As I write for the first time in weeks (I’ve missed you!) I am anticipating the imminent arrival of son and partner in a taxi. Daniel is due to be discharged today at around seven; though having previous experience of discharges (no, not that kind) I am not holding my breath. He has been a lot better in recent days though: antibiotics seem to have sorted out his infection and resting, eating and drinking have done the rest. I have to pay tribute to the staff who looked after him: he has had the best care imaginable, from dedicated and professional staff who took time to explain everything to him (and us) and make sure they were treating him correctly. Nothing was too much trouble in Intensive Care, and even when he was moved onto the ward, staff were always available to talk through our concerns.
Nevertheless, it has been a terrible time. I am now exhausted from going backwards and forwards to the hospital every day, not to mention trying to get him to eat, drink and be mobile while I was there. Mark went away for the weekend, which didn’t help, though it was something that had been planned for weeks so I told him to go. I plan to have a couple of days away myself, hopefully at Jan’s flat in Barrow. He has lost 10 kilos (that’s a stone and a half in the old money) so he has been quite seriously ill and at one point looked positively cadaverous. Very disturbing and upsetting – in fact it wasn’t until he was moved from Intensive Care onto the wards that I realised just how keyed up I had been.
Of course I’ve not been sleeping well either – hopefully that will improve when he’s home. Humour helps, too, and at times I can understand the gallows humour doctors use to get through the night. So while Daniel’s liver was struggling to perform, Mark and I were devising a website based on Monty Python called ‘canweaveyourliver.com’. It would be a sort of liver-based organ donors website where people could exchange bits of liver, as in the Python sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aclS1pGHp8o
Incidentally, did you notice the correct pronunciation in the website address? As in ‘canweave’ rather than ‘canwehave’?
Talk more tomorrow.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 