21/02/2010 by Brigid.

As you can imagine, a lot has happened in the two months since my last post. We got Mum home, safe and sound, in time for Christmas. Though it wasn’t, perhaps, quite the merry feast that we had all hoped for. Festive food, especially those dishes whose main ingredients consisted of dried fruit and nuts, proved quite a challenge to Mum’s digestive system. There were regular bouts of painful indigestion and sickness, culminating in a blockage that required yet another surgical intervention. The good news is that the operation went well and, despite the loss of yet more weight and muscle-strength, we all believe that Mum is now well on the road to recovery. So, with our London house now finished and on the market, and Mum convalescing in The Elms, John and I put the cats in a cattery and took a bit of a break.

It was all a bit “last minute” and we are being a little secretive about our current whereabouts. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out, but John’s mother is under the impression that we are still on the Isle of Wight, and we would rather keep it that way.

Knowing what a hard winter it has been so far here, it was reasonable to assume that an uninsulated summer cottage would be a touch chilly in mid-February. Thus, having failed to identify any charity sending blankets to Haiti, we borrowed two or three from Mum’s vast, moth-ball scented collection, dragged the all-seasons duvet and pillows off our own bed, and packed our thermal undies along with a dozen bottles of wine and three quarts of comforting home-canned stew.

We were right about the cottage. Despite the turf fire and central heating, we can still see our breath indoors. A hard frost covers the road outside and dark clouds race in off the Atlantic, bringing with them hail, sleet and snow.  But things could be worse. As quickly as the clouds arrive, they are gone again. Far off, the Cliffs of Moher and O’Brien’s Tower emerge silhouetted against a narrow band of blue sky and shafts of sunlight paint the neighbouring fields bronze, copper and gold. And, if all goes to plan, this view (or one very similar) will shortly be ours to keep.

The welcome has been characteristically warm and we have already been fed to within an inch of our lives or, at the very least, to the last hole on our longest belts. Then there is the Guinness. No trip would be complete without a good drink with John’s cousins. So, on Friday evening we ate in and agreed to meet up in Inagh for a jar or two around 9.30pm.

Whether due to the recession or to the smoking ban, O’Rinn’s seemed unusually quiet. We had a couple of pints there, then adjourned across the road to Dillons, where a poker game was drawing a bit of a crowd. As, one by one, the players threw in their hands, the dimly-lit bar emptied, leaving a few die-hard drinkers and our small party. I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Ollie, how are ye?”, said Marie. The owner of the hand was a thin elderly man with long white hair and a complete absence of molars. He poked a boney finger at John, “What’s wrong with your hair, Tulip? Are ye a policeman or someting?”. Then, to Theresa, “This’ll be your husband?” Theresa indicated that John was actually my husband, to which Ollie reacted with apparent disappointment, “Eh, so ye’re married to Tulip?” He backed off a little and began to sing a Republican tribute to the Falls Road Volunteers. Mercifully, the entertainment was swiftly brought to a conclusion when the landlord hit the light-switch and plunged the bar into darkness. It was time to leave.

I don’t remember anything else about the evening. It was, in fact, about 3.30am when John and I got indoors and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I have no idea if John had achieved the gallon, but was only glad that I had been drinking halves to his pints. It was still dark when John woke me, clambering about on my side of the bed. If my luck was in, my sense of humour was definitely out. “What the f*ck are you doing?”, were the most romantic words I could muster. “I need to pee and I can’t find my way out. Where’s the f*cking door gone?” came the reply from my disoriented and increasingly panic-stricken husband. I quickly turned the light on before there was an accident.

Suffice to say, I was more than slightly relieved when Jim rang on Saturday morning and put us off until tonight.

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23/12/2009 by Brigid.

I have sat down several times during the last couple of weeks, intending to update this blog, but each time I have struggled to put more than two sentences together. Despite this, the site still appears to be attracting visitors. Whoever you are, I thank you for your loyalty.

Once my mother was on her feet, her recovery seemed to gain momentum. She dispensed with the dreaded Zimmer frame within a week and, using a simple stick, was soon able to negotiate first the first floor passage, then a flight of stairs. The effort exhausted her, of course, as she was still eating very little: ‘Build Up’ soups and my homemade sandwiches being the preferred menu. Then there was a real setback when Mum’s wound (still not completely healed after her July operation) developed an abscess and had to be cut open again! Nevertheless, having been cleaned up by some friendly maggots, we were finally given a discharge date of 17^th December. And so it was that, last Thursday, Mum and I boarded the 3.30pm Portsmouth – Fishbourne ferry, and I brought her home.

I never really saw myself as a nurse or even a particularly good housekeeper, but, for the time being, this is my new vocation. Though I must say the community health services here in the Isle of Wight have proved spectacularly efficient. Within 24 hours of our arrival, we had had a visit from Mum’s GP and a screening call from the Occupational Therapists with the offer of immediate loan equipment from the local Red Cross. The District Nurse confirmed that she would be visiting the following morning, and the Stoma Nurse rang to welcome Mum home and made an appointment for Monday, and the Physiotherapists rang to apologise for the service being closed over Christmas, but promised they would be in touch the first week in January …

It felt good to know that I wasn’t on my own, particularly as I have had to leave John behind in London, overseeing the last of the redecorating work. For the time being Mum is still too weak to be left alone for more than an hour or so at a time, so JR is tasked with dressing the house for the market. An onorous responsibility, as he frequently reminds me that “real men don’t plump cushions”. Naturally, I, in all my feminine wisdom, have left him with a mountain of them, all carefully colour-coordinated, together with a substantial collection of vases, ornaments and pictures. In an ideal world, I would be there to tell John which rooms they were intended for. Instead, we have Skype and a webcam.

Neither Mum nor I have spent Christmas in the Isle of Wight for at least 15 years, and John has never spent Christmas here. The discharge date came too late for us to make any social arrangements, so this year will be rather different to past Christmasses. We haven’t sent any cards and presents have been kept to the edible or drinkable kind only. Even so, I have a feeling that this year will be one of the best.

I am looking forward to John’s arrival tomorrow, when we will be sure to raise a glass to all our friends and wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

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10/11/2009 by Brigid.

My mother is 80 today. The party wasn’t the one my sister, Sarah, and I had planned. Instead of a lunch party for 50, we had tea and cakes in Mum’s hospital room, surrounded by cards and flowers from her many well-wishers.

When she was admitted in July, there were doubts as to whether we would be having a birthday party at all. But today we celebrated two milestones.

As far as being 80 is concerned, most of the greetings card manufacturers seem to shy away from creating humourous cards for octogenarians. Perhaps they assume that one loses one’s sense of humour with age. I have news for them. Exactly twenty years ago, on her 60^th birthday, Mum commented to me that she was only getting crumbly on the outside. Inside, she still felt 21.

I was 26. At the time, I didn’t understand. Now, aged 46, I am still wondering if I will ever feel “grown up” … After all, my mother is mature and sensible, simply by virtue of being my mother. That is her job. May be I beat the system. As I never had children of my own, who is to say I should ever be either mature or sensible. But I keep looking for symptoms.

The other milestone, Mum created for herself a few weeks ago. Having only recently arrived back in a private room, weak and emaciated from weeks spent in Intensive Care, her physiotherapists reprimanded her for a lack of effort. “You can’t stay here for ever”, they said. “You need a goal to aim for if you want to be strong enough to go home.” So, between them they came up with a target.  On the whiteboard at the end of Mum’s bed, the physio wrote, “Goal: to be able to stand on my own on my birthday, 10^th November 2009.”

Today, underneath the original message, someone had written “Achieved! Yea hey! Next goal ….”

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28/10/2009 by Brigid.

Some of you will have wondered how my mother is getting on. Much better, thanks. I apologise for the lack of updates.

Her move to a private room more or less coincided with the start of my CELTA course at the end of September. It happened with no warning at all. We had spent the weekend at my mother’s house on the Isle of Wight and I got the news from my uncle on the way back to London. On Friday, it had been business as usual in Intensive Care but, by Sunday, she was sitting up in bed with her reading specs and a newspaper, talking normally and sipping (specially thickened) apple juice through a straw: no more ventilator, no more trachyotomy.

Mum still has a long way to go. She doesn’t seem to tolerate solid food very well, and she is having to learn to stand on her own two feet again – literally! We have had to postpone her 80^th birthday party next month but, at least, we are looking forward to spending Christmas together. Realistically, for us, it is likely to be Spring before we get home to France.

… and Room 101?

In George Orwell’s book, 1984, Room 101 contained “the worst thing in the world”: a place where enemies of the state were subjected to their own worst nightmares. The name isn’t wholly inappropriate. Mum’s worst nightmare at the moment is her twice-daily torment by the “physio-terrorists”, who bully her into doing her exercises!

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27/10/2009 by Brigid.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been well over a month since my last post …

I’m in the launderette again. Of all the disruptions caused by the building work, I find our weekly washing arrangements the most tedious. On the other hand, if I ignore the exuberant Asian talent show on the TV and the Hilda Ogden look-alike doing her washing in 4″ hair rollers, they do provide me with an opportunity to catch up with the blog.

Heard the one about the Englishman ,the Scotsman, and the Irishman … the Turk, the Pole, the Chinese and the Russian? Allow me to introduce you to my fellow CELTA graduates.

“Cancel your social lives; no late nights, no evenings out …”, warned Christine, Language Link’s Polish secretary, on our first day. Indeed, the four-week intensive course was no place for shrinking violets. After one day of tutorials and observation, we were thrown in at the deep end; teaching grammar to intermediate English speakers, who probably knew the rules better than we did. But, before you feel too sorry for them, I should add that these lessons are free. Students are simply required to pay a £10 registration fee for a four week course. A sense of humour helps too.

The school itself is in Earls Court, a neighbourhood long-since re-Christened “Kangaroo Valley” for its population of Australians and Kiwis. The Antipodeans remain, but the influx of foreigners from the other three corners of the globe has been such that English is very much a minority language. Take my recent exchange with a very polite and efficient Indian Post Office assistant:

Me: How much is a stamp for Portugal?
SA: 56p. Err … are you working here?
Me: Well, yes, I suppose I am … “studying”, anyway.
SA: Do you need a credit card while you are here?
Me: Er, no thanks.
SA: What about a phone card? We do very good international rates.
Me: No thanks.
SA: If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?
Me (bemused): Fulham. (about 15 minutes’ walk)
SA: No. I mean where were you from originally … before you came to England?
Me (embarrassed): What do you mean? I was born here …

At this point I could see the conversation going downhill rapidly, so decided to quit before I was accused of insulting the unfortunate woman. However, it wasn’t quite the end of the story.

Back at the language school, I related my experience to my fellow trainees. Far from the gales of laughter I expected, I was greeted with quizzical looks. Eventually, someone spoke, “Well, we were wondering where you were from. Where did you get that accent?”I was, for a rare moment, completely lost for words or, to use one of my least favourite expressions, utterly gobsmacked!

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12/09/2009 by Brigid.

If love means never having to say you’re sorry, fear is having an eastern European demolishing the back wall of your otherwise comfortable and well-insulated house with a Kango hammer. We’ve got the builders in …

Costa’s guys have only been here a week and, already, I am lamenting the fact that they don’t flush and leave the seat up, and the house is full of plaster dust. The old kitchen units are on eBay and John and I have retreated to the first floor of our Fulham house: washing up in the bath and cooking on two rings in the “living room”: previously the front bedroom. It is almost as if we have entered a time warp and stepped back 14 years!

Actually, I am not sure whether our current conditions are better or worse than when we first bought the freehold and started to convert the two flats back into a house. At least we are only dealing with one room this time, even if the room in question comprises half the ground floor. Back in the day, we stripped out the entire first floor: ceilings, walls, everything in fact, except one bedroom. I have fond memories (not) of arriving home from work and finding John and Bob Masterton looking like a pair of coal miners and the entire house being coated in a fine film of dust from the lathe and plaster. And here we are 14 years later doing the same thing. “It’s what you two do …”, commented John’s exasperated daughter.

The plumbing problems are reversed. Now instead of having no water on the first floor, we have no water on the ground floor, meaning many tedious treks upstairs for the plasterer and much ill-humoured hoovering for me. It also means weekly trips to the launderette - from whence I write, with a row of churning machines for entertainment. Every now and then I get a wave from a very large pair of purple knickers (not mine … or John’s either, before you ask) twirling around in the machine opposite!

I did, however, have a complete sense of humour meltdown over our clean linen, after dust funnelled up into the airing cupboard from downstairs. So I left it for a service wash with the Freddie Mercury look-alike who runs the launderette.

All together now, “I want to break free …”!

I am perfectly sure Mum also wants to break free. She has, and I hesitate as I write this, made a sustained improvement over the last two weeks or so. The CT scans don’t show much change, but her infection markers have been down and her temperature has been more normal. Gradually she is regaining her strength.

Nice “Dr Tim” says that Mum’s progress is remarkable, considering her age. I hadn’t previously taken in that Critical Illness Neuropathy can take 6 months to recover from. So the fact that Mum can smile, wave, clap and make thumbs up signs is very encouraging.

Mum still cannot talk as the plumbing for the ventilator bypasses her voicebox. However, the hoses are now only connected at night. During the day Mum is doing all the breathing work herself with minimal support from an oxygen mask slung loosely over the trachy pipe. A bonus of this arrangement, is that the nurses can wheel her up to the roof terrace, swathed in sheets and blankets, for a dose of early autumn sunshine … which reminds me, I must go and look for a pair of sunglasses.

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25/08/2009 by Brigid.

I suppose the very fact that we are struggling to find activities to keep Mum amused in her incarceration, is a sign that there has been some progress. Some. Days after I wrote the last blog entry, she was diagnosed as having something called Critical Illness Neuropathy, a neurological infection affecting patients with critical illnesses, in case you hadn’t guessed. It knocked her back a bit, to say the least. The infection prevents signals from the brain reaching the muscles, thus affecting the function of the heart, lungs and, well, practically everything else. She became incredibly weak, even losing the power to hold a pencil.

A lesser person might just have turned up their toes, but it seems Mum is made of sterner stuff. A week later, with no sign of being able to wean her off the ventilator, the surgeons operated to put in a trachyotomy. That evening, for the first time, they propped her up in bed and she sat reading the paper with the doctor. Seeing her the following morning, I was hugely relieved to see her looking more recognisably like my mother, albeit with a gaping mouth and lop-sided face.

Over the next week or so, the muscle tone came back and she was able to smile again. The improvement continued day by day until, greeting her old friend Margaret, she put her arms up and was almost able to manage a hug. Almost.

Then, calling the hospital on Saturday , I was told that Mum’s infection markers were up, she had had a bad night, and had been taken down for a CT scan. Not the news I was hoping for, particularly as her friend Fergie had come all the way from Norfolk to see her. John and I went to meet him at the hospital and he kindly bought us lunch, while we waited for the sedative to wear off.

That afternoon, while Fergie sat with my mother, the surgeon gave me the bad news. The CT scan had shown up a fistula in Mum’s gut. Normally they would operate to close it, but owing to Mum’s age, the high levels of infection and the awkwardness of the site, they felt it would not be in her best interest. Instead they would change her antibiotics and hope that the leak would seal itself, as they sometimes do. I was visibly shaken as I rejoined John in the hospital reception. He tried to put his arm round me to comfort me, but it had the opposite effect and I burst into tears. So I put on my bravest smile and we sat like two bookends at either end of the sofa waiting for Fergie to finish his visit.

Poor Fergie. He was longing to know what the surgeon had said, but I couldn’t repeat it all without crying, so I left out the most depressing details. Fergie had been staying with my mother when she collapsed at the beginning of June, so he has become almost family over the period of her illness. It felt like a lie, but he seemed so encouraged that she had opened her eyes and smiled for him, that I didn’t want to dampen his view that “she is going to make it”. We saw him into a taxi, and then I had to ring my sister, my aunt and uncle: Mum’s sister and brother.

Although I was told that Mum was in “no immediate danger”, the infection is a nightmare. While MRSA grabs the headlines, and provides a perfect excuse to hurl abuse at our beleaguered health system, it is eminently treatable. There are far nastier things out there. Acinetobacter, for instance, has been identified among casualties of the Iraq conflict, but is becoming increasingly common in mainstream hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic. It is resistant to all but the widest-spectrum antibiotics and can live for weeks on skin and dry surfaces and, yes, Mum probably did acquire it at Newport’s, unusually excellent, NHS hospital.

So, what now?

Well, actually, in the days that followed Fergie’s visit, Mum rallied again. By Monday, the antibiotics seemed to have the bacteria on the run, and her signs were returning to normal. Within a few days, she was bright and alert and smiling again. I have started to take a “talking book” in with me, which we can sit and listen to together. I chose Dirk Bogarde’s autobiography, “A Postillion Struck by Lightening”, the title of which, I know, will mean nothing to our American friends, who refer to a “pillion” (short for “postillion”) rider, simply as a “passenger”. Anyway, Mum hates it: not my choice of book, particularly, just having to sit in a chair and stay awake for half an hour. But the doctors say it’s good for her, so I tell her she just has to put up with it and, as she cannot talk, she cannot argue.

Today, after much negotiation on the part of Mum’s nurses, I got the IT department to lend me a small projector so that I could run a little slide show of holiday photos. When I told her that I was going to show her my photos, I could have sworn I saw a twinkle of excitement. I duly set up the laptop and projector, and Mum looked at the first two or three photos as I sat close to her right ear and told her what they were. Then, as often happens with slide shows of other people’s holiday photos, the audience dozed off. I let the show continue in silence, then packed up the projector and left Mum fast asleep with her mouth open. Only the ventilator prevented her from snoring …

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09/08/2009 by Brigid.

Our lives are, for the time being, dominated by daily, sometimes twice-daily, trips to the hospital, where Mum continues in Intensive Care. Her recovery from a life-saving operation on July 18^th is slow: sometimes to the point of being imperceptible. Each day seems to bring a new challenge: high temperature, low blood pressure, high sodium, sleepless nights, restless days … Since she still requires support from a ventilator, she cannot speak, which tends to keep our visits short. On a good day we will get a beaming grin and, if she is feeling strong enough, a hand wave. But not being able to communicate soon becomes frustrating and, as the banks of monitors behind her head warn us that her heart rate and blood pressure are rising, we reluctantly leave. On a bad day, she might open her eyes for us … but then again, she might not.

Every input and output is measured and recorded by a devoted team of 3 or 4 nurses, who have, over the last three weeks, become like family to us. Other patients come and go from this dimly-lit subterranean world within a day or two, but, for the most part, Mum has the entire staff of the ICU to herself: one nurse permanently stationed at the end of her bed, diligently plotting her progress on a giant chart. And, while Mum concentrates all her efforts on breathing, around her others busy themselves adjusting drips, checking lines, taking bloods, resetting alarms …

No five-minute visit seems to pass without some activity on the part of the medical team and, yesterday, I witnessed Mum’s physiotherapy workout. As she has spent so long lying down, there is now a concerted effort to get her used to being upright again.  This is an undignified process, by which Mum is strapped to a tilt table and gradually inclined to an angle of 45°. Then two physiotherapists, aided by a couple of nurses, help her raise and lower her arms, touch her forehead and squeeze their hands. It is painful to watch the disproportionate level effort and exertion required, but the team seem delighted by her progress. Occupational Therapy brought her a large television so that she could watch Coronation Street, and asked about her hobbies …

Friends and relatives call every day to ask if and when they might visit. Some seem shocked when I tell them Mum is still in Intensive Care and unable to speak. I don’t give it too much thought. There are few other places in the country where she would receive such dedicated care. To some extent, I have become desensitized to discussions around care plans and interventions: topics that would have previously left me faint or weepy. I find myself being almost alarmingly matter-of-fact about Mum’s condition. But the doctors are upbeat about every small improvement, so why shouldn’t I be?

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12/04/2009 by Brigid.

A little tale told by my French teacher tickled my sense of humour. We have all been caught out at one time or another, trying to translate English idioms into French. Jean-François’ story involved a friend visiting England, who tried to do the opposite. The expression, “vachement chouette” in French means “bloody great”. Translated literally into English, you get “cowly owl”. It may yet catch on in this household …

Having received the cats’ food supplement on Friday, I have finally plucked up courage to use the pressure canner for the first time. As I type, I have one eye on the pressure gauge and the other on the Munster vs Ospreys playing the first of today’s two Heineken Cup Quarter Finals. Harlequins are at home to Leinster later.

Bloody cats. Last week we came home from an evening out to find the kitchen floor awash with eggs. The place looked as if a bomb had hit it. The cats were immediately banished to the cold, dark, flat for the night, while I got busy with the mop. Yesterday we got home to find that the little monsters had been playing football with their new food supplement, which I had unwisely left, unopened, on the worksurface. Since it is chock full of vitamins, minerals and amino acids, I was initially worried that they had torn a hole in the bottom of the ziplock bag. Overdosing mineral supplements never does one any good. Luckily, the powder probably doesn’t taste very nice on its own. When I weighed the bag, only 15gms seemed to be missing – and I must have swept up twice that amount from the sitting room carpet.

Needless to say, Tigger and Foggy were again banished in disgrace. However, it is fair to say that this ‘punishment’ does more to pacify us than discipline the cats. It didn’t take Tiggy long to work out that, from the stairs, he could easily jump up to the internal first floor bathroom window, set, for privacy, about 8ft above floor level. One of the glass panes has been removed and replaced with a ventilation grille. With a bit of deft footwork, Tiggy was able to dislodge the grille and jump down into the bathroom. It wasn’t the alarm clock that woke me this morning, but the clatter of the bathroom cat-flap and usual morning cats’ chorus that lets us know that they think it is time for breakfast. Cowly owls, indeed!

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24/03/2009 by Brigid.

You can tell John is away. I am eating my dinner while typing this, while all around lies the debris from today’s unfinished projects and, on the table in front of me, is a large steel pressure canner, just arrived by mail order from the US, and still in its box.  There is just about room for a place mat and cheese board.

I’m having soup again. It is my own fault. Whenever I make minestrone, I always make too much, and John and I end up eating it for days. This time, with John not here to eat his share, it might, feasibly, not get finished. The recipe calls for a huge quantity of neatly diced vegetables, as well as bacon, chickpeas and tomatoes. Though I say so myself, it’s not a bad soup. Quite tasty, actually. But there is something rather off-putting about the colour of this week’s offering. The addition of red, instead of green, cabbage, initially gave the broth an unusually rich brown colour. Against the tomatoey background, the contrasting colours of the chickpeas, red cabbage, leek, carrot and courgette, looked surprisingly appetising. But, after a day or so, the purple dye from the cabbage started to leech into the broth, and most of the vegetables are now a uniform grey purple colour, the sort you expect to see when you wash your undies on the wrong cycle.

The canner is for cat food. Having read one too many horror stories about what goes into commercial pet food, I now prepare fresh meat for our two little carnivores. The trouble is, being away for several weeks this summer, one cannot expect the good folk at the cattery to spend hours chopping up chicken carcasses. Dry food is, well …. dry. And the only time I ever tried them on tinned food, they turned their spoilt little noses up. So, one day, looking at all the bottled pâtés and cassoulets on the supermarket shelves, I hit upon the solution. Home canning.

The French are mad for home bottled fruit and veg and bits of duck and goose preserved in fat but, otherwise, don’t go in much for ‘canned’ meat. In fact, I couldn’t find out very much about home canning at all from European sources. You cannot even buy domestic pressure canners this side of the Atlantic. But search the Internet and you will find a plethora of advice from the backwoods of America, where well-fed, round-faced, jolly-looking women, regularly can anything from squirrel to venison!

Did I say the canner was big? At 23 quarts, it is enormous. The box says I can process 7 quart jars, 20 pint jars or 24 half-pint jars. I can only imagine what the cattery owner will say, when I turn up with a box full of bottled cat food and instructions to keep the jars. Still, cats aside, I am reading the instruction and recipe book, and getting quite excited about the prospect of filling the shelves of our cave with home made stews and pâtés. Perfect for those occasions when my own backwoodsman unexpectedly brings home a posse of hungry, lumberjack-shirt wearing, mates for dinner.

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