Have had an interesting day... Got a call at 8am this morning: the Operations Manager at a motorway services; my mum was in a lot of pain, they had called an ambulance & the paramedics were taking her off to hospital... Apparently mum thought she had really bad wind (as well as the pain, she had a distended abdomen)! I called mum's mobile (in case the ambulance people hadn't switched it off), and spoke to a lady paramedic who said she was already off her head (she didn't put it quite that way!) on morphine with a suspected kidney infection, and they were just arriving at the hospital. I waited about 10 minutes & called A&E who hadn't heard of her, but hearing that she was likely to be going to urology, transferred me to a lady who dealt with ward admissions. She didn't have any record of her either, but said she'd call me next time she was in A&E, and took my name & number. About half an hour later, she called me back to say mum had been in A&E for about 35 minutes (must have not been registered straight away?). I spoke with an A&E sister who said her obs were fine, and that she’d been given painkillers & was waiting for blood tests and X-rays.
By this time, John & Rich were on there way to the hospital (Rich to collect mum’s car from the services, if necessary), so I called them to let them know I’d tracked her down (when I spoke to them before they left the house, I didn’t know where she was), and could they call me when they got there. I didn’t want to try and travel up to Sutton Coldfield if she was going to be released fairly soon (I reckon it would probably take me about four hours to get to the hospital, if I got really lucky with train times, and knowing that they’ve changed the way they charge for travel I would have had to pay full fares – could be a couple of hundred pounds?), so all I could do was sit near the phone & wait. Normally in a circumstance like this I’d be straight on the phone to David getting some moral support… But guess who’s in Germany with his phone inaudible owing to motorcycle noise! I couldn’t even chat to Rich for long, as his batteries were low on his mobile.
A little later, Rich called; they had been in to see mum (who was understandably woozy – the morphine still clearly working), but got kicked out almost immediately as they were going to give her another painkiller that should reduce the abdominal bloating, but French style! I can still remember that from having bronchitis as a five-year old!
Thankfully Rich called back fairly soon to tell me that mum had got four enormous kidney stones (about 3/8”), and that kidney stones are often very hard to spot on X-ray, but these were obvious! They were talking about keeping her in hospital overnight, so I’d written off her visit to us (and she was due to come to France for a flying visit, as well). I went from really worried to ecstatically relieved and then to really disappointed that she’d miss her visit. Because there was some blood in her urine, she had to see a surgeon – not for surgery, but apparently he’s the person you see for kidney stones! As the stones had already left her kidney, she couldn’t have ultrasound, so it was “wait & see”, oh, and “drink lots of fluids”.
The surgeon said she needed a scan, so more waiting. After about 4 hours I called Rich again, but she still hadn’t appeared, so he went in to check what was happening. A few minutes later I got a call to say she’d been discharged 40 minutes earlier, but he couldn’t find her anywhere! Massive relief that she’d been discharged (they wouldn’t have let her go if she wasn’t on the mend), but no surprise that she’d gone AWOL! Something about ‘leopards’ and ‘spots’ sprang to mind…!
Just got a call – she’s on her way to collect her car from the motorway services, have something to eat (her first meal all day), and then she’s coming down. That’s the spirit that survived the Blitz!!
I’ve sat at home, doing nothing (other than a load of laundry – house is tidy, & didn’t want to leave the phone to do shopping) for over 8 ½ hours, but it’s been one of the more exhausting days of my life!
Mum: glad you’re going to be OK!! And is that enough excitement for you?
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