bunn

On Sunday, I rang my mother and she admitted she was feeling unwell (unusual!) and sounded rather weak and wambly.  So I went round and made butternut squash soup and rolls, and got her to eat a bit of it.  She was not looking good, but she had an appointment with the doctor on Monday, so I said I'd come back and take her.  Then later, she called to say a friend from her village would give her a lift.  Fair enough.

On Monday, I heard there was a dog missing from Tavistock that had been seen wandering around our local lanes here (her home is about 8 miles away AND she had crossed the Tamar!)  So I printed out some posters and took them with me on my morning walk to stick up around the place. 

Did that, got home to be greeted by Pp in a hurry, telling me that my mother had phoned to ask to be taken to the hospital, and her doctor had phoned after that to make sure we had got the message.  Eek. 

We picked her up from the surgery and she had to be wheelchaired to the car, and looked semi-conscious and definitely very nauseous on the way.   Wheelchaired her up to the ward  (the doctor had phoned so we were expected) to find there were no beds, and so they gave her a chair to sit in, and I must say I was a bit worried she was going to fall out of it, and so I Went and Made a Fuss, which is always a horrible thing to have to do.

But things improved after that: they took her into a consulting room where there was, thank goodness, a trolley- thing recline on (I wasn't expecting an instant bed, but something to lie down on that wasn't the floor seemed not too much to ask!) and they took blood samples and then a junior doctor came and asked all the same questions that the nurses had asked, and that her doctor had told us the answers to previously.  (He had also given us notes to take with us, which vanished instantly we handed them over, and the contents of which seemed a complete mystery to everyone: I rather wished I'd read them in the car, at least I would have known what they said then!  She said later that the GP had done a bunch of tests already that morning, but it seemed that everything must be done over at the hospital.)

Anyway, they found her a bed and said she must wait for the consultant.  At 6pm I called and there was still no sign of the consultant, so I went to her house to collect a toothbrush, phone etc, and took that back to the hospital, where I found her looking rather perkier, but rather peeved still to be waiting.  She was there overnight in the end, but was clearly rather better in the morning, and sending emails from the tablet I had brought in to her ( A great thing that hospitals now have free wifi!)    I went to her house again, and fed the cat, Pudding, who was very cheesed off that it was me and not his Real Person.

In the end I brought her home Tuesday evening with some powerful antibiotics and a stick to lean on, looking much more cheerful.  A chest X-ray had turned up an infection that was a sort of mild pneumonia. She has promised to take it easy, I'm not sure I believe it.  She might manage it for a week, with luck!