24th October 2006 – She’s still here

Rebecca is still hanging on. When I went in Dad was in the ‘Quiet Room’ where they were about to start a ‘discussion on a topic’. Usually entertaining enough – what with “Step we Hailey’s” grasp of current affairs and the residents’ grasp on reality, the discussions can be quite lively. One of the more compus mentus ones usually end it after a while cursing and telling them they are all fucking daft. Which is fair enough.

I look at Dad though and he’s desperately pale. I try to take him through to the Day room to sit at a table, but we only get a few steps, he’s holding onto my arm for grim life and I’m trying to carry the shopping and make sure Ellie doesn’t get molested by Margaret or Cecily. I realise he’s about to fall – when he falls he just crumples, his legs literally go from under him and there’s nothing that will stop him – so I shout for help. Moira comes and holds him up while I run for a wheelchair. When I get back his named nurse Karen is there and a male orderly too. They get him into the chair. He’s even paler now. Karen and I confer and she’s agrees to phone the doctor, but she’ll need to take his blood pressure and temperature first. Ellie and I walk behind as he’s wheeled along to his room. The male orderly is telling me how he’s been in the morning – didn’t eat his usual full cooked breakfast and kept walking or standing up at least, didn’t want to sit down. Now, call me an over-pushy relative if you will but, if someone doesn’t want to sit to eat and every time they are force to sit will try with all their might to stand – does that not suggest to you that it’s – at least – uncomfortable or - more than likely - painful to sit?

When we get to his room they take his temperature – it’s not high, and his blood pressure, which is deemed ok too, although to my extremely untutored eye I think it’s a bit low. They take him out of the wheelchair and transfer him to his armchair. He visibly winces when he sits and immediately tries to get up. He has a thick jumper, which Karen takes off for him and his vest and shirt below are damp with perspiration. Moira looks out a clean shirt for him and they go and get a different male orderly to help Dad into the toilet. It might be constipation they say, “Do you need the toilet?” they shout at him repeatedly. He keeps saying no, until eventually he says yes and they shuffle him in. At least they close the door. Moira appears in a minute for clean briefs and trousers. Karen returns to tell me that the doctor will visit in the afternoon but she’s sure it’s just constipation – they emerge from the toilet and she asks Moira if he moved his bowels then, she says no, so she asks the male orderly if he’d moved them this morning and he says no. He’s dressed and they sit him back in his armchair – he winces as he sits and tries to get up again. They shout at him to stay sitting or does he want to lie on the bed? He agrees to that – I think so they won’t force him to sit any more – and he winces again as they sit him on the bed and spin his legs up. I tell Karen and Moira that I think there’s a pain at the bottom of his back, that the fall he had last week when he sat in an invisible wheelchair might have hurt more than they thought at the time. This theory does not find favour, and they continue asking Dad if he wants a laxative, if he’s in pain, can he tell them where it hurts. “Is it your tummy? Is the pain in your tummy?” Dad says reasonably clearly “It’s my back” “What’s that Jimmy? In your tummy? In your tummy is it?” I say “I think he said it was his back” and the male orderly tells me that the problem is he can’t tell them where the pain is – what’s the point asking him then I wonder. Why keep badgering the poor old sod into agreeing he’s got a sore tummy? “You’re fine Jimmy, don’t worry, you’re fine”. They keep telling him he’s fine.

They leave and Ellie and I turn the lights down and I tuck Dad in. He passes out or drops off or something with his eyelids only half shut and I see his eyes rolling from side to side – as if he’s reading something, as if he’s following the progress of a typewriter barrel as it moves as the words appear. His breath rattles and he looks like he did the week before, tiny, wafer paper skinned, flesh rippling away from his skull and the bones of the skull almost visible though the thin covering of his grey skin. I don’t want to wake him, I don’t want Ellie to see him like this and there’s only so long a 2 and a half year old will whisper and sit nicely for but I don’t want to leave. I excuse it by telling myself that I don’t want to see anyone if I’m ill but I know that’s a sop to my conscience because I know he’d rather I stayed. But I don’t, I leave. I kiss him on the cheek and stroke his face and promise to come back. His eyes filled at my touch – it’s uncharacteristic of me to be gentle and tender. I always want to, I want to hold his hand when he struggles to find a word, I want to give him a cuddle, but I can’t, I just can’t.

I pass Rebecca’s room on the way out and notice her memory box. There’s a photo of her smiling out and another older picture of her ballroom dancing with her husband. I hear Robert inside thanking someone for bringing him a glass of water. I wonder how long he’s been there. I’m sure he’s able to hold his Mum’s hand, to give her warmth, give her love.

I see Karen in the office by the door. She says she’ll call me in the afternoon once the doctor’s been. She does phone, the doctor says he is constipated and prescribes something to get him moving. I ask if they checked out his back after the fall. No, the doctor was sure he was constipated. I’m sure he is – months of eating chicken and leak pie and mash will do that to the most study of digestive systems and Dad was prone to getting ‘bunged up’ as he called it – and told me of with a relentless regularity so lamentably lacking is his bowels. It seems to be an old person thing – talking about your bowels to anyone who will listen. It’s not that they talk about them that bothers me – it’s the fact that they expect me to be interested.

So anyway, he’s been given stuff to shift ‘the problem’ and his back is still not looked at. I looked up the pain killers they’ve been giving him when he complains of back pain – one of it’s major side effects is constipation.