Day 7: All quiet on the weekend front

Saturdays and Sundays are bizarrely quiet at the hospital. There are no physios exercising patients, no OTs showing them how to make a cup of tea, no consultants doing rounds, no admin staff with files. It's empty and calm.

As stated previously, there are so many uniforms in the hosptial it's difficult to know what their status is, what their role is. It might mean I end up asking a student nurse a complicated technical question, or a senior nurse for a glass of water. The hospital even has a leaflet to help you distinguish the uniforms!

I would say that 90% of the nurses here are from Africa. The NHS must be blitzing African nations to send over their English speakers and learn the joy of being an NHS nurse. Most are ladies, very tall and very strong. And it's not just one country in Africa, but all over the continent: South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone... Unfortunately my dad can hold some very outdated views on other races - something which I reckon is typical of his generation. The nurses in their turn have a tough job and a tight schedule to adhere to. It means that there can be some misunderstandings.

My dad's appetite has been appalling since the stroke. Every morning we fill in a form for the next day and there's a fair amount of choice. As a Muslim, he can also choose a special Halal curry if he likes which is very tasty. Otherwise, it's solid English/Western fare: pie and mash, fish and chips, goulash and rice, sandwiches. This lunchtime was a bit of an exception - I'd chosen Thai red chicken curry for him. He declared it "the worst meal since I've been here", but I still bullied him into eating it all.

After lunch he pointed at patient Q's bed. Next week, Patient Q is scheduled to be discharged. "When he goes, I want that bed," said dad in some superstitious feeling it would hasten his own recovery.

My mother has been giving acupuncture sessions for some time now. If I visit later in the day I could find dad with a row of needles along his arm, or at strategic points on his face. Or a bizarre vision of neat square rows on his head like some Clive Barker pinhead horror movie. But the immediate effects are quite amazing. When the needles are removed, he'll be able to lift his left arm and leg a lot higher than before. Or squeeze his hand a couple more centimetres than before. These shortterm gains last for about an hour. Encouraging to see nevertheless, and who knows what the longterm gains are?

BTW, almost forgot to mention. As it can be a struggle for patients to go to the toilet, they usually use a large plastic bottle for urinating. So far, I'd managed to get somebody to help out other than myself, but in the evening I was by myself with dad and not a nurse was to be seen so I had to help out! We were both embarrassed by it all. Later my dad would tell my brother that if it wasn't for the fact that I was already married he would never have asked me to help out - seen one, seen them all quite frankly!