Friday 7th December - Where did the week go?

Dear Reader,

I am living in a demented time machine, where the minutes flash past like seconds; a day lasts barely an hour, and a week is over in the space of an afternoon.

The alarm goes, and minutes later it is time for bed again.

There has been frost, rain, sleet, and, briefly, snow; real snow, the big fluffy-flake sort of snow. looking at the weather forecast, and looking out of the window, there is to be more snow today. I believe them.

 

 

The camera on my phone does its best, but cannot convey the way that the mass of clouds is growing even as I watch. I'm glad that today is a "local" day - usually I wend my way through the maze of country lanes that connects the village schools where I teach.

 

There have been school concerts - three of them - where the children have displayed their skills on ukuleles, djembes, and stunned the school and parents into a shocked silence at samba (that was a VERY LOUD concert!).

 

There have been music exams for my piano pupils. There has even been a little tiny bit of Christmas shopping; I went back the the Place of the Cornish Pasty and scoured the gift shop for likely presents.

 

There was a trip to the Portsmouth Naval Dockyard for their Victorian Christmas Day. That was Sunday; a bitingly cold day with clear blue skies.

 

  

 

Today, I will be accompanying fifteen children at instrumental music exams. Then home to teach, then off to a choir practise, then sleeeeeeepppp.

 

My mother has been moved into another bay in the stroke unit. Medically, she is ready for transfer to a nearby hospital where they have a rehab centre. However, she is experiencing such pain in her left shoulder and left leg, that they cannot give her the physiotherapy that she needs to get mobile again. It is clear that one cannot predict the recovery path of stroke patients. It is not at all like - say - cataract operations, or broken legs, or many other conditions.

Her left arm is clamped across her chest, the fingers curled into her palm, and resists any attempt to be moved. When I tried imitating this, I found that my shoulder immediately became painful - could this be what she is feeling? How does one go about releasing this tension? They are going to give her botox!

At least she is now well enough to be bored. This is a great improvement!     

Wednesday 28th November - half an hour of breathing

On Wednesday I somehow managed to create a gap between schools that was long enough to chill out in a warm and welcoming venue:

I had an excellent hot cornish pasty, and a pot of Proper Tea made with a posh "teapig" teabag instead of the usual cheapo economy job. The cornish pasty got "et" before I could photograph it.

The cafe was bustling in a low-key, cheerful way, and the gift shop area full of good ideas which I shall follow up for Christmas shopping next week, when I will hopefully be able to return.

Outside it was WINTER. The sun was just about shining;

 but there was a cold, bracing breeze, determined clouds and dripping icy rain.

My mother had a bit of a reverse this week; forward progress was put on hold. Who would have thought that stroke patients would be in such pain? Her "disregarded" leg seems very prone to severe cramp; and I have often spent time in visits working away at it to try and relax the spasm. Who can do this for her when I am not there? However, as this post has been written at the weekend, I can report that things have improved since then. 

Tuesday 27th November - Staying in touch/losing contact

This has been a month of intense communications.

My parents have a wide circle of friends dating back from school, university, and "bachelor pad" days. Somehow, all these close friends have become extra aunts and uncles; collectively known as "the little family". They all turn up to every wedding, every christening, every silver and ruby wedding anniversary party. They are all godparents to each other's children.

So, I have grown up knowing them all, but not really knowing them well. Now, with my mother in hospital, I have been in touch with so many of them on a somehow more personal, more adult level.

I find myself emailing or writing letters to people I have never met, only heard about. I makes lists, keep a diary record of who rang when, who needs to be written to or rung back. This is not a burden or a weary duty, as I feel as though I am accumulating a treasure hoard of people who love and care for my family! The contact with all these caring, concerned people makes me feel loved and cared for as well.

I suppose it helps that the news is, after the first major shock, on the whole, good. "She's making steady progress, it will be a long haul, your card arrived yesterday and she loved the picture, that you so much for your news".

With all this going on, it is slightly harder to carve out time for meeting up with my own friends. I've bailed out of going to church for two Sundays in a row - last Sunday I needed the time to sleep and do domestic stuff - this Sunday, my family have decreed that we are abandoning the current reality to spend the day at a big Victorian Christmas Market/Event in another city.

I had a birthday letter from a friend, full of great news about her family, and made a "thank-you and catch-up" telephone to another friend which was overdue by several months. I've several "we must get together for a coffee sometime" dates to book in...

For now, I need to put my socks on, brush my teeth and hair and get to work. Ukuleles, samba and djembe classes await me - at least, decibellically speaking, it will be a fairly gentle start!     

Monday 26th November - Surprise!

Today has been very surprising!

1  The bridge over the River Arun was NOT flooded! That was a nice surprise - I felt quite apprehensive as I drove towards it this afternoon. I had taken the precaution of checking the tide tables, as

heavy rain + high winds + high tide = moments of terror as you swim your car across the bridge


2  There was a splendid chocolate cake on the front door step complete with birthday candle (rather squished into the cake by the lid, but still light-able. I had made myself a lemon drizzle cake yesterday on the assumption that if I didn't make myself a cake, there might not be one! Thank you, ministering angel!

3  After we had eaten our supper, I was presented with the cake stand (which we won in a raffle at the hospital on Saturday afternoon and caused considerable confusion for my mother, as she thought that the cardboard box it came looked like a pizza delivery box) full of lavishly iced chocolate cupcakes, decorated with the letters to make H A P P Y    B I R T H D A Y. So, far from having NO birthday cake, I ended up with three birthday cakes!



4  There was a bouquet of roses from my husband, waiting for me when we got back from visiting my mother in hospital. We eat supper when we get back - very late, about 9pm, so I wasn't paying much attention and never even noticed the flowers.

 

The card on top of the clock was written by my mother; if you have been following this blog, you will know that she had a major stroke on 30th October, so for her to have written a birthday message is something really, really special.

 

 

5  And there were presents as well! I LOVE the television play "The Flint Street Nativity" and lost my copy of the DVD several years ago - must have lent it to someone. It is "required watching" every Christmas - just need to make sure I have a box of tissues ready for the bit where the little boy (Stephen Tompkinson) can't bear to say his lines...

I look forward to having the time to get knitting something with the lovely yarns; until then I'll just cuddle them.

The One Word for today will be Surprise! in big curly letters.

 

 

I thought "I'll just log in and get this post written" and guess what! Even Google knows it's my birthday (that's a bit creepy, actually). Here's "my birthday GoogleDoodle":

 

 



 

 

I'm very glad today ended on such a cheerful note for me; we visited my mother today, and every day she gets to be more like herself. Which includes the good AND the not-so-good. Today, like yesterday, she was rather "down", but in the way that anyone stuck in hospital, feeling out-of-sorts, faced with depressingly adequate institutional food, unable to fettle for oneself, struggling with  tedium, would feel down. It would be lovely to report that she is in fine form, and great spirits, full of vim and vigour, but that's not the reality of her situation, let alone facing the consequences of a major stroke. Of course there are going to be "down" days. That has to be a part of returning to normal. It would be more scary if she wasn't affected by her situation!

 

Having said all that, it is still hard to see her stuck in hospital and not be able to wave a magic wand. However, my lovely family has managed to wave a magic wand for me. Abracadaba!

Sunday 25th November - The Dreamtime

The Persistence of Memory
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD

The other night something woke me briefly, and I found myself in the middle of a series of  events involving running away, fighting, rescuing, chasing, winning, losing - what? I have no idea. There was some kind of arena with a tall, arched colonnade. The place was brown - brown stone columns, brown ground, brown sky. I felt as though I was stuck in an episode of Star Trek.

Eventually I managed to persuade myself that I was awake, and this was a dream, and escape back into my bed, my duvet, my bedroom. I was able to force the brown landscape to leave me, and think in technicolour again.

We visited my mother yesterday; she was deeply asleep, so we went away and came back 20 minutes later. She was waking, confused, and cross with my father for standing in the middle of the ward shouting all night, and sleeping in another patient's bed, and hanging his jacket on the back of a chair. She was very angry with him for behaving so badly, upsetting the other patients, causing so much trouble. "You should behave yourself, and be more supportive".

This is her normal state on waking, and it is deeply distressing for my father to get all this thrown at him in a continuous angry rant.

I think that these are dreams and nightmares that have made their way into her real world. Once she gets stuck in this frame of mind she gets increasingly upset and fearful. To begin with, when I assured her that my father had been at home all night, and never come near the hospital, her reaction was to accuse me of thinking that she was going mad. This frightens her more; but eventually, as I talked to her, she began to consider the possibility that she wasn't mad and it might be a dream.

Once she has properly woken up (we have found that it is a really helpful if the nurses come and rearrange her pillows and generally shuffle her about) everything is OK again; the dream-state mother recedes and the real, lively, intelligent, sharp-witted, amusing mother emerges.

She has started "playing" (her word) with her fingers and toes, wriggling and flexing her good foot, straightening out her fingers (even though it is clearly painful), using her good leg to make her bad leg bend and stretch. This is the real person, now taking her recovery into her own hands, literally.

I swear, I swear, I truly swear that I saw, we all saw, that she wriggled the toes of her left foot. The nurse warned me that this might just be a "reflex reaction"; whatever it is, it is SOMETHING!     

Sunday 25th November - Looking to the Skies

I realise that I take what I see in the skies as my hope, inspiration, meditation for the day.

The patterns of clouds, the colours, delicate shadings and gradations of hue all speak to me in some way, as I travel hither and thither through the week. I'd like to take more pictures of skyscapes, but I'm always busy, busy, busy and can't stop now.

On Thursday, the colour of the sky was the palest, most beautiful blue. The clouds arranged themselves in gentle billows, as though in a watercolour painting; careful shadings of dove grey shaded with pink stroked into a wet wash, the colours blending with utmost subtlety. I taught in two schools that day, one in the morning, one a good 45 minutes drive away in the afternoon. The lessons were bustling, active, with lots achieved in each session; djembe, and a year 5 and 6 class lesson on the intricacies of sonata form in the morning, ukulele and recorders in the afternoon. Then home through a golden dusk for piano teaching. A good day.

On Friday my daughter commented on the sky; a clean pale, slightly greenish blue topped by a knife edge layer of clouds as a weather front travelled across at high level. The beauty of the colours lifted my spirits as I braced myself for a long, hard day; exam rehearsals, recorders, samba, theory and piano lessons from 9:45 am until 6pm.

Yesterday was rain, rain, rain. Dark grey washed into pale grey washed into mid grey. The rain, and the clouds were persistent, but still not a uniform colour or texture.

Even the worst of the weather seems to come from a beautiful, subtle skyscape.