Day 42 - New Year, New Start

So, 2005 ended and frankly cleo and I, not surprisingly, were happy to see it finished. This year had started out well for us, getting our new house, and being financially stable after some real struggles over the last few years during my divorce, we were starting to make plans for the next few years.

We ought not to wallow in self-pity but the question we ask each other now is "why us?". The answer to that we don't know, but it just doesn't seem fair somehow. We had waited so many years to meet each other and finally found complete happiness in our lives, and suddenly this bolt from the blue, as unexpected as it was frightening has turned our world upside down. All those plans must now be either changed or shelved for the moment.

I have to admit that at midnight last night, as the chimes from Big Ben rang out from the TV cleo and I stood and held each other, in tears. We will of course make the best of what we have, and I know that cleo will harness that driving force that is so much an integral part of her to make the best possible recovery, but even so, this year will not be what we had envisaged some 6 weeks ago.

The girls had stayed at their dad's last night, and so cleo and I woke to a quiet house this morning, which gave us time to get up, get cleo downstairs, and into the shower. It's so funny, that the simplest things we don't even think about become problematic right now, because cleo needs assistance to move: simply getting in and out of the bath takes several minutes. We think nothing of stepping into a bath, but for cleo right now it's a major obstacle, like many other things which we take for granted.

Another odd observation: since the stroke cleo, who is normally vegetarian, has been wanting to eat meat, particularly bacon, and sausages! So, breakfast this morning was bacon sandwiches. Maybe her body is telling her she needs the proteins in the meat, or maybe the stroke has affected her in more subtle ways that mean her choice to be vegetarian, taken some several years ago, is no longer valid for her? Who knows.

Another milestone this evening for us, as a family is that I have to work (I work in London, and do night shifts) so responsibility for cleo's welfare is with her daughters. They will manage fine I am sure, and they know that should they need me I am at the end of a phone at all times. We also took the decision that when I am at work cleo will not climb the stairs, but will sleep in the lounge on the sofa bed, and tonight, as it's their first time without me there, Hannah has said she will sleep with her mum on the sofa bed.

It might be a good time here, at the start of this year, to pay tribute to the care and commitment of the staff at the hospital who have looked after cleo for the last 6 weeks. I have mentioned several times that they suffer from lack of resource both in terms of money for the most basic medical needs, and of staffing levels that frankly are appalling. In the ward where cleo was treated there were some 31 patients, all of whom were suffering from strokes. Every one of those people is dependent to a lesser or greater extent on the staff to get them up, feed them, dress them, wash them, and do all those things which they cannot. Mornings in the ward are manic, with all that happening, and sometimes there are only six or seven staff there.

The salaries paid to the nursing staff are not that good of course, and finding staff who actually want to work in that environment is not easy: even the "bank" and agency nurses are not always available. These people devote their working day to ensuring that those who need it are given the best quality of care that is possible, under the most trying of circumstances. While we might moan about it, if you analyse what the staff have to do, one wonders how they ever manage.

It's only anecdotal but as an example, we heard a couple of weeks ago that the hydrotherapy pool at the hospital had been closed. The reason? There was no money to pay for the chlorine to go in the pool. Now, I ask this question: How can a physiotherapy department that relies on hydrotherapy for much of its treatment of orthpaedic patients, among others manage without such a basic tool as this, and for the cost of some chemicals to add to the water? Maybe there are just too many administrators: walk round the hospital during the day and you see any number of people that are obviously not medical staff walking round with clipboards, papers and files. Maybe those high level hospital administrators should consider whether they really need their inflated salaries and bonuses? I bet one administrator salary would pay for that chlorine? I also wonder just how many of those people would be prepared to deal with the crap (literally!) that nursing and auxilliary staff have to in the middle of the night? Not many I bet?

Political rant over for now.

So, cleo and I enter 2006 with high hopes for her recovery, and while we are under no illusion that any of it will be easy, we will work together, as a team, and in conjunction with the carers from the hospital and other agencies to get the best from what there is.