Hospital log #7 The Last Day

THURSDAY 20^TH FEBRUARY

Little things hurt a lot

Sorting stuff ready to go home, I laid out my nightie, yesterday’s blouse and undies, Ferretfingers’ jarmies and the socks he was wearing the day of his accident.

Then I noticed one had a long tear down the front.

They had had to cut his sock off.

What he had gone through hit me and I could barely hold myself together.

All that in the midst of relative strangers...

I shut the cubicle door, put my hankie over my mouth and went to the window so no one could see me sob.

13.40

Just been down to X-Ray for a picture of his ankle before discharge.

The porter put us next to an elderly lady.

She was plucking at and pulling back her bedlinen 

saying weakly “Oh I can’t find my key.  I’ve lost the key.”

“That’s ok love” I said “They’ll have your key.”

“My front door key?”

“Yes love, they’ll have it safe somewhere for you”

She seemed reassured and smiled at me.

I asked if I could put her bedclothes back for her.

A tiny bruised kneed confused little bird of a woman.

She started talking to me 

about where she’d been living 

and what she’d been doing 

and how she liked Marks & Sparks food.

At least I think that’s what she said.

I couldn’t quite follow.

But I smiled and nodded 

because sometimes you just need someone to listen.

Her name was Audrey.

Hospital log #6 "Do what!?"

EVENING WEDNESDAY 19^TH FEBRUARY

In the fifties Miss Doozer next door would have been called a Pocket Venus. 

However as her hobbies include horse riding and sword fighting “though she be but little she is fierce.”*

In a conversation about getting Ferretfingers washed at home I texted:-

How do you feel about hosing down a young man?

And got the following replies:-

“Well”

“Charlie horse gets hosed in summer”

“He doesn’t like it”

“And he tried to bite the sheath cleaner”

“But I think humans are different”

“Give me a hoof pick and a scrubbing brush and I’m pretty good too”

“I can get a nice shine on the hooves”

I asked:-

Do I want to know what a sheath cleaner is?

Replies:-

“It’s exactly what it says on the label.  Geldings have a bit more room ‘up there’ than usual and sometimes they need a bit of a clean”

“There is a person”

“That person is the sheath cleaner”

“Or the willy washer”

“If you’re being crude.”

I wondered, via text, whether they ever had one on What’s My Line.

“Now I know what game we are playing at the next Christmas night out at the barn.”

*that’s yer actual Shakespeare that is.

Hospital log #5

WEDNESDAY 19^TH FEBRUARY

Still in RVI but there is light …

If Ferretfingers wasn’t autistic and didn’t need so much help moving we might have been home a week ago, but there it is.

I’ve managed to get home every other day or so for a bath or shower, walk to the end of the garden and a bit of shifting stuff in the hope we’ll be home soon.

It’s been a pretty awful couple of weeks.  Thank goodness for mobile phones and texts.  I’d have felt completely alone and isolated without them.

SILVER LINING

At the start of all this I weighed 14st 4lb.  Yesterday afternoon I weighed 13st 13¼lb.  We’ve broken the 14st barrier.  Two years ago I was over 15stone.

Having witnessed, and eaten, hospital meals Fester now knows what a reasonable portion is for an adult.  Hopefully he will stop feeding the boys, and us, quite so much.  I live in hope.

I’ve learnt how lovely Thunderthighs is, and he knows a little of how much he means to me.

Thunderthighs has stepped up and grown up a little.

LITTLE BLACK CLOUDS - 16.00 19.02.20

All is organised.

Equipment in the house.

The OT has done the safety assessment and brought the wheelchair to the hospital.

The home-going ambulance/patient transport is booked.

Then …

A couple turn up from our local authority “Enablement Team”. 

I naively think it’s to organise someone to wash him.

Oh No

“We’re here to see about his re-enablement needs.”

I answer their questions about his daily routine: tell them how he needs prompting to clean his teeth and wash; tell them how he washes himself in his evening bath; tell them he can’t get upstairs to the bathroom because his broken ankle in non-weight-bearing and besides which he can’t get in the bath with a plaster cast on his broken ankle.

“Oh.  It doesn’t look as if, from what you say, that he needs our re-enablement services.”

“So can you say whether or not he can go home?”

“Oh it’s not for us to say, we can only report to the Social Worker.”

“Have you any authority over whether he goes home tomorrow.”

“Oh it’s not for us to say, we can only report to the Social Worker.”

 “Because he is, we are, going home tomorrow whatever any one from Adult Social Care says.”

“Oh it’s not for us to say, we can only report to the Social Worker …”

They leave.

Before ringing to blast Ferretfingers’ ‘Enablement Officer’ (i.e. cheaper than a social worker) I go to see Ward Sister.

“Have those people got any power to stop David going home tomorrow?”

“No they have not.  I have no idea why they were sent.  All I asked for was for someone to come in and wash him.  Anyway, I’m doing all his medications now.  How do you feel about giving him his heparin anti-coagulant injections?”

“Good God no!  I couldn’t do that to him.  I can barely watch!”

“That’s ok; I’ll ring your GP surgery and get a District Nurse to do it.”

Good old local authority Community Learning Disability Team, almost always guaranteed to cause unnecessary distress.

Hospital log #4

16 February at 11:56 Facebook update·

7am this morning it was "Get up Mummy" and from then on regular announcements of "the nurse will put me in the green chair."  Then at about 8.30 "I need a poo!".  At which the nurses brought in the rotunda (sackbarrow-for-people according to Fester) and commode, and decided to wash and change him for the day.  

He's quite content with tv, tablet (non-medical) and Guardian tv guide.  Every now and again we get "I was very brave last week" and "I had an accident at The City Farm last Friday" and "When are we going home?"

I only wish I knew.

16 February at 12:38 · Facebook update

I have just eaten all 6 of cousin Daisy's cheese scones (with butter) and a bag of Valentine milk chocolate brazils, so feel a little sick!

Mrs Banjoman Stress does that to you. Mega munchies.....

Miss Doozer Medicinal x

Mrs Quilt Easily done, pity the warning queasiness doesn't cut in sooner - still you're entitled to whatever indulgence comes your way!

MONDAY 17^TH FEBRUARY

For the first two nights I slept on the reclining chair.   

No good for someone who habitually sleeps on their stomach.   

Then I filched four pillows, blankets and a pair of sheets and made myself a next on the floor.   

Much better.   

On a trip home I picked up the bag containing my yoga mat (and for some mysterious reason an orange checked apron).  That helped, and I was able to do some yoga in the morning to loosen my back up.

Then at midnight last night I heard a terrific rumbling in the corridor and the cubicle door clashed open.

“I don’t think you’ll mind me waking you up for this” says Nurse.

It was a foldy-out bed-chair.

Oh the bliss of lying flat 2ft above the floor.  To be able to lie on your side, front or back.  And I still have the yoga mat for morning warm ups.

TUESDAY 18^TH FEBRUARY

I had just got off the phone to Fester, he’d been told the commode and rotunda would be delivered tomorrow and the OT would visit to do a safety assessment.  I turned around and there was Thunderthighs standing in the doorway.   

It was a delight to see him and I flung my arms around him in a long long hug.  His work experience day had been cancelled because the car taking them to the job had been in a crash and written off.  So he’s decided to come in and see us on his way home.  It’s the first time he’s come in on his own.  Previously he’s come in with his Dad and then gone home with me or him.  Or come from college and met up with Fester here.

I told him how close we were getting to coming home and that maybe we should light a candle for it.

“I wanted to light a candle on Sunday for Ferretfingers’s operation, but there was a service on so I couldn’t go into the church.”

I was so touched.

When he left I told him I loved and missed him.

“I’ve missed you too” in a gruff little voice.

Then he was gone and I was overwhelmed.

He’s seen me light candles for Mum, Dad, poorly family, ailing friends and others in so many different churches and cathedrals over the years.  But I had no idea he’d noticed or absorbed anything: that I had actually managed to give him a way to ask for help; to give him any sort of spirituality.  Or that he was actually so sweet and caring and loving.

I shut the door, went to the window and put my hankie over my mouth while I wept.  Hoping that Ferretfingers and the nurses wouldn’t notice I was upset.  Because how could I explain I was floored by kindness not cruelty.

Eventually I blew my nose, wiped my eyes and washed my face several times with a cold flannel.  Even so there were a couple of “Are you ok?”s and offers of coffee.

LATER THAT DAY

On my visit home this afternoon I attacked the living room.   

Fester had shifted most of the furniture and lifted most of the mats but left a load of muck from underneath them.  I took up, rolled and stashed the remaining mats.  Took out the dead flower arrangements.  Swept all the floors to the kitchen and brushed up and binned all the muck.  Found the laminate flooring cleanser and made it up in a bucket.  Found the new mophead and mopped the living room and hall.  

Then had a much needed shower.

I’d just wrapped a bathsheet around my chest and a towel over my shoulders when there was a hammering at the front door.  Nothing to do but go down and there was an amused looking delivery man.

“Imma sorry I forgotta da milk” he said in an Italian accent, handing me a flower box.

I didn’t have my glasses on and must have looked blank; we’re usually taking in parcels for next door.

“It’sa for number 13” he confirmed before waltzing off to his van.

It was a lovely bunch of flowers from Dr E (ex-uni-flatmate) on the Isle of Wight.

Then Thunderthighs appeared from the loft with a “What?”

I made him get me a vase from the delft rack and put the flowers in it and onto the mantelpiece.

Then called for a taxi back to the hospital.

Hadricksmill Road is closed off South Gosforth so the taxi driver took the road up to Gosforth and then the first left, and other lefts and rights through the back street.  He brought us out onto an empty Hadricksmill Road with almost no traffic back to the city centre.  It was Sunday traffic on a Tuesday afternoon.