Throughout the journey undertaken to date I have been of all men most fortunate. There's never been a why me attitude, nor undue anxiety and whenever I've needed a different view it has been provided.
I shall mention two events that I hope will never leave me.
The first took place on the Sunday morning of my CT scan. I'd been collected early and wheeled to the place where the scanner was. I was parked in the deserted cool corridor and left for while. To my right a porter was pushing a lady in a sturdy wheelchair toward me. I couldn't avoid looking at her as she looked quite remarkable. Colourless very thin hair, high cheekbones and an aquiline nose, very elegant in her youth, I surmised. I put her at late 60's early 70's if I was being generous. She was placed very near me and I was reminded of Cream, Disraeli Gears, Mother's Lament, she was nought but a skeleton covered in skin. I felt such a wave of sympathy for her and wondered where her journey had taken her and where she was headed.
When you are collected your name is called but as there were only the two of us the nurse went to my near neighbour and asked her date of birth.
I don't recall the day or the month but when she got to the year she said 1986.
She was two years younger than my daughter.
The second occurred during my final stay (so far) and on my last Wednesday.
A man was wheeled into E1 during the afternoon and was very seriously jaundiced. Like you were my visitor remarked. Was I that colour? At least, she said. It didn't look nice. He lay quietly all afternoon his wife in close attendance.
Before I woke on Thursday he'd been taken away. Late afternoon his wife arrived and he came along shortly after. Very soon a familiar doctor and team were in attendance. It was very quiet and even though the curtains were drawn they are no barrier to words. He had all the tests that I'd had in a week on that one day. The doctor quietly but clearly said that all the test results had been examined and passed to a radiographer. Silence. Dispersal.
Just after the doctor saw me on Friday morning he reappeared at E1 sans team but with another man, the radiographer who pulled the curtains around and clearly said that there was nothing they could do and that a palliative care team would be along shortly. I guess his wife asked the question to which the answer was weeks rather than months.
They went and his wife, Margaret tried to phone her son but she was in pieces, as you would be but across the ward, Pat visiting her husband went over, put her arm around her, used her phone to contact her son and passed the phone back to her. It was a beautifully tender response to an awful situation.
The palliative care team did all that had to be done and that evening the family was beside the bedside.
They asked if there was a side room, there wasn't but by first thing Saturday he'd been moved to somewhere more appropriate and eventually to a hospice, I trust.
He was called Roger and he was one of the 4 in 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment