Hospital Visits

By Trish Healy.

I am tired and thinking about all the things yet to do at home.

I hope tomorrow the bus is on time……..

The stress starts as soon as I ask myself, “shall I take the bus or take the car?”

The bus may or may not turn up on time.  I have stood so many times cursing then calming down with a deep breath or three.

Although it is faster with the bus lanes it costs an arm and a leg every day. You cannot really buy return tickets as the bus often does not appear as is scheduled after visits and then the next bus is a different number altogether and won’t accept your ticket.

What if I get the driver that nearly throws you out of your seat with his dodgy driving, I remember the man behind me swearing at him after being thrown forward for the umpteenth time, or the cheeky young driver that tells me ‘there is a bell’ if I want to get off the bus? There are of course many polite, lovely and safe drivers too.

Well what about the car then?  Traffic build up, irate drivers, cost of petrol, environmentally unfriendly, no parking to be found and then when I do find a space about 20 minutes later it is at the maternity unit and I need to be at the other end of the hospital.

By now I am cursing and wish I had taken the bus!

The bus usually wins, only due to the amazing people I get to meet at the bus-stop and the stories they tell. Now, at the hospital, I have a short time before the wards will let me in so I have the choice of waiting outside the ward or in the hospital cafe that sells nothing suitable for a vegan. Well fruit, there is always fruit.

The café staff seems tired, looking forward to the end of their shift. I am not allowed to eat my homemade sandwich that suits my dietary requirements but they cannot make me one similar… stress.

It is a long day when visiting from 8.30am to 5pm on chemotherapy day. Once I am finally on the ward I get to my partners bedside and he is asleep. Ah well, I will sit and relax for a little while, don’t want to wake him. “Don’t sit on the bed…..”  Oops, forgot.

Feeling like a school kid now, never would think I had been a ward sister in my time.

I notice the busyness of the ward and note that the people who make you feel best are the domestic and auxiliary staff who just seem to have more time for you.  The trained staff fly about, undertaking medications and admissions, calling doctors and technicians, not at a lot changed since my days.

I have been there a while now and need to use the toilet but, depending on the ward, I have to go down 3 flights of stairs and walk along a long corridor before I get to them. Note to self… do not drink so much when visiting, even if it is a full day.

My thoughts are always with my partner and how he is coping, treatment burns. Unable to speak, I look back at the 8 hours. My head can be full of so many outcomes, I need to cry but there is nowhere to go where I feel safe. Although there is the small hospital chapel, it is nice there, I like the stillness, but I cannot cry and then visit my partner, it would not be fair. It is not about me after all, it is about him.

He smiles when he wakes up and sees me and my thoughts disappear, I smile and love him back.  The visit passes quickly and then we have to say our goodbyes. A nurse has told me I should have left 5 minutes ago.  Off I go to the lifts which sometimes work and sometimes do not, walk the long corridor to sit an hour’s wait at the bus stop because it has not arrived again.

I am tired and thinking about all the things yet to do at home.

I hope tomorrow the bus is on time……..

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