Hospital-going

[poliphilo]

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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

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, which was over six hours after I got into my room.
I knew I liked your system better than ours!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It said one hour. In the event it was more like three before he was seen.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I hope your father in law is all right...
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!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They prescribed him some heavy-duty painkillers and sent him home. It's likely he's cracked his ribs.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Cracked ribs can't really be helped much--just waiting for them to heal, I think.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

So I believe.

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.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

My mother went through the same thing for two years. We begged her to get a walker, and later a wheelchair, but she refused, saying she would be embarrassed. When I pointed out (gently) that it was much more high-profile to fall against a wall with a loud cry in public than to be quietly wheeled into a restaurant in a wheelchair, she couldn't or wouldn't see the logic of it. I think for her a walker or wheelchair meant "old woman" and she couldn't bring herself to embrace that archetype.

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ailz was suggesting today that he might like to use a walker (after all, she does) and he wouldn't hear of it.

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.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

One thing to be said for those smaller, electric "wheelchairs": It is impossible to fall while sitting in one of them. I, for one, will have no problem with using one if and when it becomes prudent to do so.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ailz has been using wheelchairs for over a decade. She can walk- and sometimes walks considerable distances- but she gets tired and wobbly and then it's good to have the back-up.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly!

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it was me again. I keep forgetting to log in...

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

When Mother had her last fall, when she fell against a chest after becoming dizzy, she ended up lying on the floor and unable to get up. She thought she could just stay on the floor until morning and sleep, but as she woke more she realized she needed to get up, and somehow she crawled to a chair and helped herself up.

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Independence and privacy- those things are so important to us. More importnat than safety.

Ailz's parents- my mother too- often prefer not to tell their children about their "minor" mishaps. I think I'd be the same.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

May all be well with you and them.

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!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

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.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Ah, four crows, then.

(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!)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Over here it's magpies rather than crows. Luckily there are lots and lots of them around- so you can always pretty much make your own luck.

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.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

We have a program here, Dr. Phil, in which people will confess the most awful things about their marriages, their debts, their children--even allowing cameras inside to watch them fight and scream at each other, or to follow them as they go shopping with credit cards or overeat crazily or do any number of disfunctional things, while Dr. Phil, a "life coach" and psychologist, tells them off and the audience gasps. What angers me most is that sometimes children of these disfunctional families are brought in and their faces shown on national television.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've seen that show. Didn't Dr Phil start off as one of Oprah's sidekicks?

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.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Dr. Phil did begin his TV career with Oprah, but I understand there's now some friction between them.

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.)

[oakmouse]

Lordy. I'm glad it's only cracked ribs. I hope he manages to get some common sense out of this and starts using a cane or some other form of support.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He uses a cane, but it's not enough. We've suggested he use a walker, but he won't hear of it.

[oakmouse]

Oh dear. Do you think perhaps you could talk him into one of those four-footed canes? They're at least steadier than a regular cane.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We've tried. We were trying only yesterday. Ailz has one and swears by it.

[oakmouse]

Ah, pity he won't listen. As my friend J says, "Aye well, whut can ye dae?"

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

I hope he makes a speedy recovery.

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

When things get hairy I comfort myself by trying to see the bigger picture.

[nostoi.livejournal.com]

I hope things went well yesterday and that he is, or will be soon, okay.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. They gave him painkillers at the hospital and sent him home. He was a lot cheerier last night.