I got a telephone call at about 6.45 on Tuesday morning. One of the nurses on the ward where Carol is at the moment. Carol has asked if I could bring in the penguin socks when I visit because her feet are cold. So, at least her sense of humour is intact.
Alfie is wondering where Carol is. He came upstairs when I went to bed last night. He's finding it more and more difficult to jump up on our bed. We often have to pick him up to give him a hand. He's quite capable of jumping on the sofa and has got a bit lazy as he knows he will be helped, that is, if he plays the trick he uses to just stand and look at me for long enough He usually sleeps on our bed, but during the night I could hear him jump off and go downstairs. I knew he would go into the lounge and curl up on the sofa, but when I came down at about 5.30 I found him asleep in his bed on the corner near the patio doors. He finds the net to be a sort of haven where he can be safe and warm. When I went back upstairs he followed me, and at one point stared for a second or two at the space where Carol should have been sleeping and I could almost imagine him thinking to himself 'where is she?' It's odd how dogs have a sort of sense when things aren't quite right. I think in his case it's the routine which is changed. We are ourselves creatures of habit and if our routine suddenly changes, he knows.
I walked to the hospital this morning. It's not a long walk, taking about 10 minutes. Then about another 5-10 minutes to walk through to the ward, which is easy enough to get to as it's not far from the M.R.I. scanning unit and opposite the restaurant, which you can see from the ward through the window. They have tables set up outside in the courtyard with large blue umbrellas over the tables, which are ideal places to sit if you're having a meal in the bright sunshine.
Ward 1 is an extremely busy place. I'm not sure how many patients there are on this ward, probably about 30-40. The staff are extremely busy. Like the oncology suite, the nurses in particular never seem to stop. Carol had a cup of tea for breakfast. She wasn't up to anything else. Every hour she has someone come and do 'obs' (observations), blood pressure, temperature, heart rate. She had a load of tubes connected to her, one for insulin. They are in the process of stabilising her diabetes, which is the reason for being on the ward. They keep checking her blood sugar levels. During the morning she had a visit from a group of doctors, doing their usual ward round. Two student doctors came along with them and later came back to ask Carol questions about her treatment, no doubt as part of their training. Then Doctor Saka, the oncology consultant we've seen on several occasions, and who is in charge of her treatment, turned up. It turns out he only does a ward round on a Tuesday, so it was a good thing (if being in hospital is a good thing.) that Carol was on this ward on a Tuesday. He cannot give any clear indication of where Carol's treatment is going. He told us that it really depended on the results from the various scans she's having and what the verdict from Oxford turns out to be.
At lunch Carol had oxtail soup. She gave it a try, she certainly did. She had one spoonful and gave up. It looked to me like the sort of substance, perhaps varnish or wood stain, or something you'd paint your wooden floor with. It had the consistency of a dark pond. the sort of thick mud in which all manner of wildlife lives and moves. She said it was extremely salty. How on earth, in the twenty-first century, is it not possible to produce something that even looks and tastes decent and helps N.H.S. patients get better? Seems an almost impossible thing to ask, even on the tiny budget they have to play with in the hospital kitchens.
By about 2.30 Carol was feeling sleepy. She had enough of being prodded and poked for blood samples, having her finger pricked for blood-sugar levels, blood pressure being taken, thermometers being stuck in her ears for temperature and so on. She just wanted to have a sleep. It seemed a good idea. There's very little room on the ward. The cubicle (for want of a better word) you have has a bed, taking up most of the space, room for a chair (usually for the patient. They don't like you to stay in bed too long, so you're expected to sit out in the chair provided as your health improves, and usually room for a cupboard to stow your clothing and other belongings. I'd be intrigued as to how they decided, no doubt in the dim distant late 1940's, just as the N.H.S. was being set up, a group of Whitehall mandarins in a committee, deciding how much space the average person needed, more or less 12 feet by 12 feet (probably more, probably less, not too much to keep costs down. How many beds they could fit into each ward. A regulation, standard sized space when they were planning to build each hospital, probably the standard right up into the 1970s when they were planning to build a hospital for Milton Keynes. Not actually enough space, but never mind. Just about adequate. Then they have to fit in all the machinery you'd need, the stands to take the drip-bags and the monitors for hearts and pumps for other medications. The bed to be such-and-such a size, the one Carol has (and I reckon fairly standard through the N.H.S. nowadays, in three sections which can be raised and lowered by electric motor and controlled by a hand-held keypad.
I digress. If Carol was going to be having a sleep, I might as well go home. So I bundled some of the things I'd bought with me in a Morrison's bag and went home, through the heat and haze of the summer sunshine.
I had left my mobile charging at home when I went to the hospital, as well as turned off. It seemed a bit pointless to take it with me. Carol had texted me, and later said that she was going to move to Ward 22. I thought I'd wait until she'd moved, and then she said they were waiting for a porter to take her. Sounds like a repeat of when we needed a porter when she was discharged last time she was in hospital. It was a good 45 minutes before a porter came. This time she, apparently, went up to Ward 22, but she then told me, via text, that there wasn't a bed available. Which seems crazy, when you think they sent her there, with the idea that there was a bed available. Not making sense at all, so we'll have to wait and see what happens in the morning. Mind you, when I was last in hospital, they moved me to a different ward in the middle of the night, so who knows.
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