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2005-11-12 @ 5:41 p.m. |
Saturday and More About Granny |
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fr. F. dormir to Websters Dictionary 1913
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I am not sure where today has gone but I have not managed to achieve anything. I cannot decide if I drank too much last night (aprox five glasses of white wine), if the house white was off, if it was the curry, the stress of the last week or a combination of all of them but today I feel totally dreadful! I have a headache, aching joints, my stomach is emulating a washing machine on spin cycle, I'm nauseous and dizzy as well as plain exhausted. I never normally have hangovers and often drink more than five glasses of wine (Bad me) so I am blaming the quality of the house white in Brick Lane. It took all the energy I possessed to get the food shopping. The food shopping itself was an epic disaster. We set off in search of the nearest Tesco Extra supposedly 5.5 miles away. This was clearly as the crow flies as the Tesco website had not taken into account the fact that I would have to cross the Thames to get there. After 20 miles, quarter of a tank of wasted petrol and an hour of wasted time. We gave up trying to find it and went to Tesco at Bow. It was full of rude people, very claustrophobic (I was the closest I've been to a panic attack since the Welsh person came to visit in April) and had almost no food. Stopped at Sainsbury's on the way home to buy various necessities Tesco did not have - bread for example. I have decided I am not capable of driving to Kings to visit Granny tonight so I am going with my brother tomorrow afternoon. It looks as if she will be in the hospital for at least a fortnight. They are almost certain they now know why she fell - common or garden dehydration. We all knew she wasn't drinking enough. Hell we've all talked ourselves hoarse telling her to drink more as have the district nurses, carers, doctors etc. What we did not realise was just how little she was drinking; two cups of tea and one glass of diet lemonade a day. Clearly nowhere near enough. She refuses to drink because if she drinks she has to get up to go to the loo more often and getting up hurts. The thing is she is completely sane therefore we can advise her to drink, we can ask her to drink we can put the drink in front of her but we cannot make her drink. The consultant in charge of her care has read her the riot act. She has drink so many glasses of fluid a day. What she does not drink will be made up with IV saline overnight. I do not know what will happen if she continues to refuse to drink, the doctors have made it clear that until she drinks sufficient quantities of liquid not to need IV fluids she cannot go home. She does not want to stay in hospital and she does not want to go into residential care, the only thing she does say is she wants to stay in her own home until the end. We are doing our best to let her do that although it is against all medical advice and our better judgement. The best social services care package in the world with family care and back up cannot provide the quality or the round the clock care that she needs. She is better for the 24/7 care she is receiving in hospital: She is washed properly twice a day as she allows the nurses to wash ehr in a way she would never allow us. Three days of oxygen and enforced diabetic diet is doing wonders for her general wellbeing. It is doing less for her temper as there is noone who is willing to smuggle her in forbidden delicacies. When she's at home the family refuse to purchase her favourite surgary treats but she coaxes the eneighbours and people at church to do it for her. Stuck in the hospital she gets only the right things and is less confused as a result. Part of me wonders if she has stopped drinking because she has had enough. This is of course her right but she has not said that and she has not refused IV fluids. If she said that was what she wanted I'd back her but without a court order and her express wishes how can any of us allow her to die of dehydration in an NHS hospital in what is supposedly the civilised first world. I really really hope I die before I get old.
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