It is amazing that it is only a couple of weeks since I last updated the Blog. Since then such a lot has happened.
Firstly we have found out what has been a matter with Dad. The results of a CAT scan showed up a growth, which was a tumour and he was admitted to hospital. The hospital rang Mum on the 20th of August to ask them to come in on the Sunday 22nd. He was to go to Southampton hospital which has an excellent reputation for this type of thing. On the Monday Dad had a procedure which sounded like anagram, but wasn’t, and involved putting a dye into his bloodstream so they could track the blood supply through the tumour. The operation was on the next day.
I had gone to Swanage after Jims birthday party on the Saturday, and returned home on the Monday as we were moving the following Friday, and poor Ian was left doing all the packing.
We had been warned that it would be a long time – and it was. The op was to start at 8.30 in the morning, and for the first few hours I was near the phone worried that I might get a call to say that they had started but couldn’t do anything, after 12ish I was quite happy as it meant that they were certainly doing something, and then at 6ish started to get worried as to why I’d not heard anything. I am not sure how much help I was that day.
Dad was out of the op at 8.30, and recognised Mum. He winked at her, and said ‘God Bless’.
On the Weds he was wearing a headband dressing rather than the skull cap that Mum had described, and on the Thursday his dressing had been removed. Straight after the op dad had no bruising and looked like himself, but the bruising later started to come out so did some swelling. This was only to be expected but was a little shocking. Both S & H told me to prepare myself for seeing the ‘staples’ in Dads head, and they were quite right, when I saw him on Sat he had a row of neat little staples holding everything together.
On the Sat Dad recognised me, and recognised Ian too – howevere called him Roger which was a bit of a suprise as Roger was my first proper boyfriend hundreds of years ago.
On Sunday Dad was moved from Southampton to Poole hospital and on Monday mum found him sat in bed reading the headlines from a newspaper. The move to Poole is good for a number of reasons – it is much quicker for Mum to get to and it also demonstrates how pleased they must be with his progress to have moved him.
Thats a very brief account of Dads progress, I have put it in here as the days soon start to merge together and it is interesting to see his progress in the space of a week.
In the meantime Ian and I have been trying to move house. This has been completed with one or two major headaches which fortunately are hopefully behind us now.
We are ‘living’ back at Bridge End. I use that term loosely as we are sleeping in sleeping bags on the bare floor. Luckily my Girl Guide training has prepared me for all eventualities, and we are improvising well. We have the five small dogs and Basil is in Keynsham still. We think the little ones are missing him as they are quite subdued. I wonder if Basil is missing them now he has a family of labradors to play with!
We still need to make some plans as to what we are going to do next – not sure what we will do re caravan / van, but will need to get something sorted as we want to head off south again on Friday.
So that’s it for now – we’re back on this BLOG now as didn’t get on so well with the other one.