Day 3: At close quarters

Having spoken to my mum, the events of Saturday night / Sunday morning were filled in. My parents are divorced but live in the same flat. At around 1 or 2 a.m., my mum happened to be still awake. She could hear banging from my dad's room and on investigation, found my dad semi-out of bed, stuck there, paralysed on his left side. He'd been banging with his right hand in the hope of getting her attention. Thank God she had been awake. It took a bit of time to get through to the ambulance services, but once contacted, they came like lightning and dad was taken to accident & emergency where all kinds of tests were done on him and he was diagnosed with having suffered a stroke...

On day 3, I had my first chance to visit my dad as a proper visitor (i.e. not an emotional wreck). My mother and I marched straight to his bay to find... an empty, tidy bed. My stomach wobbled thinking the worst and frantically found a nurse to ask where dad was. "Oh, he's been moved next door I think." Well, he had been moved but to two bays down. In fact he was the first patient you could see when you entered the ward and I had indeed seen a very shrunken figure out of the corner of my eye. I hadn't realised it was actually dad - I'd walked straight past him.

"Where have you been?" He was panicky. He was moved but nobody had told him why. We think it was because his condition had stabilised so he did not need to be in the 'intensive' bay.

We helped feed him his lunch. He didn't eat much and drank even less. Stroke victims often have difficulty swallowing. Everytime he drank water, he would cough, sometimes very harshly. It's scary. The flip side of drinking liquids is the wee-wee aspect. He'd been given a nappy to wear, but in fact he could control his bladder. He had to use a long-necked plastic bottle to pee, and needed help to do this. So a combination of fear of choking and embarrassment in urinating meant he refused to drink much no matter how much we nagged him.

My dad is a keen photographer so I'd brought in his camera for him to play with. I took a picture of him as a record. He didn't look as pale as before, but still droopy on the left hand side. When he saw the picture, he wagged his finger at it and said, "I hate you!"

I left for lunch and on my return, found him very pleased with himself. Two physiotherapists had taken him for a 'walk' around the ward. I'd missed it! After that, he was very snoozy and dozed on his seat in a rather lopsided position.

It felt good for me to be actually doing something, even if it was just sitting beside him.