Sunday

I arrived at the stroke rehab ward to find the vicar from the church where Mum was church warden with Mum. It was nice to see her again. The Hospital is a regular haunt of hers as so many of her parishioners are there.

The visit turned into a game of two halves. For the first hour I couldn’t rouse mum at all. Completely unresponsive.

There are no doctors on this ward at weekends. They usually rely on a pool of on-call doctors if there is an emergency. But it looked like they were a couple of sisters short today so there was the on-call doctor there instead. He shouted loud enough to wake everyone in that bay in order to examine Mum.

He said she was stable and had a good appetite but her infection markers were still going up.

I had been relieved to see that the lines for antibiotics and saline weren’t attached when I got there but they’d simply unhooked her after completing her daily dose earlier in the day. The antibiotics will continue this week.

Mum made much more of an effort to talk today. I couldn’t understand much but she was giving it a right good go.

The day ended with volunteers to take a couple of the visiting slots in the coming days putting their hands up. I finally admitted how knackered I was. Relieved and knackered.

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