Monday, January 07, 2008

Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?

Karen and I are exhausted. We had to be realistic and give up any thought of visiting Karen’s mum over the weekend or else risk Karen’s health as well. As it was Tom had a bad day on Sunday – possibly a cold of some sort – and wouldn’t have been up to travelling.

Whether Karen’s mum will be understanding about this remains to be seen. I can’t go into too much detail for reasons of family confidentiality but let’s just say she’s a very difficult woman.

I leave it up to the reader to fill in the blanks.

On a brighter side, although Karen’s mum is still unable to talk/eat she has retained the use of her limbs and mental faculties. Karen and I managed to furnish her with a word processor on Friday which frees her from having to point to letters on a sheet of paper in order to communicate with the hospital staff or indeed anyone. I dare say the poor nurses are already ploughing through great epistles and imperial requests of legal complexity as they go about their day to day chores on the ward...

Karen is planning to visit on Tuesday and Fridays – although more frequent visits would be preferable to try and do anymore with a 3 month old baby is just asking for trouble: it’s a 4 hour round car journey there and back. I’m already paranoid about Karen undertaking such regular journeys on her own with Tom as it is and, to be honest, neither the weather nor other drivers improved my confidence during the trips we made on Thursday and Friday last week. But what else can we do? Even if I could get the time off work to go with them we still have to consider Ben – he starts back at school tomorrow. It’s a very messy situation.

We’ll do what we can, when we can. But I mean to see to it that we also take care of ourselves too.

At the end of the day, as cruel and cold as this may sound, my first priority is Karen and the children. For me they come first and everybody else comes second. And that unfortunately includes the ill and the invalided...

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, def look after yourselves - you're no good to anyone otherwise. You sound great, Steve - Karen is very lucky!

You have my every sympathy. I know from bitter experience how difficult it is to deal with/try to help such people at times of crisis when you are worried yourself and nothing you do seems to be the right thing!

I hope things improve quickly.

All the best
Gina

Steve said...

Thanks for the pat on the back Gina, it's much appreciated... though being a man, I can assure you my faults are many and multifarious!

I guess I'm lucky in a way: back to work today which (I never thought I'd say it) has managed to ground me once more and I feel a little more stable about things once more. Nevertheless I'll feel much better about it all once some kind of normality has been imposed on the situation and Karen doesn't have to drag herself down to Slough twice a week...

The Poet Laura-eate said...

I can only concur with Reluctant Blogger. It's necessary to be selfish about health and sanity in this situation in order to have something to give!

The Hitch said...

Hey
I had to commute from London to Manchester when my grandfather got really bad, 3/4 days a week to feed him and take care of other stuff.It has its own rewards (+:
Your MIL sounds tough (Drs are)
best wishes.

The Sagittarian said...

Ditto as above, and the "bright side" (ahem) is that for the moment you're safe from an earbashing!

Steve said...

Laura, right on the nail as always!     :-)

Hi Hitch, I bet your granddad was a pleasure to visit though... unfortuantely the MIL is like a Victorian headmistress (and not in a good way) and spends the entire time hovering on the edge of berating everybody and everything for the slightest perceived wrong or imperfection. She has the mind of a doctor but the soul of an axe murderer...

Hi Amanda, funnily enough I said the same thing to Karen as she left this morning... she can type what she likes on the keyboard but you don't have to read it if it's nasty... the delete key is always in reach...!

-eve- said...

That;s fine... your family SHOULD always come first! :-)

-eve- said...

> I dare say the poor nurses are already ploughing through great epistles and imperial requests of legal complexity as they go about their day to day chores on the ward...

LOL. I like this... very witty! :-)

Daisy said...

steve...that is neither cruel or cold and as a mother myself, i would prefer my child to take care of himself and his responsibilities prior to making a visit to sit by my bedside...that said i have been known to entertain myself when in those situations and not to need the attention of others...you are a father and have responsibilities to your family and your MIL should understand that...really...i'm getting down on her because i do understand for some it is hard to sit by themselves but when you have children they have to come first...that is what being a parent is all about...

Steve said...

Thanks Eve - unfortunately it's very much a case of true words spoken in jest...

Daisy - thank you. I will pass your comments onto Karen too so she can feel more vindicated and less stressed.