Mother IX

Shortly before lunchtime yesterday a call came from St Margaret's to tell my sister and I to go there at once. Together with our respective partners we arrived at the Hospital to find mother awake, aware and relatively communicative. Connected in one way or another to a plethora of gadgets; electronic controls for drip feeding saline and blood, automatic blood pressure and pulse rate readers, a pneumatic bedsore preventing mattress and a device that warms air and circulates it under a plastic cover to keep body temperature stable, she appeared nonetheless to be comfortable. A nurse fed her with ice cream, of which she ate a full tub, and tea.
We spent the afternoon taking it in turns to sit by her bed, visit the hospital café and take a little exercise strolling around the hospital car parks (There are five!). As the afternoon dragged on into evening with no obvious deterioration in mother's condition – she was by now sleeping peacefully - we decided to return to Dollar.
Expecting to be summoned back to the hospital at any time we had dinner and turned in for a less than settled night. At nine o'clock this morning – post the doctors' rounds – my sister phoned the hospital and learned that mother had spent a quiet night and that shortly she would be offered breakfast and given a wash. If we hear no more from the hospital this morning we shall go there this afternoon at two-thirty, normal visiting time.
The peaks of this emotional roller-coaster sharpen!