Still here.
Right Royally fed up.
We could
have gone home on Friday or perhaps even Thursday evening.
On Thursday morning the plastics specialist nurse
turned up and said she was happy for him to go home with a portable dry vac
dressing.
HUZZAH
BUT
We live in North Tyneside so the North Tyneside
District Nurses have to be organised.
Also we can’t take the hospital dry vac with us because:-
a) we live in
North Tyneside
and/or
b) they use a different one in the community.
AND
It was Thursday with the weekend coming up and
North Tyneside had to order the dry vac machine.
So we have had an extra three or four nights in the RVI for no good medical reason at NHS expense. At least he’s getting his medication given, and observations taken, in a timely and regular fashion.
When we
eventually get the call it will take me 5 minutes flat to get our stuff packed.
I have run out of books to read and can’t bring myself to look at
Ferretfingers’ tv listings.
I have
finished my knitting, the light is too poor in here for sewing up and besides I
have no buttons for finishing off.
There is a man on the hip unit around the corner who is quite disturbed and does a lot of crying out, especially at night.
It reminds me of Dad’s night terrors.
Dad would go to bed early as he had to be up
at 05.30 to do the post. Mum was a night
owl. They once famously passed each
other in the passage after she dropped off in her chair and didn’t notice the
telly going off (that was in the days when it used to).
As a child I would hear him starting to
scream, get up and tell Mum.
After enough times
of her saying “Go and tell him to wake up” I would go without involving
her.
The noises would start quite low
and I’d lie and hope they’d stop. They
seldom did so, as they increased in intensity and terror, I would get up, open
his bedroom door and say, kindly but firmly, “Wake up Dad, you’re having a
nightmare.” There would be a sudden
movement as he turned over and a relieved “Thanks pet.”
He told me once that he dreamed there was someone
standing at the foot of the bed that he wanted to get at but just couldn’t
move. So he screamed because he knew if
he screamed someone would come and wake him up and it would be ok.
I wonder now what happened in the days when
Mum and Dad went to bed at the same time. Did she poke or kick him as soon as she was aware of the noises, like
she used to when he snored?
Dad once told me his grandfather, Dada, used to get
night terrors too and he would go and wake him up.
Tommy used to get the terrors when he was a
toddler, but thankfully they seem to have gone away.
Fester is suffering with Ferretfingers being away.
I have a feeling of utter impotence.
I don’t know how to make anything
happen.
I don’t know who to contact,
push, nag or make a nuisance of myself with.
Not that I want to but if that’s what it takes I will.
Not knowing is demoralising.
Plus the ward phone keeps going and nobody
answers it so I keep wondering if it’s about Ferretfingers.
There was talk that we might be home last Monday.
So that’s another seven nights
and days gone.
Had I known I could have
planned.
Could have got Fester in every
day for two hours.
Could have got
breaks, got things done at home.
As it
is I’m permanently waiting around for information that never comes; and if it
does is tiny and not what I want to hear.
Someone Somewhere Please Get Things Moving!
I’m tempted to phone our GP to see if they can shift
things from their end.
I think I shall soon scream or cry.
There is a Geordie blurke across the corridor with a carrying voice, an unending source of conversation and comment, and one leg. I’m having the uncharitable though that he talked the other leg off.
Staff Nurse Mercy has been in.
She has been tasked with chasing the District
Nurses and the Senior Nurse re Ferretfingers’ medication and discharge
papers.
The glacier is moving.
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