Happy birthday, DLL

Happy Birthday

Balloons. Banners. Presents and cards.

Just one thing missing.

DLL, kept in for another night.

So the mountain (that'd be me) went to the birthday girl. She was putting a very brave face on, but was in a lot of pain, and very tired.

She opened some cards, we did a sudoku puzzle together. I probably wasn't much help, because that was enough to exhaust her, and she fell asleep.

As she slept, I was reminded that, just because your kids are no longer small, because they're independent, because they're all grown up, they can still be frighteningly fragile. They can still frighten the living bejezus out of you.

It already felt strange without DLL and BLISS (imagine a female version of the Men Behaving Badly sofa) occupying the living room (almost uncharted territory for me), but, somehow, I'd entirely wrongly made my mind up that the absolute fallback, latest possible date for her discharge would be today. Add another to my list of getting medical stuff wrong. At least there's something I've got a 100% record at.

Vulnerable. That's the feeling. How to cope when a loved one's vulnerable?

Hopefully, the rest and the care will pull her round and she'll be home soon.


Wake up – time for your sleeping pill!

I know. It was an old joke when it first hit the screens in Dr On The Go or whatever in the sixties. A black and white joke.

On DLL's ward there's a lady who distributes the food and drinks and brings the no solid food cases ice creams and jellies that they leave melting on their tables, because they're taking what they can by squirting syringes of water and protein shakes down their throats, or intravenously. She's absolutely lovely, one of those with her heart of gold on her sleeve. She hasn't been briefed on the medical benefits of sleep, and she hasn't got a volume control (or if she has, it's jammed somewhere between 90% and 95% of maxing out.

DLL's asleep, and the food lady bustles in.

“You want?” she yells, pointing to the melting pot of ice cream.

“No, you can take that” I say, in an exaggerated whisper, trying to subliminally give that palms-down 'reduce the noise' signal.

“OK” she yells “you want anything else?” this addressed at DLL, who plainly does want something else, that something else being allowed to carry on sleeping.

“No. No thank you”.

“OK”

She moves on to the next bed, for some more high volume Q&A.

Here's a training video they could use:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyn4KJzbL3c

“Too loud man...too piercing...my ears, man, you're hurtin' my ears...”