Posts Tagged ‘post hospital life.’
The corner.
We turn the corner onto the long winding road.
At first you see daisies and a small tin shed,
an inconspicuous gravel driveway meanders along side of it
but suddenly everything opens up and the land spreads out
to rolling brown-green hills with large spotted gums
and cows -
the brown kind.
They mill in small groups and some watch you as you breeze past.
Beyond that and a smattering of houses are the mountains.
They stand, like rounded soldiers – still and tall.
Sometimes the clouds sweep so low that they touch the tops.
The windows of the bus are down and the music is turned up.
The sun is warm.
It feels like Spring every time I round that corner.
Even on the stormy days.
It feels like home.
My breathing slows.
I have the small girl in the back – she’s singing Taylor Swift and staring out the window.
She feels it too,
I just know it.
We earned our discharge papers this morning, Ivy happy and well.
All doctors pleased.
A full quota of IV antibiotics on board.
The nurses hugged us both as we walked out of the ward.
Wished us well, told us with sad, knowing eyes;
“hopefully we won’t see you again too soon”.
They always say it
even though we all know that it’s throw away statement.
It’s okay
and it’s not
but it is what it is.
I think they are worth their weight in gold.
They are family to us – the long termers, the repeat offenders, the frequent flyers of this hospital world.
Without them this journey would be different,
colder somehow.
It takes about twenty minutes to drive that road.
The whole trip takes an hour but it’s not until I round the corner that I feel like it’s true;
we are going home
to stay for a while.
When we moved out here, nine years ago, it felt so foreign, so desolate
but now it is like a haven.
A place to recover and regroup
and that road means so many things but mostly that Ivy has turned the corner too.
At least for now.
We both will get there in the end.
We were discharged late, late on Sunday night
after the cannula in Ivy’s foot tissued.
It was kind of a relief, to tell you the truth
and since then we have been moving through the days at lightening speed.
The girl is in school along with Noah
happy yet tired all at once
and everything has gone back to the ordinary routines of daily life.
I’d like to say that I am happy and content (and I am mostly, I am)
but the truth is that hospital admissions and dealing with medical staff drain the life out of me
and I go through, what I have come to think of as, the post hospital blues.
It’s a physical and emotional thing -
you are tired but you can’t sleep
you feel lonely but you crave alone time
you are happy and miserable at the same time
you want to fix everything but at the same time you just want to sit
and yesterday, when a bird flew head first into my sliding door and I thought it dead
and I sat by it on my old verandah begging it to get up
and then cried great salty tears, laced with spent adrenaline
because it was a beautiful little thing,
some kind of honey eater I think -
with dark green feathers all over
except for its tail
which was yellow and had golden flecks through it, if it caught the sun just right
and to die at the hands of something as cumbersome as a door was inconceivably wrong
I knew that the blues had found me for sure.
It’s nothing really, in the grand scheme of all things terrible in this world
but I need to find my feet, brush myself off and find my happy again
before I can be any use to anyone.
I’ve written some posts but my uncertainty in posting them
in case people find them too boring or frivolous
or not what they are looking for
prevents me
and that’s part of this down time post hospital junk too
and so, I might leave it for a while my friends,
if that’s okay with you
until I’m feeling more like myself
but I wanted you to know that the girl is home.
You deserve to know that much because you support me through each illness and admission
and I’m appreciative of that.
She’s safe and happy and that’s more than she’s had for a while
and that makes me happy too.
This is not a recent photo but one of the last times I remember her being smiley
She hates all photos of her with the nasogastric tube in, so they are few and far between at the moment
but, like me, she will get there.
We both will.
This and that.
I’ve been sitting here for a couple of days trying to figure out what to write.
I need to write something (anything) so I can push past the block.
Something witty (okay, I know that doesn’t really happen here)
or funny
or happy.
Anything that strays from the theme of last week.
There are things to write about, good things but I need time to sift through my thoughts,
and put them here.
It’s hard though when the girl is up and down – having slept for most of yesterday in,
what must seem to her,
like a gigantic swimming pool of a (my) bed.
Missing school (again – the truant officer must be ready to make a home visit soon) .
Recovering.
Covers right up under her chin, she slept and slept and slept.
She has the gammy leg thing going on, which is bothering her still
and then she has started having these funny turns too -
where she pales and says she feels weird and shakes and wobbles.
I honestly don’t know what to make of them.
They come on quickly and go just as suddenly.
She woke bright and sunny this morning though
which gives me space to breathe
and think
and roll each thing through my mind,
hoping that something will stick and somehow make sense.
At the moment, I cannot make head nor tail of what is going on in that little body of hers.
Part of me doesn’t want to know
and the other part is hoping the problem will either show itself
or just relax (for goodness sake).
If only I could heed my own advice.
I thought I might put some photos up from this last week because much has happened
a concert or two:
(stealth photos only because of photography rules in the hall – probably one of the naughtier things I’ve done in my life)
That’s Ivy in the front, in the red top (the small one).
Noah, you can’t see, probably because he was too busy trying to chew the balloons off his wrists during the performance but for prosperity’s sake, he was in the row closest to the table.
some happy afternoons:
The teenage boy turned another year older yesterday (“don’t make a big deal of it, okay. No soppy blog posts”)
Now I have three fifteen year old beings in my circle.
Hold me.
He asked for one thing only, which he received
and I think he was happy.
I mean really happy.
I may have lost him and our television to the PlayStation monster
but it’s kind of worth it just to see him smile.
I suppose, this is kind of a strange hybrid post.
A hello, I’m still here post
an update on Ivy post
and a birthday post.
A bit of this and that
and it’s all over the place, I know.
A bit like me at the moment, I think.
Life marches on without you when you are in the hospital
and I feel as though I am constantly playing catch up when we come home.
Post hospital coping is not one of my stronger traits.
Bare with me, okay?