14th January 2008 - Novovirus 2

I went to see him yesterday. Ellie had been very sick on the Friday night - the day I'd been in to see him. We'd had plans for the Saturday and Sunday but they'd all unraveled as she needed to be kept away from other people and to be coddled a bit.

When I went it I was met by big signs alerting visitors to infection control measured being in place, and my hands were duly squirted with antibacterial wash. The day room was virtually empty. Each of the residents that had been ill and who could be kept quarantined, was. Some of them it's impossible to quarantine because they wander and short of locking them in their rooms, which is distressing for them, or restraining them, which is illegal, or sedating them, which is ineffective in the case of projectile vomiting and diarrhea, there's nothing that can be done. Ina - who was one of the worst affected - was wandering but she was over the worst of it.

Dad was very grumpy. He'd been unaffected by the virus because he'd been in bed after his turn when the chaos was happening. He didn't know who I was - even after I called him Dad there was no recognition in his face. He was irritated by me sitting beside him looking at him and got up to go. I asked him where he was going "to the Cemetery" he replied. He wandered off towards a member of staff, with me trailing along behind trying to get him to come and sit down. She persuaded him I was a visitor for him, his daughter, and although he didn't seem convinced he came and sat beside me. When I spoke he looked beside me, making eye contact with an invisible someone and nodding at there conversationm unresponsive to mine. I brought a newspaper, made him a cup of tea and started to tell him about the football of the previous day. He lifted one of the lighter supplements and tried to drink it. He wouldn't be told that it was a newspaper, that his tea was beside him on the table. His face was blackening with newsprint. I took the paper away and lifted the mug into his hand - but as he didn't seem to have any notion that it contained liquid that he was about to spill in his lap I tried to take it away again. He wouldn't give it up but he wouldn't hold it straight. Impasse. I went to get one of those table that you can push under a chair - they are often used to pen someone into their chair if they are likely to get up but shouldn't. I pushed it in and his arm down to rest the cup.

He fell asleep tired of me and my strange tea ceremony. I left. Later that night I started to feel a little unwell. Much later I was crouched, holding my hair out of the way in one hand and cuddling the porcelain with the other. Much later I was lying on the bathroom floor, too tired and drained to move, my ribs aching from the force of wretching, my throat sore and the prospect of diaorrhea to come looming large in my mind. I snuggled under the bath mat and thought of those poor souls in the home who must have felt like this, but without the knowledge of what was happening, without the comfort of knowing it wouldn't last for ever. And my wee girl, she must have felt her stomach cramping like this. Wee scone. I lay and hoped that Mark didn't get it - or Sean. So I got up and started disinfecting every surface I might have touched - in between doubling up and retching that is.


God I hate being ill. What's the point of being off sick from your work if you actually are sick? It sucks. You can't even cheer yourself up with a jam doughnut or a theraputic bacon roll. I could never have been bulimic. I really hate being sick. It's raining, Ellie's off too so I'm stuck in CBeebies hell without the lifeline of tea and biscuits. Woe. In the Night Garden is on. It's one of my least favourite. I eventually warmed to the Teletubies, but Igglypiggle, Maccapacca and the gang really really get on my tits. Woe woe woe.