Hospital

Well, this blog has been abandoned for a while and I shall tell you wherefore. I have been spending a lot of time discovering the wonders of the Royal Berkshire Hospital. Rob has been taken ill several times now with excruciating pain emanating from his stone-stuffed gall bladder and resulting irritated liver and pancreas. I've experienced a side of life I realise I have been previously fairly sheltered from, one that revolves around the agonies and indignities of frail bodies and minds driven to distraction by pain, stress and that master of us all: age.

The first bed my husband was admitted to was on a temporary holding area, not unlike Picadilly Circus. Very soon after arriving there, a man in late middle-age arrived who was clearly in a great deal of pain, incredibly confused and without any control over his bowls. He was followed in by his surprisingly together wife. I wondered how many times she has gone through this before. He kept trying to get out of bed and repeated the mantra, 'I want, I want, I want...I need, I need I need...' but couldn't tell anyone what either of those things were. He was reduced to a mass of id, like a baby, like my son. He quickly deteriorated and I heard a Doctor muttering the words '...if he wakes up from this episode' to his now quietly distressed wife. She sat on the outside of his curtain crumpling a tissue and looking down at the floor. Her clothing seemed so incongruous with this scene and I kept thinking, 'How can you go through something like this when you're wearing a cosy green and pink striped wool cardigan like that?' She should have been walking through crunchy-leafed autumn parkland with toddling Grandchildren, not seeing her husband being put into nappies by an enormous Russian male Nurse who calls everyone 'Boss'.

There was a ghostly presence in this place, evident through a constant plaintiff, 'Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!' This long, drawn-out sigh spoke of frailty married with arduous anguish. I saw a semi-conscious elderly woman with the stretched gauntness and pallor of a Munch painting being wheeled through the corridor. She was uttering a small, breathy version of the wail as she went past. So, this is where age eventually leads us? I don't care that we have modern facilities, equipment, medication, it's-much-better-than-the-old-days; this is suffering and indignity with a modern facade. I am astounded that there are people who can actually endure this enough in order to help treat these people. I am crippled by pathos.

When I received a text from Rob to say that he'd been moved into a proper ward, I replied, 'At least you don't have the wailing woman keeping you awake now'. His reply: 'No, I have a mad, shouting old man instead'. And did he ever. When I came to visit the next day, I was horrified to hear him in his room screaming, 'HEEEEEEELP! HEEEEEELP!' I wondered what sort of a torture chamber my husband had been dumped in and couldn't wrench my mind away from this man's plees and everyone's seeming indifference to them. 'He's been at it all night', said a weary Rob. I was about to get up and see why no one was helping the poor man when I heard a nurse go to him and ask, 'What is it this time, Frank?' 'When's my dinner coming?' he asked in a perfectly collected voice. Incidents like this became commonplace during the many hours I spent at Rob's bedside and ranged from:

'HEEEEEEELP! I don't want to be here! Get me out!'

To:
'HEEEEEEEELP! Have you got any tea over there?'

To:
'MURDER! My wife is a missing person.'
'She's being looked after in a nursing home, Frank, while you're recovering from your operation'

To:
'CAN SOME ONE PLEASE TELL ME WHY I'M IN THIS HOTEL?!'
'Like I said before, Frank, you had an operation and you're in the Royal Berkshire Hospital until you recover.'

And after having just finished yet another cup of tea:
'HEEEEEELP! Where's the tea, you rotten buggers?'

He dictated letters to imaginary secretaries and sent out calls to phantom police cars - sometimes it was to tell them about his 'missing' wife and sometimes it was to complain about the lack of tea in the 'hotel' in which he was staying. He kept telling the nurses that he was a police Chief Constable and gave them all lectures about the falling standards of education making the new breed of officers into a bunch of illiterate incompetents.
Sometimes it was simply the word 'help' repeated again and again with increasing volume and ferocity until the nurses could do no more than close his door in order to prevent him upsetting more patients. I was astounded and in awe of the patience and tireless care the nurses showed to Frank, even when they had many other patients with pressing needs to see to.