This weekend I went to see mum in
hospital. She tells me that no one in her ward is really ill (something to do
with their campaign to all get sent home in time for Christmas). As if to prove
it, on the eve of my visit all the patients decided to have a pyjama party in
which they wore their PJs, sat in their beds and collectively watched strictly
come dancing while shouting at the screen. The beautiful (heart wrenching)
irony is that they spend all day in pyjamas confined to beds anyway.
I was relieved to see that she looked
relatively chirpy when I arrived and as we got chatting she told me that her
biggest problem was the extremely uncomfortable stent* in her hand that
was administering intravenous antibiotics (not ill are we? It’s not many people
ill enough to receive intravenous antibiotics that consider a stent to be the most of
their problems, bless her).
As if in perfect demonstration that
she’d regained her usual character (even if not health) we did manage to talk
non stop for several hours, only interrupted once by a lovely lady in the bed
opposite who was exceptionally pleased to tell us that she’d just discovered
that the sterilising wipes could be used as make up remover. I’m not 100% sure
that disinfectant is something that should be put in one’s eye, but in the
absence of certainty I didn’t want to bring her cheerful demeanour down by
saying so. This lady has been in hospital for over a month and her muscles have
wasted away. I assumed she was planning to go home for Christmas too but didn’t
like to ask.
What really struck me was that at
such a difficult juncture in their year, all the patients were so cheerful
(staff too!) It made me think about all I had to be grateful for. It also made
me want to come back on Christmas day to personally make sure that everyone had
a friendly visitor! Before I left mum confided that she was planning to go home
in 2 days time, but “the consultants don’t know yet”. However, I’m very happy
to say that much to our surprise it didn't take that long and she was released
the very next day.
That said, if anyone did ask me to go
and do some St Helier Hospital cheer spreading on Christmas day, I wouldn’t
need asking twice!
* For anyone happy enough to have no use for such vocabularly thus far, a stent is a little tube which in this case was sticking out of the back of mum's hand. It allows the doctors to attach a drip to it on a daily basis and saves them the trouble of having to pierce the poor patients anew every time they wish to do so.
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