Mum’s Opp. (by sarah)

Mum had her oppuration yesturday, they removed the lump from the breast and the lymph nodes undernieth her right arm. When I went to see her she had blue lips and very pale with two drains coming from her breast (this was two tubes full of what looked like just blood ending in what I think of as a plimsol bag). She was also drifting in and out of concousness whilst sitting up with the cup of tea they'd given her to re-hydrate/replace the fluids she'd lost (I'm really not sure this is a good technique as I thought tea was a diarrectic and it contained milk when she was feeling quesy from the drugs and it was hot and I had to keep rescuing it otherwise she'd have tipped it all down herself!).

Apparently she had been bleeding alot and they'd had trouble stopping it, she'd just come off of the oxygen which she would have hated as the masks make her feel closterfobic. They had given her morphine as well for the pain and she really was away with the fearies!

To my suprise there was actually stuff to wash your hands with though it did run out whilst we where there and I was actually really impressed as when one of the woman fell over on route to the toliet three nurses appeared like lightning from the woodwork!

Jean was very quiet and still for most of the time in there, she was fine with mum if a bit subdued but seemed highly concerned about all the other people on the ward. When she started to become fractous I took her out of the ward and instantly had a hell of a fight on my hands as she wanted to go back and got annoyed with me as, 'Nanny ouchy, Nanny stuck, no like, Nanny!' She seemed quiet concerned that we had left nanny behind.

Mum did look very bad when we went to see her - I actually cried a bit when I took Jean outside to the shop that was supposed to be open until 7 but was closed at 5, but Al visited later on and she was fine and coherant by that point.

I was concerned as well to find that mum only had one sexy white stocking on to help prevent clots - they had been unable to find a vein so had had to take the other one off to find one in her leg. I saw the results of their search today and I haven't seen bruising as bad as that since my nan died and her skin had gone paper thin. You could really see that it was bleeding under the skin. (mum normally has to take asperin as a prescription thing but had obviously stopped taking it in the lead up to the opperation but I think that perhapse it hadnt been stopped long enough).

I am a bit perplexed that she had trouble stopping bleeding yesturday and today they've given her Claxan (sp) which is the blood thinner I had during the pregnancy, this is 'just incase' and she had two stockings on today - her feet have also blown up like balloons which worries me quiet alot as she's had history of blood clots in the legs.

Still she seemed almost herself though a bit concerned that one boob seemed to be bigger than the other!

We now have to wait three weeks to find out what sort of cancer it was and wheather chemotherapy is needed. She will start the radiotherapy at about that time just to 'make sure' . She's alot better than we were expecting and they might let her go home tomorrow even though she will still have a drain in.

We are happyish as the main concern for me really was the strain of the opperation and the anasthetic.

Not instilled with confidence (by sarah)

Mum is due for her op today which is why I havent posted this before but she is under the care of the same hospital trust that a) basically killed my uncle (I have not posted about this due to legal reasons which is why I'm not going to mention anything specifically either) and b) mysteriously lost my notes from the pregnancy so that the drs and stuff here knew nothing of the blood thinners or antibiotics I'd been on and stuff things up over me having the emergancy c-section and stuff like that, took my panic alarm away from me and told me I had to walk to get help when the day shift had told me I mustn't get up without help and should use the alarm and so on and so forth. c) gave a diabetic fruit juice for breakfast each day that contained sugar and then wondered why his sugar was all over the place. d)didn't have enough beds for the heart attack victums so put them onto the terminal ward and then wondered why the non terminal patients begian to get depressed and didn't recover too quickly.

These are the people that have mums care in their hands and though the actual breast cancer nurses and doctors actually seem to be trying and are friendly and helpful there has already been an insidend that makes me nervous. Mum went for her pre-op tests and was given a name thing from the files and only realised when she had sat down that it was not her name. She took it back and pointed this out and the had a quick look on the file trolly and the receptionist person (or who ever it was dealing with the files) said they couldn't find it, mum pointed out that she needed the file and they said, 'its not my problem I'm going home' and thats what they did.

This ment that mum could not have the tests done and infact there was a bit of a panic as with out the test results and notes already in that mum could not be emitted for her op. To be fair the Dr was very upset and then hunted down the notes within 3 days which was good of them but this really just doesn't bode to well.

I posted this so late becuase I didnt want mum to read it before she went in for the op.

Attempts to Take a Bath (by sarah)

a) the water appeared to be orange - Alaric assured me that this was just clay particals from the heavey rain and that it was fine so I put lots of my nice bath pearls in to try and convince myself it was going to be a nice bath and that I wasn't sitting in something from a cess pit.

b) just lowered my backside into the water when - wha wah wah nick-nocks oh dear wet oh dear icky yuck wah wah wah. She had been sleeping and everybody else was out so I had mistakenly thought that I could have a bath to get rid of aches and pains and not be in the way.

c) Jean retrieved and de-festified back in the bath this time with her splashing me from the side, I here voices, Barbaras come back. I hurriedly start washing thinking they are bound to want to use the bathroom and I was right.

d) they tell Jean she must be about to enjoy her bath so now she thinks shes getting a bath and objects when I get back in the bath enough to make the bathtime unpleasant - I give up and get out.

With dispair I note that not enough time had actually passed for my nice bath pearls to have dissolved meaning that all their nice oil was wasted :'(

I should have known better really.

Public transport and the State of the World (by sarah)

I been thinking on the whole bus fare thing again and I am again struck by the stupidity of the world - like the restruant waste thing I am just erked I really am.

And you know what the worst bit is? Everyone expects me to have some radical view point on resources and oil when they find out about the degree - good grief I'd have thought that dealing with things like resources should be obvious?

Why are people so governed by mass media? Its driving me nuts. As I'm sure I've said before I think that reguardless of weather we have a significant affect on the climate we should be treating the resources as just that - resources and that means managing them properlly, nothing is infanite in this respect and to waste what we have is just stupidity on the grosses level. At the same time ramming stuff down the general publics throat continuously is not going to work. People are fed up of trying their best and being told - but its not nearly enough - the result? They give up and dont bother with anything.

I am thinking that things really do need to be targeted a level up - the companies, the countries inferstructure etc... The public transport being prohibatively expensive for a start is just pathetic as is the fact that imported food of the type we grow here is cheaper than that from just up the road! What is going on with that one? I mean come on!

Now I like variety - I would hate to see imports go but we don't need to import everything, do we? Why are our farmers commiting suicide? Why do we have very few full time farmers left, its slipping to the realms of hobby and a hard one at that.

I'd have thought that having an island that can not produce even its own food is just a bit dangerous? Maybe I'm pessamistic, maybe I am too hippy-esk for my own good but the whole thing just annoys me.

Sigh - I don't know what the answers are. I know my GCSE Business Studies teacher thought I had a humanitarian approach to running things which came through heavily in my business plans. Happy staff = less theifts etc... but never mind - I'm just babbling in dispair now.

The Nitty Gritty Comb (by sarah)

Jean being at nursery and mixing with other children occassionally comes home with head lice or nits these are little blood sucking insects that live in hair and as I told a panicking mum - they prefer clean hair and just about all children get them. Infact when I was at school you were thought of as dirty if you hadnt had them leading to a strange fashion of scratching your head on a regular basis reguardless.

Now the first time we got some full marks shampoo which worked really well and came with a free nitt comb (this have lots of thick metal teeth that scrape the lice off of the scalp) in fact it worked so well that when Jeans head was itching from a mozzy bite she went and got the box and mimmed putting the shampoo on. But it was expensive and needed to be applied twice over a set period of time inorder to get the eggs once they had hatched but before they themselves could breed so this time when I went to buy some the lady at the pharmacy told me about the nitty gritty comb which has really long metal teeth that tapier to a round point at the end and appear to have a fine archemedes screw type thing going on on each tooth. This reputedly gets rid of the eggs as well as the nitts and is reusable and can be used on every body (this seemed like a good option as me, dad and Al and probably Barbara had already cuaght them!).

It worked fantastically on Jean and Dad and ok on Al but then I tried to use it on me - I have thick, tangle prown, waist length curly hair - I have one word - OUCH!

Not good - I'm sticking to the shampoo! The other thing is that though it has rounded ends I would say that it is a definatly a bit harsher on the scalp. Still its effective 🙂