Categories: uncategorized
Date: 28 October 2004 20:50:55
It wasn't a heart attack. Thank goodness. After tests and Xrays and a night in hospital, he has come home safe and sound and healthily grouchy and is now safely installed in his own chair, snoozing in front of the television when I finally came away this evening.
I went with the boys to collect him. He was just having his catheter bag changed, ready to come home as the one he was attached to was a permanent hospital fixture. They didn't have any suitable leg-bags on the ward (surprisingly) so one of the nurses popped over to the ward next door to borrow one and attached it to the catheter. It was only when I was helping him to get dressed that we realised that the tap on the bottom of the bag was totally different from any we had seen before and we hadn't the foggiest idea how to tell whether it was turned on or off (apart from the obvious way, of course, which was to wait until it filled his socks!)
We called the nurse back. She was lovely, but she hadn't the foggiest idea what to do with the bag. She experimented a bit, and suggested Dad fill the bag so that we could try the tap out, but needless to say this was the one time he didn't want to go! She called in another nurse who joined us behind the curtains. After a good bit of fiddling and adjusting she declared herself equally perplexed and called her colleague to come and have a go. At this the curtains opened a fourth time and the final team member appeared, declaring she wasn't going to be left out! And we all stood in a semi-circle around the rather interestingly designed catheter bag tap.
Finally the first nurse had a brainwave. She grabbed a wheelchair and popped my Dad into it, bag and all, and off we set down the corridor to the neighbouring ward for a demo by the experts. Not that they appeared particularly knowledgeable about the workings of the thing. "Oh, well... er.. I reckon it probably works like this. I don't think I've seen a tap like that before!" Well, so far so good - he hasn't phoned to say he's under water yet!
Tiddles has gone to bed with a flea in his ear. I think he's just overtired (again) after a late night on Monday (I let him stay up till eight o'clock - yes, eight o'clock - to watch the end of a video) and relieved that his grandad's OK after all but he's been an irritating little pest all day. How irritating can a child be? He's behaved like a three-year-old all day, which is a bit wearing when he's actually twelve AND got his first zit. He ended up being sent to bed at six to avoid me dangling him upside down from the lampshade and sticking carrots up his nose! Thank goodness M is taking them out for the day tomorrow!
Now I find myself feeling, well, sort of numb but that's not quite the right description. I'd go to bed if it were earlier - I sort of wish it was tomorrow already but I am not quite sure why. I don't feel worried about Dad, no more than I did a week ago, and I don't feel stressed or even disappointed about the weekend. I just feel as though I am in suspended animation. Maybe it's just this strange sensation in my ear combined with a sense of helplessness and sort of anticlimax (I don't mean that in a bad way, but...well... it's just hard to describe).