Sunday

Arrived at the hospital to be told that Mum had had an ECG and that seemed fine. Blood tests looked OK and the infection markers were coming down albeit slowly. Mum’s oxygen levels were good enough to allow them to switch the supply off.

All of this had left the senior medics utterly perplexed about why Mum wouldn’t wake up.

Dr M had asked for a head CT to be done when she saw Mum on her morning round but that hadn’t been done yet.

When I saw Mum she was very groggy and the whole team were very concerned. She woke up enough to have a sip of water and refuse anything to eat and they were all pleased with that. But it wasn’t long before she started refusing water completely and then she went deeply asleep again. The only words she said in the first 2 hours I was with her were

“I don’t feel very well”

Soon afterwards, she started fidgeting and struggling. I thought I was watching her die.

She had gone from being unsure who I was to totally unaware I was there. She definitely looked worse than when I saw her on Wednesday. Eldest Sister said she felt the same yesterday. I told Dr M that while I hadn’t expected Mum’s road to recovery to be positive steps all the way, I was still shocked at how negative this step had been.

The porters arrived to take Mum off for her CT. While she was gone, the Sister and her team insisted that I wasn’t going to be allowed to leave until I’d got Mum to eat something.

Mum was still asleep when she came back. But an hour after I’d got her to eat some soup and some ice cream she was sitting up in bed wide awake and acting like nothing had happened. She could even remember Eldest Sister being there the day before.

But it was still very obvious that she was still seriously ill.

Author’s Note

My Mum is in a nursing home in a small village in the Thames Valley. The photo is not of the home. I used an AI image generator to give the reader some idea of the home she’s in.

All, some or maybe even none (you’ll never know!) of the names have been changed to protect privacy and hide real identities. If you think you recognise someone then let me know and I’ll edit the post or remove it entirely