Typed into phone 16 June 2018 15:36
Settled after sleep during the 1-3 ward closure, strictly enforced today. I look around with
a kindly eye at the residents of this PACU bay. For a spell, and maybe due to a spell cast by day nurses H and K (special people), it feels like family.
The chronically ill 17 year old is laughing with her parents, the long-serving ITU nurse, and her consultant.
The elderly lady who needed a Punjabi speaker and made me wonder about dementia is speaking apparently rationally with her tall son in his cream shalwar kamiz and sandals. I guess she just wanted her stuff and her stick and didn’t want to hang around waiting for someone else to get it.
J’s son has been in with her grandchildren. They peeped in at her sleeping and I smiled broadly at the tall girl with her kinky hair, hoping she would find this a comfortable place to visit. She smiled back. The younger boy peered in in awe through his dark framed glasses, trying to locate his grandmother round a cubicle corner. It was white-haired J who chipped in to help the elderly lady and the nurses come to some communication successes, however small. Maybe a shared love of tea made the wish for a warm cuppa the most likely translation of one repeated refrain. And J passed one of her (only ‘cute’ will do) knitted animals to this lady. Another son was sent earlier on an errand to John Lewis - more wool required! And now, the earwig tells me that her husband was a tailor, set up as one when he ‘came over here’ - East End Jewish? The accent works. Then, perhaps East End Sicilian or Italian is more likely after all - he used to squeeze blood red oranges - it’s the volcanic soil - Africans loved it, Old Etonians loved it...
Must say more about H who has been an ITU nurse for 20 years. He talks about making this bay more of a PACU speciality but there’s still a flexibility with ICU provision. He is of a certain age with a shaven white tonsure and chin stubble. He has a tongue piercing which I only noticed after his lunch break yesterday- surely he didn’t have it done then?! I said the way he dealt with J on her first night when she thought she was choking was just what I would have needed.
Nurse K reminds me of one of the allotment tenants who has done wonders with a difficult plot but they are not sisters. She has made a shower on a bath chair happen for me and cleared up after H removed my epidural with only an amused, patient comment about ‘these male nurses’. She listened to me about my sorry story of dad and mum while the shower water ran down and later some tears came as I lay in Tutankhamen pose and the lights of J's monitoring station became candles on a tall altar.
The chronically ill 17 year old is laughing with her parents, the long-serving ITU nurse, and her consultant.
The elderly lady who needed a Punjabi speaker and made me wonder about dementia is speaking apparently rationally with her tall son in his cream shalwar kamiz and sandals. I guess she just wanted her stuff and her stick and didn’t want to hang around waiting for someone else to get it.
J’s son has been in with her grandchildren. They peeped in at her sleeping and I smiled broadly at the tall girl with her kinky hair, hoping she would find this a comfortable place to visit. She smiled back. The younger boy peered in in awe through his dark framed glasses, trying to locate his grandmother round a cubicle corner. It was white-haired J who chipped in to help the elderly lady and the nurses come to some communication successes, however small. Maybe a shared love of tea made the wish for a warm cuppa the most likely translation of one repeated refrain. And J passed one of her (only ‘cute’ will do) knitted animals to this lady. Another son was sent earlier on an errand to John Lewis - more wool required! And now, the earwig tells me that her husband was a tailor, set up as one when he ‘came over here’ - East End Jewish? The accent works. Then, perhaps East End Sicilian or Italian is more likely after all - he used to squeeze blood red oranges - it’s the volcanic soil - Africans loved it, Old Etonians loved it...
Must say more about H who has been an ITU nurse for 20 years. He talks about making this bay more of a PACU speciality but there’s still a flexibility with ICU provision. He is of a certain age with a shaven white tonsure and chin stubble. He has a tongue piercing which I only noticed after his lunch break yesterday- surely he didn’t have it done then?! I said the way he dealt with J on her first night when she thought she was choking was just what I would have needed.
Nurse K reminds me of one of the allotment tenants who has done wonders with a difficult plot but they are not sisters. She has made a shower on a bath chair happen for me and cleared up after H removed my epidural with only an amused, patient comment about ‘these male nurses’. She listened to me about my sorry story of dad and mum while the shower water ran down and later some tears came as I lay in Tutankhamen pose and the lights of J's monitoring station became candles on a tall altar.
All the best Jan, here's hoping.....
ReplyDeleteSteve Smith
Hi Janet, it me the chap on the train.
ReplyDeleteHi Janet, it me the chap on the train.
ReplyDelete