Stormy Weather

My Dad is normally a pillar of strength... more commonly known as "Stormin' Norman". However, he has been floored in the last couple of years by a fairly aggressive form of arthritis (a rampant strain which has ravaged several members of his Mother's family), and so has had a 'hip resurfacing' operation to rectify some of his problems. On Thursday night last week, on the day of his op, I went to visit him - and he looked positively perky... we had a pleasant evening, chatting about the operation, and while I *should* have known that worse was to come, I somehow managed to blot out the furtive pitying looks of the other men on the ward. I guess they all knew what was to come, but didn't have the heart to tell him. The thing is that on Thursday night he was still attached to his 'epidural' machine - and was subsequently pain free, and blissfully unaware of what was to visit him on Friday.

As it goes... I didn't have a good end to my day on Thursday. When I left Dad to drive home on my own, I found that my headlights were not working (only full beam and the side lights). When you have just hit the M11 in the pitch dark, its not a good moment to discover that you can't see a bloody thing! Foolishly, I decided to pull off the dark road onto a slip road going into Wymondham (pronounced "Windham" by all those Norfolk Wairdos ;-) which seemed brightly lit, and therefore a little safer. WRONG! I pulled onto a track just on a roundabout, and put my call into the AA - who said they would be with me in 40 minutes. Joy! However... I quickly found myself being circled by a rather persistent crowd of 'boi racers' (the Norfolk pronunciation), who whooped at me from their tinted car windows, while sardonic grins play on their be-bum fluffed lips. A few of the braver ones actually got out and approached the car... shit shit shit. I tried mouthing a few obscenities, and used BIG '9 9 9' dialling gestures to scare them off. If in doubt, pretending to be mad always works on young people keen to have a laugh at someone else's expense... ahem. Anyway... thankfully, the AA man arrived (before said kids had had me sectioned), and he soon fixed it and I was on my way. Apparently a fuse had blown... I'm not sure whether he was talking about me or the car!? ;-)

On Friday, Dad's chickens came home to roost. They removed the epidural, and left him to stew in his own juices (quite literally in fact... his 'bag' burst in his bed, and they left him to soak in it for three hours late in the evening). Poor Mum and Tracy turned up at the hospital to find sweat lashing off him, and him literally screaming in agony... not good. He vomited up the morphine they tried to give him, and following his first attempts to get out of bed (onto a trolley for an X-ray, and then to the toilet) he was left feeling tearful and frustrated - unable to get any relief from the pain in his hips. I think it was midnight when they managed to get his pain under control... a deep sigh of relief all round.

Saturday, I joined did a spot of shopping and cleaning in the morning, and joined Mum back at the hospital to visit Dad again. He was so much better than the man that refused to speak to me on the telephone the night before. He was up, and sitting in a chair beside his bed, wearing a pair of jazzy pyjamas, and joking with his fellow 'inmates'. I noticed Dad giving the rather perky guy in the bed opposite one of those furtive and pitying looks - he has just had his op, and was loudly proclaiming that everything was just fine - with his epidural attached of course. Poor guy. Dad was eating properly... in fact a little more than properly. One of the nurses quipped that Dad looked as though he was opening his own deli counter on his bedside table - and it certainly looked that way! Us Brown girls are a big bunch of 'feeders' (including my Mother) - and while several other inmates on the ward were sipping warm lemon squash and eating custard creams, Dad was quaffing Elderflower Cordial, and nibbling on Belgian Florentine biscuits, black spot pork pies, and chocolate covered pumpkin seeds. Mum and I stayed most of the afternoon and early evening and then made our way to Tracy's for dinner. Tracy made a veritable feast of Mussels in "Dill and Tarragon" pesto, served with doorsteps of warm sourdough bread to mop up the juices, lashings of butter, and plenty of vino to wash it down with. Very satisfactory... However, there is a risk attached to staying at my Sister's place. Henry joined us in bed at some point in the night and pee'd on me, and Oscar took it upon himself to bonk me on the head with a wooden hammer at 4:45am... literally shouting "Bonk! Bonk! Bonk!" as he did it... ah well, I guess you cant have it all!

Sunday, I headed home and did a spot of cleaning. Mark's Dad joined me for lunch (I finally caught up a little on his trip to Australia), and in the afternoon I hosted a bit of a birthday party for Mark's little niece Emily (poor Mark was at work, and missed out on it). I did save him a bit of the Peppa Pig birthday cake I bought, but Katie made sure she took all of the balloons home with her... supposedly for "Emmily to play with". I suspect though that Katie had her own agenda for those - she had put them all in another room on arrival, just in case any should get "broken". heh. The poor cat, who has been a little off colour of late, took one look at those garish globes wafting in the draught from the back door, and almost cleared the fence in her haste to escape, leaving a trail of bodily substances behind her. In the evening, after all the guests had gone (Paul and his family also popped in for cake), I cooked Mark a roast dinner, and we finally got around to saying hello to one another after several evenings doing different things (and his trip to Scotland). It will be our 4-year anniversary this Wednesday... I am looking forward to celebrating it (after I have been to my brand new pottery class, and Mark has been to a Reserves match for Histon FC and done the photographs). Who said that the age of romance was dead?

Anyway... good news today. Dad is going home. Mum was going to collect him this afternoon - bless her. It will literally be a white knuckle ride, as she hates driving - but she hates being parted from Dad more, so she has decided it is worth it. Mark has kindly volunteered to go over on one of his days off this week and cut his grass, and do some bits and bobs for them - no doubt he will be trying to make something resembling a Stenna Stair Lift out of two bits of string and a length of "2 b 4" (Wallace and Grommit stylee), with an attachment to winch Dad up the stairs, dress him and make him a jam sandwich on the way.

Love, Peace and pass the morphine... as they say in Norfolk and Norwich Hospital
Hayls
xxxxxx