At 3am last Monday morning my youngest starting throwing up and didn’t stop until there was nothing left and she passed out.
We spent the rest of the week staring out at the world from beside her hospital bed. Oddly, on the other side of the windows, everyone carries on as normal while, for us, life is suspended.
I organise people to look after my other daughter and fret that she’s being passed around like a parcel. I cancel work. I cancel everything I can think of and the other things I just miss. I forget the vet’s appointment, washing sits in the machine for days and birthdays pass unnoticed.
Outside, shops open and close, the market starts and finishes, people moan that it’s cold (is it?) and a netball match is played on the courts opposite.
Inside, the temperature is the same the whole year round. It is never dark. Nurses move beds into wards at midnight and doctors stick needles in my daughter’s hand at 2am. You sleep at three in the afternoon. The oxygen monitor beeps...
Ever since our daughter was a baby we’ve had to keep a sharp eye on the dreaded common cold which, without fail, would send her to hospital.
While other kids carried on going to nursery school – maybe the really drippy ones took a morning off – she’d end up with double pneumonia and be on constant oxygen for a week, confined to bed.
Visits to the loo meant attaching her to a mobile tank the same height as she was and trailing it along the corridor on wheels.
She had her third birthday party on the children’s ward, by then our second home. The nurses let her invite her friends, gave her a teddy (Howard) and made her a cake which she wasn’t well enough to eat. They threw her a party in the playroom and attached her mask to the wall so she could get out of bed. She lost at musical bumps because the attachment wasn’t long enough for her to sit on the floor.
As she’s got older (bigger, stronger) the effects of the cold have reduced and until this week it was three years since we’d been admitted.
But on Sunday I had the old sinking feeling as she lay on the sofa getting hotter and hotter, refusing to eat and not talking. She needed all her energy just to pull in oxygen.
An early night and doses of Calpol failed. By 2am she was looking at me with strangely glazed eyes and asking if it was the second world war and if she would die.
At 8.30am I nipped to the GP to get her oxygen levels checked and they told me to get an ambulance straight to A&E.
My daughter was chuffed to bits. She loves being in hospital. To her, it means back-to-back DVDs in bed and people running to do your bidding 24 hours a day. If you’re well enough, you get to paint in the playroom with the lovely Shelley - and if you’re not, they bring paints to your bed.
At school people are pleased with you if you are organised, learn your tables and concentrate. (Not things she’s great at). In hospital they are pleased with you if you are sweet, brave and don’t complain. (All things she’s very good at. The upside of the endless pain and needles is that she is very, very brave).
No-one swaps you out of the netball match unfairly or tells you off because you struggle with long division. (My suggestion that we use the time together to practise her tables was met with an expression actors should study as a perfect way to illustrate ‘I’ve never heard anything so utterly ridiculous’).
In hospital, she is cheerful in the face of adversity and they love her for it. There is a lot of crying on the ward and she is never miserable. They recognise her, greet her like a celebrity and love the fact that she still has Howard with her.
Her nutrition-obsessed mother relaxes all food rules and is happy that she manages to eat something, anything. Big Mac? Sure. Coca-cola with that? No problem. Eating in bed? Go for it, baby.
For me coming home is an immense relief. My shabby, messy home is utterly beautiful and I love everything about it. I vow I will never wish for time to sit still again.
For her – not so much. Healthy eating and only on the ground floor, sleep at the proper time and up at the proper time. No more painting in bed. Wear clothes.
It’s tough, normal life.
We spent the rest of the week staring out at the world from beside her hospital bed. Oddly, on the other side of the windows, everyone carries on as normal while, for us, life is suspended.
I organise people to look after my other daughter and fret that she’s being passed around like a parcel. I cancel work. I cancel everything I can think of and the other things I just miss. I forget the vet’s appointment, washing sits in the machine for days and birthdays pass unnoticed.
Outside, shops open and close, the market starts and finishes, people moan that it’s cold (is it?) and a netball match is played on the courts opposite.
Inside, the temperature is the same the whole year round. It is never dark. Nurses move beds into wards at midnight and doctors stick needles in my daughter’s hand at 2am. You sleep at three in the afternoon. The oxygen monitor beeps...
Ever since our daughter was a baby we’ve had to keep a sharp eye on the dreaded common cold which, without fail, would send her to hospital.
While other kids carried on going to nursery school – maybe the really drippy ones took a morning off – she’d end up with double pneumonia and be on constant oxygen for a week, confined to bed.
Visits to the loo meant attaching her to a mobile tank the same height as she was and trailing it along the corridor on wheels.
She had her third birthday party on the children’s ward, by then our second home. The nurses let her invite her friends, gave her a teddy (Howard) and made her a cake which she wasn’t well enough to eat. They threw her a party in the playroom and attached her mask to the wall so she could get out of bed. She lost at musical bumps because the attachment wasn’t long enough for her to sit on the floor.
As she’s got older (bigger, stronger) the effects of the cold have reduced and until this week it was three years since we’d been admitted.
But on Sunday I had the old sinking feeling as she lay on the sofa getting hotter and hotter, refusing to eat and not talking. She needed all her energy just to pull in oxygen.
An early night and doses of Calpol failed. By 2am she was looking at me with strangely glazed eyes and asking if it was the second world war and if she would die.
At 8.30am I nipped to the GP to get her oxygen levels checked and they told me to get an ambulance straight to A&E.
My daughter was chuffed to bits. She loves being in hospital. To her, it means back-to-back DVDs in bed and people running to do your bidding 24 hours a day. If you’re well enough, you get to paint in the playroom with the lovely Shelley - and if you’re not, they bring paints to your bed.
At school people are pleased with you if you are organised, learn your tables and concentrate. (Not things she’s great at). In hospital they are pleased with you if you are sweet, brave and don’t complain. (All things she’s very good at. The upside of the endless pain and needles is that she is very, very brave).
No-one swaps you out of the netball match unfairly or tells you off because you struggle with long division. (My suggestion that we use the time together to practise her tables was met with an expression actors should study as a perfect way to illustrate ‘I’ve never heard anything so utterly ridiculous’).
In hospital, she is cheerful in the face of adversity and they love her for it. There is a lot of crying on the ward and she is never miserable. They recognise her, greet her like a celebrity and love the fact that she still has Howard with her.
Her nutrition-obsessed mother relaxes all food rules and is happy that she manages to eat something, anything. Big Mac? Sure. Coca-cola with that? No problem. Eating in bed? Go for it, baby.
For me coming home is an immense relief. My shabby, messy home is utterly beautiful and I love everything about it. I vow I will never wish for time to sit still again.
For her – not so much. Healthy eating and only on the ground floor, sleep at the proper time and up at the proper time. No more painting in bed. Wear clothes.
It’s tough, normal life.
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