A Month in The Country

I did my work out after midnight. Groaning into the burn was a blessed release.
The cottage was sleeping. Bee, fitfully, Jim cautiously. I couldn’t rest. I set the alarm for 5.30.
Watching my daughter hobble, her dropped foot dragging along beside her, is heart breaking. Trying to imagine that everything is ok is a mission. Hearing the old git trying to stifle his pain is a double whammy. I am caught between my rock and her hard space.
Dealing with ones own pain is easy, dealing with somebody elses pain is draining, frustrating and exhausting.
I thank you all for your messages of support.

Yesterday I took the daughter for reflexology, amongst other things. Anything to take our minds off the MRI scan this morning.
It’s an old trick but whenever I need to get up early I draw the time on my forehead, three times. After my forty minute gym session I drew 555 on my head and knew that I would awake 30 minutes before the alarm.
I always have a problem if I have to get up at 6. Drawing 666 on my forehead feels like tempting fate…
I woke up at 4.54. I had enough time to wash, dress and make a ham and tomato baguette for the two invalids. Both have to take pain killers – not a good idea on an empty stomach.
They were downstairs by 6.00. The threat of rain hung over East Sussex. The roads were empty and Pembury Hospital awaited our arrival. They had sent pages of information about parking, there isn’t any due to extensive building works, tattooes, they may get hot under the scanner, jewellery, don’t wear any and music- bring your own.
So the girl took Stevie- Mr.- Wonder who been the back drop to her life for 23 years. He was about to accompany her into a cubicle in Kent, the garden of England.. The very hospital she was born in, the very fete I opened twenty odd years ago when I wore lip liner and had the shiniest hair this side of Bluewater.
23 years ago, when she was seven hours old, a Pembury ambulence drove us down Bunny Lane and deposited us in the new little maternity wing of the local cottage hosopital. Headphones were hung inher crib and Mr. Wonder wlecomed her into the world.
At 6.00 this morning B told us that she was woken in the middle of the night by a graphite grey figure, she thought it was her great, grandmother, who stood in the middle of her room and calmed her down. Bee asked her to leave politley as she was beginning to friek her out. As it turned out B’s pain was less, meaning she would be able to lie in the scanner without twitching and moaning. If my Bubba Sophie did make a visit ta very much, if she had wandered into our room I don’t think I would be alive to tell the tale….
We got to the hospital before anything was open. The car park was empty, the lavatories locked and the MRI room empty. Jim offered to put B on a stretcher that was mortuary cream colour, understandably she declined to recline. Then a chirpy, young radiographer arrived at 6.45. asked B whether she had a pacemaker, a baby or anthing that could be pulled off by the magnets. She was then sent into a cubicle to change into hospital blues. The colour works wonders for my daugher, in fact one of her most successful outings was in hospital greens. She stunned everybody at the fancy dress party, they all thought she was a paramedic and asked her to feel their pulses….
Jim and I wandered through pink painted corridors, looking for a tea machine, as Stevie Wonder and the girl rattled their way through thirty minutes of high radiation manouvering. He found a Fanta and Bee found her footing. As the last bars of ‘Happy Birthday’ played into her ears the drilling stopped. She came out of the room flushed, but fine. Listening to HOTTER THAN JULY was a treat she said she had forgotten quite how good the album was. Now there’s positive for you.
The relief for the three of us was palpable. Back home, then out again to be looked over by our brilliant osteopath. The prognosis is still dodgy. If the swelling doesn’t come down soon enough, her trapped nerve will need to be operated on. A Neuro surgeon is being talked about. Micro surgery and more hospital visits, thank God Steveie has made enough albums to get her through…..
Tomorrow we have a meeting at the fracture clinic at The Kent and Sussex Hospital, to talk througn the MRI’s findings.
It is inconvenient, frightening, all consuming and worst of all out of our control.
The Phillipino nurse told us that with the advent of the internet pictures can be sent speedily and with the least amount of paperwork. I just wish that my daughters back could be dealt with in the same way.
One day at a time. I dearly want to be back at LBC, to get back to some kind of normality, but the old git is off to Prague and I have to hold the fort for one more week. After which, if the child is still in pain, we shall de-camp to London and she’ll stay with me until she is better.
I miss my lovely team, I miss my lovely listeners, but most of all I miss my families health.
Enuff already. Self pitying blogs are wretched. I’m going to make some kind of supper tonight although eating has been a bit tricky for me. In between my blubbing, her squealing, his grunting and the cats kneading, a summer in Moscow would be preferable to a Month in the Country. Turgenev I believe, or should that read turgid, whatever,. Now the thunder has started. I really am living in some kind of Russina Soap Opera. All we need now are some bats – and I don’t mean the willow ones….