Day 33 – Water, water, everywhere

Sunday 11th October 2009

My wound had been leaking during the night which didn’t come as any surprise. I knew there was no chance that I would be going home tomorrow.

The bays on the ward were practically empty. They were getting nine admissions during the day so the peace and quiet wouldn’t last long.

One of the men who was admitted yesterday came over to say hello to me and Mary. I had been confined to bed/chair rest to try and stop my wound from leaking, so Mary had popped over for a quick chat.

Sister Charlton came to change my dressing and was still optimistic that the leaking was coming from a pocket of blood. I wanted to believe her, but I knew deep down that it wasn’t, and that I would have to go to the woodshed again. Still, it could have been worse. I could have gone home, found it was leaking and have to go back into hospital. That would have been sole destroying.

Later that morning I noticed there was water on my side room window, which over looked the nurses station. I got up to have a close look and saw that water was running down the nurses side of the window. I saw Sister Charlton walking passed the nurses station so called her over to take a look.

She looked up at the ceiling above the nurses station and saw that water was dripping through the ceiling tiles.
“Bloody hell”, she yelled.
She rang the ward that was directly above us but got no answer so ran upstairs to the ward.

She came back ten minutes later to say that an elderly, confused, gentleman had been turning on all the taps in the wards.

Half an hour later an emergency workman arrived to remove the ceiling tiles to let them dry out.

Doris, the lady in side ward 1, sent in some magazines for me to read. They weren’t my type so gave them to Mary who was over the moon with them.

Hardly saw much of Mary for the rest of the day as we were both confined to quarters. Mary’s leg was still swollen so it was bed rest for her too.

No change on the wound front. It was still leaking considerably.

Had two visits from John, which were lovely, as I normally only got to see him on an evening the rest of the week. He was able to take with him some of my dirty laundry seeing as my mam didn’t visit on Sundays.

My mam had developed a fascination with my locker. She was forever tiding it up. She would arrange it to how she wanted it, not what was practical for me, and woe betide if I or a nurse put something in the wrong place !!!! It started to get irritating as no sooner had she arrived, she was desperate to get to the locker.

Whenever the physio’s took me walking on an afternoon and she was visiting, rather than watch and see how I was progressing, she would ignore me and tend to the locker instead. It must be nice to be loved…