Blue Monday

The bright blue sky and sunshine is always very welcome, especially in November, and I was glad to see it first thing on Monday morning.

I'd missed seeing Dad in hospital on Saturday afternoon when I was in Buckinghamshire, but I was back in Essex in time to visit him with Mum on Sunday. I gave him his new mobile phone which I'd got a sim card for, loaded up with £30 so he could make some calls on it. He's never had a mobile of his own before, but he'd seen some of the other men in his bay being able to make and receive calls to their families on theirs and asked if I could get one for him. I sent off for one that's specially for the hard of hearing and has extra big buttons and an easy to read screen. He's already called my sister, my nephew and us - so far I've taught him how to switch it on and off, and how to look us all up in the phonebook where I've saved the family's names and numbers. Maybe he'll learn how to send a text soon! He looked very tired by the time we left him at 6 p.m. on Sunday, and in fact he was fast asleep when my nephew and his fiancée popped in to see him later on in the evening. Dad phoned me when he woke up to ask if I'd apologise to my nephew because he'd missed them. They'd seen him asleep when they arrived and tiptoed out again after a while rather than wake him - he only knew they'd been because a nurse gave him a message from them.

On Monday Mum asked Dad how he was when we got to the hospital at 2 p.m. "Fed up", he said. It's so hard to keep someone's morale up when there's no definite date for them to come home. Still, he was a bit livelier and awake than he had been on Sunday and his course of antibotics for an infection was thankfully at an end. He even managed, while he was temporarily unhooked from his suction tube, to shuffle to the bathroom and go to the loo unaided, which shows how determined he is to be as active as possible once he's out of hospital. Mum and I ended up staying with him until 6.20 p.m. because he had to go down for an x-ray, which he was kept waiting for in a queue for an hour. At least this time he had company, which he hadn't had on Friday when it also took over an hour for him to be x-rayed. When we got back on the ward, the evening meal had been served to the other patients and Dad was brought a meal he hadn't ordered. He didn't look like he was going to eat any of what he'd been given, so I had to march off and demand that they changed it for the meal he wanted. We got there in the end, and he didn't do too badly as he ate more than half of it which is more than he's been managing for the past week or so. Friends have been right when they've warned me that you have to keep an eye on what the hospital staff are doing (or not doing)....

I'm writing this on Tuesday lunchtime, and Mum and I are just about to leave for this afternoon's visit. I will write more later on in my journal entry for Armistice Day.