Last night, I tried to go to bed early, as I’m on early shift again this week so I can visit Heather in hospital after work. During the night, I woke up with my left leg in terrible pain. I recognised the symptoms as cramp. I got up and massaged my leg for a while before donning my DVT socks to give my leg some support. Research today showed that my dehydrated state plus the fact I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around lately probably caused this to happen.
Of course, being at work, news about Heather can only come from family members who visit during the day. Luckily, Nicky and Margaret were visiting her this morning. Nicky contacted me at 11:57am to say that Heather had been seen by one of the speech therapists and was going to have a camera down her throat to see if there was any damage down.
When she came back, the news was that one of her vocal cords wasn’t working and may have been damaged during the tracheostomy. If the nerve is damaged, they will have to operate on it. If not, it’ll heal itself. She will be going for a CT scan in the next day or so to find out one way or the other. When I heard the news, I was not happy (according to Heather, I scared Nicky). Heather only went into hospital with a kidney problem. Since then, she’s had a minor stroke and damage to her vocal cords. I don’t know about you, but I always thought the first tenant of medicine was not to make the patient any worse. I believe it’s called the Hippocratic Oath.
Lunch came, but Heather didn’t want it. Not because of the news she had been given, but because it looked and tasted terrible. Nicky and Margaret tried to tempt Heather with a salad from the restaurant, but she didn’t want it either. I was then tasked to bring her in some sandwiches for later in the day.
After work, I stopped off at Tesco and bought Heather a smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich, along with a standard prawn mayo sandwich. When I arrived with them, Heather wasted little time on them; not surprising really, she must have been starving. It was a long time since breakfast. Nicky had told me of a sore patch on Heather’s head, which I inspected when I arrived. It looked like a bald patch with a nasty sore inside it. We waited for a doctor to take a look at it, but no one ever came.
Heather told me of the rest of her day. She’d been for a walk along the ward with her frame, closely followed by a nurse with a wheelchair in case she exhausted herself and needed to go back. Tomorrow, she is going to carry on the work with the physio and will try only using one hand to support herself while walking.
Later in the afternoon, she wanted to go to the toilet, but wanted to use the actual loo. So, she walked with her frame (with me behind her for safety) and she did a great job of getting there under her own steam. A few days ago, this would have been impossible.
When she was safely back in her chair, I went to the shop to get her a bottle of red grape and raspberry juice. I felt congratulations were in order, so I bought her a Mars bar as well (though she said it tasted different that she remembers)
By 5:50pm, she was getting very tired and wanted to get back into bed. I helped her get changed (though she did a lot of the work herself) and I helped her back into bed.
By 6:30pm, she had all but dropped off. She occasionally woke, but not too much. Her feet got cold, so I covered them with a blanket and stayed with her a little longer. She had got some make-up on today and with her hair still clean, she looks a lot more like herself. At 7pm, I wished her goodnight and left for the day.
Today was the shortest amount of time I’ve spent at the hospital due to work and traffic problems. By the time I arrived, she was all but worn out. Tomorrow is a milestone date. She would have been in hospital for a whole month. However, with this kind of progress, she could be discharged soon (in fact, the date of 20th June has been provisionally set – four days away).
Watch this space to see what happens.
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