Sorry for the radio silence, I was somewhat overtaken by events and am writing to you via a dongle, which is a bit of a first for both of us. The communication of it is dodgy, it’s beaming out from an estate of people so ancient they are still expecting to be shocked by electric typewriters. Perhaps satellites don’t bother looking here; it might be a bit like looking back through the universe at the big bang. Anyhow, if you manage to read this we should be grateful, especially me, I can’t plug in the mouse without knocking my dongle off, which could be fatal at my age, so I’m learning the track pad as I write. All that and typing too, I feel as if I should have a haddock in my mouth and be slapping it from side to side as I go, whilst doing ‘I like to go a wandering’ on a kazoo out of the side of my mouth.
It’s all been a bit of a challenge and more to come.
I was here a week ago to assist my mother to get the house ready for the visit of my aunt. I was only planning to stay a couple of days, so just had the stuff I’d thrown in a bag, clean underwear, extra socks.
In the posh grocery store my mother came over a bit breathless, so I sat her down and finished the shopping. She couldn’t make it up the street to the taxi rank, so I parked her in a shoe shop and got the taxi to her instead. At home all was well. The following day she went off for a Christmas lunch, deferred for weather. Whilst she was gone, as I couldn’t find all the hose connectors for the pressure washer, I scrubbed the patio an inch at a time with a wire brush. By the time I had finished night had fallen and the bats and I were both right out, so I retired to bed with a sparkly patio under my belt.
In the night I heard my mother cough a very strange cough. She said she was OK but by five in the morning she definitely was not so I called an ambulance. She was the only patient in A&E, which was just as well, with blood pressure 240 over something, she needed all the help she could get. By mid morning she was in the acute admissions ward on a constant radio heart monitor, which was showing a very odd rhythm indeed. She responded well to drugs, wasn’t in the middle of a heart attack but obviously had troubles in that area. Helpfully the drugs they gave her for her heart compromised her kidneys, though as she had a waterworks infection anyway that was probably neither here nor there. As she has taken antibiotics prophylactically for years, things were already dodgy anyway.
So, over the next few days as they changed the medication trying to find the balance, she grumbled, cheered up, behaved well, behaved badly. Rang me up at ten thirty to demand a taxi home, shouted at me, repeatedly smacked my bad hand (ouch), was charming, was very demented, loudly commented on every other patient, ran the ward, made a mare’s nest of the bed clothes, and, incredibly, got better.
So I’m hoping to bring her back to her home today. I have been so grateful that the hospital is only a fifteen minute walk through the park, seeing as I am the genius that got rid of the car. And I have been so tired, I would be so glad to have a good night’s sleep, or a good deal less worry.
I cannot see that happening because I’m going to live here for a few weeks, as I did after my father died.
Oh joy.
Until I get a life again, you and I will get it on via a dongle.
How was it for you, dear?
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JaneLaverick.com – trying, very trying.
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