Hospital-going
Sep. 15th, 2008 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I have my hospital-going head on this morning. Very cool, businesslike, unemotional.
Stoical
We just drove my father-in-law to Accident and Emergency. He stood the pain from last Thursday's fall for as long as he could and has finally decided to have himself looked at. He wouldn't call an ambulance. People- neighbours- would see it on the street- and what on earth would they think?
He's stoical too. And he hates being an old man.
Who can blame him?
I have previous with hospitals. As a young man I did a couple of stints as a nursing auxiliary- in Sheffield and at South London's pioneering St Christopher's Hospice. At this distance in time I'm not sure why- because I hated it.
Stoical I suppose.
And when I was a vicar the part of the job I hated most- apart from the ever so jolly social events- was the hospital visiting.
The A&E staff sit behind glass- bulletproof I shouldn't wonder. The clerk's voice reaches us over a speaker system. My father-in-law gives out his details crisply, smartly- like a wonded soldier. He wasn't a soldier, he was in the RAF police. Same thing, I suppose.
And after that he was a railwayman.
Waiting times this morning are calculated at about an hour. I'll guess there are some thirty people in the room. They're sitting on two banks of seats, facing each other- with nothing in the middle.
I get my in-laws seated and leave them. They'll ring when they need us.
We're back home- waiting. Ailz has just popped next door. We've been hearing high pitched noises and we think Sameena must have had her baby.
Stoical
We just drove my father-in-law to Accident and Emergency. He stood the pain from last Thursday's fall for as long as he could and has finally decided to have himself looked at. He wouldn't call an ambulance. People- neighbours- would see it on the street- and what on earth would they think?
He's stoical too. And he hates being an old man.
Who can blame him?
I have previous with hospitals. As a young man I did a couple of stints as a nursing auxiliary- in Sheffield and at South London's pioneering St Christopher's Hospice. At this distance in time I'm not sure why- because I hated it.
Stoical I suppose.
And when I was a vicar the part of the job I hated most- apart from the ever so jolly social events- was the hospital visiting.
The A&E staff sit behind glass- bulletproof I shouldn't wonder. The clerk's voice reaches us over a speaker system. My father-in-law gives out his details crisply, smartly- like a wonded soldier. He wasn't a soldier, he was in the RAF police. Same thing, I suppose.
And after that he was a railwayman.
Waiting times this morning are calculated at about an hour. I'll guess there are some thirty people in the room. They're sitting on two banks of seats, facing each other- with nothing in the middle.
I get my in-laws seated and leave them. They'll ring when they need us.
We're back home- waiting. Ailz has just popped next door. We've been hearing high pitched noises and we think Sameena must have had her baby.
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Date: 2008-09-15 02:06 pm (UTC)I knew I liked your system better than ours!
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Date: 2008-09-15 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 02:09 pm (UTC)Wow! One Hour waiting time? Last year I was taken by ambulance to the Emergency Room and after initial screening waited for six hours before seeing a doctor, then four more waiting for a bed in the hospital. All this for an overnight "observation" stay, in which I was sent home six hours after I got into my room.
I knew I liked your system better than ours!
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Date: 2008-09-15 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 04:29 pm (UTC)Almost exactly the same thing happened about a year ago.
He's desperately unsteady on his feet but won't acknowledge there's a problem.
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Date: 2008-09-15 04:35 pm (UTC)It made it very scary for us who took her places--we never knew if that would be the trip when she fell and couldn't be lifted (even though she weighed under 100 pounds). It was also sad.
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Date: 2008-09-15 06:31 pm (UTC)He's a heavy man. When he fell the other day the kids who found him had to fetch their dads to help him up.
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Date: 2008-09-15 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-17 09:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-17 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 07:22 pm (UTC)She didn't call anyone, lest she disturb us!
We didn't know about it until the next day, when she began having pain and so called and asked someone to take her to the doctor.
Mother's sense of logic deserted her in her final two years. My sister Janice even built her an entire apartment in their house, using Mother's favorite colors and framing old photographs, even had a little kitchen and a safe bathroom, but Mother wanted her own house and privacy, and so we were always worried that she would be afraid and alone on the floor--which finally did happen, but after that her condition was clear and soon someone was with her every day, then every night, too.
She had in the end what she yearned for most: she died at home with her children beside her.
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Date: 2008-09-16 09:44 am (UTC)Ailz's parents- my mother too- often prefer not to tell their children about their "minor" mishaps. I think I'd be the same.
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Date: 2008-09-15 03:46 pm (UTC)I was leaving church yesterday, sneaking out the back door early after the anthem, and I saw an old woman on a stretcher; she was being quietly carried to a waiting ambulance.
Who knows what the day will bring?
Not only did I notice this morning the startling sign on the lane that passes by my new house: "Dead End," but there was a single crow in the road, and it flew up when my car went by.
"One crow for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy."
So there is a new baby next door! How fun!
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Date: 2008-09-15 04:33 pm (UTC)When I see a crow I always look around until I spot a second- and then I can relax.
The new baby is a boy. They're calling him Hassam.
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Date: 2008-09-15 04:40 pm (UTC)(Tony, I am watching, for the first time, the BBC program "How Clean is Your House?" It is so funny I am laughing out loud! And horrifying, too!
The voiceover man is perfect: "This pestulant pad..." "This horrifying hovel..."
Honestly, the tearfully grateful, ashamed and filthy householders! How humbly they cast down their eyes before the two fierce housecleaners, one of whom wears rubber gloves with sewn on feathers! They love water, bicarbonate of soda, and drops of lavender.
"On your knees, love," they say to their pitiful subjects, who scrub and weep. I just think this is a wonderful program!)
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Date: 2008-09-15 06:39 pm (UTC)I wonder at the people who volunteer to go on reality shows. There's one I've been watching called The Hotel Inspector- which speaks for itself. These silly people invite the expert in, she tells them everything they're doing wrong- and then- as often as not- they fight tooth and nail against her proposed changes.
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Date: 2008-09-15 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 09:47 am (UTC)We have equivalents. There's a thing called the Jeremy Vyne Show which has been described as the 21st century equivalent of putting people in the stocks.
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Date: 2008-09-16 12:33 pm (UTC)As for putting people in the stocks, it's true, with the twist that they ask for it.
Have you ever seen How Clean Is Your House? Yesterday's featured a man whose kitchen was filled with bluebottle flies...
(I can't help but wonder if the applicants toss all their garbage around the house in the month before the camera crews arrive.)
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Date: 2008-09-15 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 09:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 08:13 pm (UTC)There is such a cycle of life in this entry. Your father-in-law as an old man, your own reflections of your younger days, then next door, perhaps a baby.
On my RSS reader, your blog rises from the ruins of a crumbling market, to which I have been glued all day. I didn't realize how out of touch we can get when news overtakes us. You're kind of a centering force.
I'm so glad to count yours among my must-reads.
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Date: 2008-09-16 09:50 am (UTC)When things get hairy I comfort myself by trying to see the bigger picture.
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Date: 2008-09-16 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 09:52 am (UTC)