Thursday, March 27, 2008

What's happening? (Or what a bugger of a day)

Hi all,

Well the day started off alright. Did my exercises and weights; watered the vegies, pot plants and fruit trees, picked a few tomatoes, thought about mowing the lawns. And then we got a telephone call that my father had collapsed and been taken to the Wang Base Hospital. Went to hospital. My father is okay. His blood pressure is causing some concern - they want to send him to the private hospital to see if his pace-maker is still working, but wont dare to move him until his blood pressure settles down. My father had a Ct Scan of his brain yesterday and we fear that it may have damaged his pace maker. My mother is with him, so I go for a shorter walk than usual and head home.

Follow Norman Mailer’s quote: A real writer produces work even on bad days, I turn on the computer and struggle to write 50 words.

Phone call from hospital. My mother had been told that my father will probably have to stay overnight. She wants me to collect a few things for him and take them to the hospital. I do so. They want him to wait for a cardiac specialist and the hospital registrar to see him. The later to decide whether he needed to be admitted to a ward instead of being stuck in emergency all night. I stay a while and then both me and my mother leave.

Later tonight, phone call from the hospital. My father has become irritable as he can’t understand why he is still in hospital, as all he did was "fall over". I head off to hospital again. The cardiac specialist and registrar have proven how special they are by not having seen him seven hours after he was admitted. My father had managed to get his pants on when they stopped him from leaving. I don’t know what he thought he was going to do about the intravenous drip plugged into his arm. My mother and me convinced him to stay. I think even the most rational of us would have been upset and thinking about leaving the hospital if nothing seemed to be happening.

An hour later, phone call from the hospital. The registrar had finally appeared and said my father could go home. My mother tells me that, although he did not say so, she thinks the registrar accessed my father’s Ct scan results, because he told her that my father’s brain is deteriorating. His memory has been going and he has a bit of trouble putting sentences together when talking. The doctor says there is nothing that can be done about my father’s condition and it will progressively get worse. We’ll see about that. It the registrar did access the CT Scan why not tell us? Doctors can be arrogant, uncompassionate bastards - not to mention totally incompetent (I speak from personal experience).

Graham.

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