Tell him we love him

He has just gone in.
I am on a chair just outside.
The nurse promised to hold his hand.

They do it in the theatre
but I expect he will be sedated.
Others coming out have been.

Done. Full sedation.
I am with him in recovery.
He is snoring.

In the waiting area.
They will give him tea and toast.
He is a bit unsteady at the moment.

Everything ok.



Text replies from a hospital waiting room to messages expressing concern. Submitted by Angi Holden.

Blind Man's Bluff

It may be some days before
relatives or nursing staff
stumble onto the fact that the patient
has actually become sightless.

The patient ordinarily does not
volunteer the information
that he has become blind,
but he furthermore misleads
his entourage by behaving
and talking as though he were sighted.

Attention is aroused, however,
when the patient is found to collide
with pieces of furniture, to fall
over objects, and to experience
difficulty in finding his way around.
He may try to walk through a wall
on his way from one room to another.

Suspicion is still further alerted
when he begins to describe people
and objects around him, which,
as a matter of fact, are not there at all.



MacDonald Critchley on Anton�Babinski syndrome, extracted 13 February 2015. Submitted by Howie Good.

What They Don't Tell You

My mum doesn�t know who I am.
Sometimes I�m her sister.
Sometimes I�m her dead mother.
Once I was Shirley Bassey,
which made for an interesting evening.

I�d assumed we�d have lots of time
to get to know each other properly.
I was wrong. Instead of visiting coffee shops,
we ended up visiting the memory clinic.
It�s like going home with a newborn baby,
but with less support and no balloons.

They don�t tell you that she�ll hit you
as you coax her into the bath.
Neither do they tell you what nappies to buy
when she becomes incontinent,
how to persuade her to wear one
or stop her taking it off
and stashing it in a pillow case.

They don�t tell you what to do
when she thinks that the small boy
you pass on your walk is her grandson,
and tries to talk to him. Nobody tells you
how to placate the angry parents.

They don�t tell you that she�s never
going to phone you again, see you get married,
be a grandmother to your kids.
Nobody tells you how to channel the anger
you feel that your fellow thirtysomethings� lives
now involve marriage, mortgages and children,
and yours revolves around a confused old lady
who doesn�t know who you are.
They�ve chosen their responsibilities;
you�d give anything not to have yours.

They don�t tell you that you�ll spend hours
trying to feed her a spoonful of hospital jelly
even though she�s pretty much given up on eating,
because you can�t just watch her starve.

It doesn�t matter how distraught you are
that she�s wasting away before your eyes,
or how much it upsets you to agree
to the doctor�s request for a DNR order;
this disease is relentless .

I�m still not sure how to feel about it
when there�s nothing tangible to mourn.
�Waking grief� someone called it.
When the person you knew is gone, but not gone.
But it�s not. It�s a waking, sleeping,
cloud of despair. But then nobody tells you
how to grieve either, do they?

Especially when there�s no funeral to go to.



From What they don't tell you about dementia by Dawn Vance, The Guardian 28 January 2015. Submitted by Angi Holden.

Ha-Ha

The force of laughing can dislocate jaws,
prompt asthma attacks,
cause headaches, make hernias protrude.

It can provoke cardiac arrhythmia, syncope
or even emphysema (this last,
according to a clinical lecturer in 1892).

Laughter can trigger the rare but possibly grievous
Pilgaard-Dahl and Boerhaave�s syndromes.

There are choking hazards,
such as ingesting food during belly laughs.

We don�t know how much laughter is safe.

There�s probably a U-shaped curve:
laughter is good for you,
but enormous amounts are bad, perhaps.



Taken from Who Says Laughter�s the Best Medicine? in The New York Times, 20 December 2013. Submitted by Howie Good.

Stroke

In case you don�t know me, Hi. Im Diana.
I�m a 30 year old lady.
Itallerthan your average girl,
thinner tha your average girl,
and and active than your average girl.

Yeah I run an ice crea business for a living,
but like to thing
I�m healthier than your average girl too.
No priorn medical history. Nothing.

my first ever ride in an ambulance
was uneventful � the hops;ital
is a 5 minute drive from my folks� house.

By now I had somehow regained some ability to sspeak
and answered the EMT�s incessant questionsining.
still stuumbling over my words,
even laughin at my mstakes.



From Bad Year for Boars, an account by Diana Hardeman about suffering a stroke, written 30 December 2013, a week after the event. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.