Hospital log #2

For reasons which will become obvious these blogs are backdated.  They are based on writings in the little red journal I always carry with me in order to have something interesting to read, and somewhere to vent.  As usual names have been changed to protect the innocent.

SATURDAY 8 FEBRUARY

And the day starts with …

Catheterisation …

Because Ferretfingers has a full bladder but will not wee in a bottle.

This is not the sort of thing a mother should witness.

Late on Friday night a tired looking doctor arrived and showed me on his own foot where and which bones Ferretfingers had broken.  “We’re going to have to put in a plate and a pin because if we don’t set it properly that foot will be useless.  If we get no trauma patients in tonight we’ll do it tomorrow, otherwise it will have to be Sunday.”

SUNDAY 9 FEBRUARY 

7.51am

Well we must have had a better night’s sleep because I had weird dreams.   

To be honest, what dreams aren’t weird?

Ferretfingers was awake asking questions at 3am but settled back down.

When fully reclined this chair is narrow but firm (like some people).  If I could get my covers to stay on it would almost be comfortable

Ferretfingers’s operation was in the early afternoon.  I went with him up to Anaesthesia and had to put on croc sandals and a gown for sterility.   

The last time I did something like this was back in September 1992 in the Freeman Hospital when Mr Priddy the pain specialist gave my late husband Phil an epidural to relieve the pain from the cancer in his liver.  I’d already had two days of reliving, remembering and flashing back to sitting at Phil’s bedside.  Continually pushing back the thought “Oh God I’ve done enough of this.”  Because resentment and anger are of no use when you have a child to support emotionally and practically in, to them, a strange and frightening environment.

In a tiny room I stood by his head and held it while Dr M (a stern lady) put a cannula in his hand.  It seemed to take ages; and then his eyelids slowly drooped and he was asleep.  At 12.15 they wheeled him through the double doors and it was “You can go now.”

To where?

To do what?

Suddenly I was completely and unutterably alone and with no purpose, but an awful empty feeling.  The elastic snapped.  All the tension I had been holding down rushed back at me.  My jaw started chattering and I shook.  I took myself to the Chaplaincy, hoping to find some sort of chapel.  Instead, a dark windowless Quiet Room, with soft institutional chairs and a proggy mat picture of leaves framed on the wall.

I sat and wept for a while.

No one heard, or if they did, no one came.

Eventually I realised I hadn’t eaten for over eighteen hours (I couldn’t eat while Ferretfingers was nil by mouth) so I took myself to the cafeteria where they had good old fashioned mince and dumplings, like Auntie Ed used to make when we came up here on holiday.  She also gave us lime jelly which, aged 8, I though glamorous and sophisticated as Mum only ever served strawberry. 

Once I’d wrapped myself around the mince and dumplings and some vegetables I felt a lot better.  It was time for a Snickers and a cappuccino.  I felt the urge for some fresh air so took my cappuccino across Victoria Road to the University Quad.

It was blustery but not raining; other parts of the country were suffering storm Ciera.  I found myself the least windy spot to sit and have my coffee: near the doors to the old Undergraduate Reading Room, where I used to sit and look up at the balcony signed The Gertrude Bell Collection and wonder who she was and what she had done.

My mobile crowed. 

It was Middlesister “If you want to shout and swear and scream at someone you can shout, swear and scream at me.”

“I’m in the Quad.  I don’t think the University security men would look kindly on some grey haired old bat screaming profanities on their premises.”

“Oh never mind them.”

It was so good to vent.

The Quad is a lovely place with only happy memories and associations for me.  The primulas are blooming and the mahonia is giving off its unexpectedly honeysweet scent, which catches you all surprised on the breeze just for a moment so that you wonder whether you imagined it.

It was getting on for 2 and they’d said the operation would take “a couple of hours” so I took myself back up to Trauma Ward and cubicle 4.

It was empty.

No bed.

I flashed back to the first dream I had after Phil died; walking into an empty cubicle with no body, no bed, just a puddle of bloodstained water in a corner.

I pulled myself together; there was no puddle and I was completely awake.

Even so by 2.15 I was pacing in and out of the cubicle.

Then, suddenly, a nurse said “He’s out.  Do you want to come up and fetch him?”

I didn’t need asking twice.

There he was, open eyed and alert, in his bed, ready to be pushed back.