On Thursday
I got to say the following line: “don’t worry, she will be fine, but your mom
is in hospital”.
This was
after an interesting day in emergency. Early in the morning Cindy fainted in
the bathroom, twice, and hit her head pretty badly (also twice) on things like
the bath-tub and the toilet. I was the only one besides her at home, so she
called out to me, and I got her some clothes, bags of ice and we drove off to
the hospital. There was a hole in her
eyebrow and it looked like she had smashed all her front teeth (which were fake
as she kept saying). Because she had been in the shower, she started out
relatively clean, but by the time we got to the hospital her face was so
covered in blood that the emergency people took one look at her and immediately
started getting personnel and wheelchairs and beds lined up for her.
An endless
line-up of nurses, doctors-in-training, radiologists, blood-takers, real
doctors and even someone from administration ("can you please sign this form?")
came by and all asked what had happened and had she been in hospital before. I have been to
doctors/hospitals/emergencies with several friends and acquaintances over the
years, and it is always stunning how much medical history everyone has. And
perhaps slightly embarrassing, I just happened to be the only one to help her
and stay with her, and now I know of all illnesses in her whole family, although
I don’t think she minded me hearing all of that.
Over the
course of the whole morning they found out that she had fractured the bone in
which the upper teeth reside. It’s interesting to consider what bones you have
and that you can break every one of them, and that the hospital has seen it all
and has a solution. Lots of metal pieces holding it all together in this case
until it will be healed in several months…
The whole
reason for the fainting was probably a too hot bath after having had some sort
of food poisoning. Cindy is more or less the toughest woman I have ever met,
and although she told me she is also very accident prone – which I also
understood from her medical record – she took it all with a blood smeared
smile.
The thing
was that her daughter was arriving in the evening and she was supposed to pick
her up from the airport, but now she had to stay overnight in the hospital with
a hefty dose of morphine. Naturally I said I would pick up the daughter. But
Cindy did not want to tell her over the phone that she was in the hospital, so
that as soon as the girl was in the car and asked “so why isn’t my mum here” I
had to explain… I had practiced all the way to the airport, and she later told
me that I did well in delivering the not-so-good message. I guess it was
relatively easy, it would have been much harder if Cindy was not going to be
well after all.
So we drove
to the hospital, picked up some milkshakes because Cindy was now on a liquid
diet, spent some time with her. Her best friend was also there and Joel called
and everybody was laughing so it was a good end to a hectic day. But when we
finally got home I was pretty exhausted and once again started considering how
many things can go wrong in your every day normal life and how easy it is to
hurt or kill yourself unintentionally and how I could only hope that if
something silly but serious happens to my mum or anyone that is close to me
someone will be there to get them to the hospital.
It also proved that the kiwi- attitude and expression "no worries" is not always appropriate. I said this a few times to her mother who called later, in reply to "thank you for helping", and the old lady kept replying "I'm not worrying right now, I'm just happy you were there to help her".
It also proved that the kiwi- attitude and expression "no worries" is not always appropriate. I said this a few times to her mother who called later, in reply to "thank you for helping", and the old lady kept replying "I'm not worrying right now, I'm just happy you were there to help her".
