a day of three

what an up and down day. It started with a very disturbed-sounding Dad on the phone (via his over-the-bed-pull-down tv/phone/internet thing) telling me he'd been in pain all night and his urostomy bag was leaking everywhere and he couldn't get a nurse to sort it or to get him cleaned up and dry despite asking for hours. We got to the hospital and after making polite-but-firm enquiries as to why he'd been like this all morning and stressing our fear of it causing infected pressure sores he eventually got seen to by one of his stoma nurses and by late afternoon he was sitting dry again and freshly washed and dressed. Whilst we were there I got a text off ladySp33d with a picture of littleA just about to go picking strawberries. Dad was too uncomfortable to show it to him then, so I made the executive decision to show it to him later.

Middle of the afternoon we left the hospital to get Dad some fresh clothes from his bag at the hotel and a couple of not-easily-confused-with-the-hospital-variety plastic bowls so he could have some shredded wheat on demand whenever the milk-laden drinks trolley came round, instead of going hungry if he was asleep when breakfast or lunch arrived.

Late afternoon Mum told me she was tired so I took her back to our room for a rest. I stayed with her for an hour, doing my best to reassure her that Dad will be ok soon, then after twenty-or-so minutes staring at my shoes I packed bags ready for our checkout tomorrow and we dashed back for evening visiting and...

... BOOM! The change in Dad was remarkable! He'd got up, walked to the end of the A55 corridor and back, was talking about operation-related stuff, the pain had gone and he was even eating some of his tea, And best bit of all was the smile he beamed when he saw the photo of his little granddaughter.

Go Dad.