down and eat with the beloved’s family. After that I headed round to his house with a plate of the beloved’s mother’s Christmas dinner and the GMF and I sat and chatted for a while as he ate.  I’m convinced that mum got more attention in the hospital than she might have done with me attempting to cook a meal in her flat on a miniature oven, a microwave and a couple of electric hobs. More general gifting and a proper sit down family meal was postponed until after she’s home. The beloved and I paid another evening visit on our way home and were surprised at both how quiet it was and how few evening visitors there actually were.

We arrived home and the DVR had failed to tape any Christmas Day telly that I’d programmed to record because I was going to be so busy. Just our luck!

DEC 26 2010

I got a rare restful morning (although I got up early to listen to some of the test match) before we headed out for a late afternoon visit to the beloved’s folks, then called in at the hospital again for an evening visit. So many people were now telling me that the hospital doesn’t check the pay and display parking at all and that I was throwing my money away, but with the way my luck’s been going recently I wasn’t prepared to chance it. Sometimes I felt like I was funding the place personally anyway, so what was a few more quid?

DEC 27 2010

The Beloved had a family birthday. I dropped her at the house then drove off to do an afternoon visit to the hospital. The rains had finally come, so it was most definitely warmer and  we thought that maybe we’d seen the last of the ice for a while. I apologised to the nurses for being ten minutes early in my visit only to find GMF already sitting there.

Afterwards, I returned to the beloved and a small family party, then for once we were able to head straight home without an evening visit. Despite the thaw the house seemed chilly, and at bedtime I discovered that the central heating boiler was on the blink. I reset it, but it started to sound like a jet engine warming up and all the radiators were suddenly red hot. I decided to switch it off, possibly terminally…

DEC 28 2010

When I got up, I tried to run the hot water tap and the boiler made a rather final sounding set of clunks and bangs that sounded like a “Goon Show” sound effect, and after finally tracking down a boiler engineer who was prepared to make an appearance, we realised that now washing and drying mum’s nightclothes was suddenly a small extra problem. Not good. Mum’s morning call did not sound good either,  as she’s hadn’t slept due to all her coughing and she was standing up as she made the call (and adding to her own disorientation) as the nurse was making the bed.

At least shampooing her hair had finally been mentioned. This had been another source of worry.

Our evening visit had me very worried indeed as mum just looked so frail and the cough and the stomach issues seemed to be making her kind of give up to these weary eyes. We were sent away early because she was so tired and for the first time I got very upset when I reported in to my sister on the phone later. My sister had got laryngitis, but managed to croak a few words of encouragement and it did make her a better listener I expect. We decided that I should ring the ward to voice my concerns and they did at least tell me that they would keep a particular eye on her, although they didn’t seem unduly worried themselves.

DEC 29 2010

Mum’s morning call was very early (especially as I’d stayed up listening to cricket) but she seemed brighter despite some chest pain that had already passed. Later on there was a rare sighting of an actual Doctor on the ward doing the first rounds since before Christmas, and her chest infection was finally addressed. There will be more tests, more x-rays and a home care package was now being discussed.

Evening visiting had mum asking me whether Social Services have rung me after their long chat to her. I told her that they hadn’t.

DEC 30 2010

Mum’s phone call that morning told me of another bad night and the return of the stomach problems, and  she also asked again whether Social Services had been in touch yet about what is going to happen after she gets home. To me, that possibility still seems a long way off. My mentioning of the beloved’s overnight migraine in relation to not being sure when I’d be able to time my visit got the concession that I have my problems too…

Maybe, at last, we are starting to understand each other.

And that brings us almost up to date and I’m hoping that these five pieces have in some small way explained why I’ve been so distracted during December. I’m sure I’ve been so brain-mashed for much of the time that I’ve left out (or simply forgotten) a lot of the detail, so, perhaps this isn't the WHOLE sorry saga after all, but I’ve found it pretty therapeutic to mull over and revisit what has been a strange month for me and my family.

As ever, I’m always aware that there are others having, a much harder time than we are, and if my month has even in some small way given me a taste of what it must be like for them then they have my deepest sympathies and whole-hearted admiration. All you can do is stick with it and hope that eventually there might just be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm sure that sometime soon there’ll be a “part six” to this our sorry, if not unusual, story, although I guess it might be becoming a very monotonous tale, and suspect things will just carry on in much the same vein for a little while yet. Nonetheless, I should like to thank you for indulging me and reading my thoughts on it.

We sit at the dawn of another year, and I hope everybody has as good a one as they reasonably can.