HAVING WORDS...

Mum will have been home a week this Monday, and my sisters and I are all a little concerned about her.

I have often heard folks talk about relatives who have been ill, and say "they seemed to have given up". In fact I saw it with my dear step-mum last year, the fight for life over, an acceptance of what will be will be.
Mum appeared keen to be back home, everything was put in place to help her deal with things. Care-workers come in every morning to help with personal care, they do the shopping once a week and household jobs every two. My sister goes down each evening to make sure she has taken her medication, even though they are in blister pack (day-time- dosage in individual pockets), she never has!!
She is having endless visits from family and friends, yet something is wrong........

My youngest sister called me the other day sounding very concerned. She'd phoned mum, who she found could hardly talk back her mouth was so dry. She drove over to mums in a panic, only to find that she hadn't had a drink since the care-worker had left in the morning, not even poured herself a glass of water.

Whilst at the nursing home the staff showed mum how to use a microwave to heat up her meals and we then provided the same microwave in mums home. When I phone her I ask if she's eaten, she replies, "Yes of course I have". My sister will then inform me that the same amount of frozen meals are still in the freezer, obviously she isn't eating unless someone prepares her meals and serves them to her.

My sisters and I have discussed all these concerns, we are aware that she has been in hospital and then the nursing home for over four months. We have wondered if she has become institutionalised!!!! All her food and drink being provided for her, being told whats happening next, feeling safe day and night knowing someone is checking on her......

Whilst in the nursing home she would always put her lippy on, and with a bit of coaxing would have a game of bingo in the day-room. Since she's been home I have noticed the lack of lippy, and just wanting to constantly sleep on the sofa, no T.V, nothing . Mum was a great reader, 8 books a week from the local library, read and returned each week, with new ones stamped out for the next week of literary enjoyment... Now she reads nothing.

I asked her if she missed the nursing home, she told me she missed the company. This is a ridiculous statement, she is well blessed with visitors and all her four daughters are always on the phone, if not in attendance. In fact my niece has spent everyday with her since she came home, its just the nights she is alone.

I hate to say this but at the moment I seem to be getting really cross and despondent with mum. That sounds awful doesn't it????? You know I love her to bits, yet I feel mum isn't trying hard enough, or making that little bit more of an effort to let us know she whats to improve?

Maybe its this horrendous disease, has it taken a firmer hold on mums mind then we realise? We are waiting for an appointment at the Memory Clinic for her to attend. We have been told scans will be taken to diagnose her condition and we will know then if its the stroke or Alzheimer's. Hopefully, knowledge of her condition will enable us to work together on a long term plan.

Then again maybe I get grumpy with her because I'm so frustrated I can't do more? I'm usually snappy with mum when she's making negative comments, I feel so terrible afterwards. Being sharp with her isn't the answer......

Maybe we are expecting too much too soon, I really don't know...... How I wish there was a 'potion' I could sprinkle over her, then magically the answer would appear...

Math is working this weekend, so tomorrow my youngest sister is bringing mum up to my home for Sunday lunch, she will pick her up later when she is ready to go home.
So I have put into place a cunning plan, so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.
Mum and I will prepare the dinner together, hopefully show her there's no point getting annoyed when you drop potatoes, carrots and the like on the floor and are unable to pick them up..... No worry more about how much weight the dogs will gain eating all the debris that falls to your feet, and be thankful it wasn't a 'knife'.
Laugh together about the unbelievable positions and acrobatic movements you have to perform, to get food from the stove to the table.
I'm not going to publish this post until after tomorrow, when I can see if its physical, or something more that is holding mum back from making more of an effort.

SUNDAY,
Whilst mum was at the nursing home, the social-workers told us she was difficult to access. They said she could be an ace poker-player, its not that she tells fibs, shall we say stretches the truth a little.

I called her bluff today, asking her to tell me the things she is actually doing, and things became a little emotional. I honestly thought today would bring out her maternal instinct, that she wouldn't just sit there, and be waited on, I was wrong.

I phoned Avis, one of my neighbours, to come around and have a sherry with mum whilst I prepared lunch. Avis is 87yrs old, has had both her hips replaced, and is doing really well. I thought that mum would appreciate her company and they had a good long chat sharing their aches and pains. Seeing how Avis had recovered I hoped would inspire mum. The problem is I'm not sure how much she remembered ten minutes after Avis had gone......

There's not a lot more of the afternoon to share with you, except what my younger sister said to me after she had taken mum home. In one short sentence she said "I think mums boat has sailed". I felt that heavy weight in my chest as I recalled my sisters words, and feel bad that I maybe expected too much of mum today.... I hope she remembers I'm here to help hold the mast through her life storms....

FRIDAY FLASH 55,Famous Women

Thank you, my favourite meal, and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.
May I wear my designer dress???
Hush now with your blessings;

This is the price I must pay.
To be reunited again with my love.

He knew not what he did!!!!
Cease your tears, mine was a calculated aim.
We'll embrace in heaven again…….

RUTH ELLIS.
To the living we owe our respect, to the dead we owe nothing but the truth.

Maybe more of the truth should have been given to the jury at Ruth's trial. Yet I believe she wanted to die as a punishment of taking the only man she ever loved life.
I have read through so many of the events that led to the fateful day Ruth pulled that trigger. No mention was made of how this man kicked her until she miscarried with his child.
The mental torment he persisted in drowning her in, stripping her of any self worth and stamping in his supremacy so she understood her lower class cheapness.

No this didn't even raise a whisper at her trail.
I may seem bias on this, maybe I am.
Even in that age, her crime would have been of 'passion' in France, here in England she was only portrait as a scheming evil woman.
I have copied the only notes I could find, that maybe gave a wider view of the actual events surrounding this sad woman's end. I truly would like to hear your opinions, should you wish to explore the facts...

Like all statistics, they serve a purpose of sorts. Like most statistics, they only hint at a deeper, unseen truth, hidden from view behind the dry, formal and dialectic structure of numbers.

"She was 28 years old. Her height was five feet two inches and she weighed 103 pounds. She was well nourished and her body showed evidence of proper care and attention.
She was also very dead with a fracture-dislocation of the spine and a two-inch gap and transverse separation of the spinal cord. Just to make sure, there was also a fracture of both wings of the hyoid and the right wing of the thyroid cartilage. The larynx was also fractured.
She had died of injuries to the central nervous system, consequent to judicial hanging. She was a healthy subject at the time of her death".

So said Doctor Keith Simpson, pathologist of 146 Harley Street and Guy’s Hospital.
He was a reader in forensic medicine at London University, so he would know all about the statistics of death, especially as he had carried out the post-mortem examination on her, just one hour after she had been executed.

He knew nothing of the menage a trios that had brought her to the pathologist table. He could not know that her death would result in two people killing themselves and one dying of a broken heart.
Or of the lawyer, so despairing of his faith in the law and the way it treated her that he would give up his career.

Or the man who travelled half way around the world to escape from the certainty that he was partly to blame for her being here on this cold, metal table.
The small, slight cadaver stretched out before him was all that remained of a true tragedy of British justice. She was a statistic, one that would haunt the conscience of the British judiciary system for the next forty-five years.

Ruth Ellis was the fifteenth, and the last woman hanged in England in the twentieth century. She was also the unluckiest. She did not kill for gain and, had the judge allowed her defence to be put to her jury, they may well have found her guilty only of manslaughter.
She, however, never thought so.
She never doubted in her own mind that she deserved to die for killing the man she loved.
Her death would be the final exclamation mark in a sad and tortured tale.

On that note I would like to wish you all a pleasant weekend.

Friday 55 Flash Fiction is brought to you by G-man (Mr Knowitall). The idea is you write a story in exactly 55 words. If you want to take part pop over and let G-man know when you've posted your 55.

PROGNOSIS!!!!

Yesterday I had an appointment with my consultant/surgeon, and this also included my pre-ops in readiness for my operation on the 10th of September. I suppose up to this point the saying 'ignorance is bliss' held a lot of truth.

Dr Gorgeous had just returned from a holiday in Tuscany, and, if at all possible, he looked even more hunky. Its hard to believe a man this handsome and talented (even gifted), carries an air of genuine concern and is so approachable.
This is so different from when I had my original car accident - when the consultant spoke over you. Then when they could be bothered to tell you what form of torture your body was going to be put through next, they spoke down to you as if you had the IQ of a chimpanzee with dementia. (No slight intended to any chimps out there, as I have met some far more intelligent chimps, than some human-beings I have had to endure).
I really don't want to go into all the ins and outs of yesterday, for fear of sounding sorry for myself, and for putting you off visiting me again with the dramatics of it all. So I will try and explain without posting the next 'War & Peace'.

Dr G explained how he has taken my x-rays, scans and notes around the world, ending finally at the largest seminar held in the States. They had asked for each surgeon to take a complex case with them (Dr G took mine). Apparently mine was the most complex any had ever seen (told you I was famous), and no one knew what procedure should be undertaken to ease my pain and help my mobility.
What Dr G explained to Math and I next was the conclusion they reached in order to help me.

I am to have 3 major operations. He informed me that operation number one is a major. Two is a major, major, then three a major major major.

Op 1. A complex total hip re-surfacing.

Op 2. When this has healed operation two is the removal of all the excess bone growth that has welded its self to my pelvis and femur with a steel rod placed inside my deteriorated femur.

Op 3. Number one will only last 6 to 8yrs, so the third operation will be to give me a complete new hip & pelvis - attaching it to the rod that by then will have strengthened my dodgy femur.

That is the best case scenario.

However the worst case scenario, which I have to be prepared for, is that whilst he is performing procedure number one, some of my femur gives way. If this does happen, I have to be prepared to go through two and three, there and then.

He took Math and I to see my three dimensional scan (followed by all the student doctors and nurses). I hate to say it, but it made me feel physically sick to see the hideous state my body is in. I felt a freak when all the student doctors and nurses made comments to me about the scan, saying they'd never seeing anything like it. My younger sister told me on the phone that I'm not a freak - but unique, bless her, it made me feel a little better.

Anyway here's a coincidence. Whilst I was been rambling on typing my blog the phone rang; it was Dr Gs secretary.

"Hi Queenie, did Dr G say anything to you yesterday about another consultant being with him on the day of your operation".

"No"

"Well, he's not prepared to do your operation without him there."

"Is that in case it goes wrong?"

"I can't say if its for that, only we need to postpone your operation to the 15th of September when the other surgeon can be there to assist him. Is that OK?"

"Well his suntan will have faded a bit more by then, so yes that's fine."

"OK then Queenie, I'll tell him that you said that."

I could hear her laughing as she put the phone down, and I returned to my laptop to finish my post.

So folks that is as brief as I could make it, and I have tried hard not to be too gory about the scans.

I think I was in some sort of shock, so didn't think to take many photos but I did though get a picture of the nurse with me. She is a little sweet Philippine lady (who made me look like a giant), and her name is..... 'Queenie'. I also got a couple of pics of the hospital. Its huge, I swear its half the size of Nottingham.

Hey, its not all bad news though. I ordered my Omlet eglu, run and hens today, so I will be the chucks mama on the 26th August. Then I'll have a couple of weeks to get to know them before I start on my journey....