Day 6 - Taking Stock.

Question Time

There are times when one needs to keep quiet in this world and times when one needs to speak up.

However, and it took a while for me to accept this, she has been in the hospital for nearly a week, and we are still unsure what was the exact cause of the stroke, and results from all the tests are either inconclusive or not available.

I have decided that while I believe the care being offered is of a high standard in terms of making her comfortable, and stable, I am also less happy that they are not being pro-active enough in their efforts to move the treatment forward.

There does not appear to be a regime in place from the speech therapist.
Cleo’s brother asked a valid and very pertinent question this afternoon, which was “Have they explained to you how you might get your arm moving by suggesting exercises (mental and physical) that you can try while you are here with no visitors, and through the times when visiting is not allowed?”
We were given the name of the “consultant” in charge of her case. Now this may simply be an error on the part of the person who wrote the name, but in England a consultant is always referred to as “Mr So-and-so”, rather than “Dr. So-and-so”. In this case the name we were given was Dr, rather than Mr. On Monday I will find out.

Unless people are told what they need to do, it’s very difficult to know. In a sense this may be three or four days wasted in the recovery and rehabilitation process. Of course, a high percentage of stroke patients (forgive the emotive language here please) are very old, and are perhaps more content to be “maintained” rather than improved, that is not true of my cleo. She is only 50, and has two young daughters who will still be looking to their mum for some years to come. If she were 80 then I can understand, but she is not, and so my course is set as of Monday. Weekends are not the time to begin pushing things forward, so we will let this rest tomorrow, but be prepared for some diplomatic fireworks on Monday.

Today I have spent almost 6 hours visiting cleo, and I have to report that she is in the best possible spirits, allowing of course for the situation in which she finds herself. She was in good form, and seems to have bonded ( I am sure they do this on purpose) with a couple of the nurses there and enjoys some banter with them, which is nice. She is more accepting of the predicament and is laughing and joking too, which makes me happy, because it seems she is contented. Today she ate a better meal, still pureed, but had more than she has been eating of late. I quite enjoy feeding her, because it means we are drawn closer, she is dependant on me rather than anyone else; she looks to me for the next spoonful which is nice. She knows too that I will always provide for her, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

So today was less stressful overall, and cleo was more relaxed too, which makes me more relaxed also. My job now is to act on her behalf, and ensure that the treatment which she needs is moved forward, in the best possible way, for her, and if I have to ruffle a few of those NHS feathers along the way, then so be it.