Hospital Week

With three hospital appointments for Jon's Dad in the last week, we always knew it was going to be stressful. It was.

We've done next to no home ed work and next to no business work and poor Emily's been largely left to fend for herself. Let's call it her feral child week. Raises eyebrows. We didn't even get time to celebrate Litha on the 1st August, which is a little upsetting, but we'll try to fit something in next week, albeit very late.

First appointment this week was for a heart scan, which has to be the fastest appointment in the history of the world ever, in that we were in and out before the half hour free parking elapsed. Needless to say, the rest of the week made up for this little oasis of joy. The following appointment was for the diabetic clinic, yet again, where we spent a solid three hours waiting for the appointment and a further 40 minutes in with the actual doctor. He was a lovely man and tried his best to sort Grandad out, but Grandad, needless to say, doesn't want to do what he was told to do. So that was a productive use of everyone's time.

Then yesterday I got up at 4.30 am to get Grandad up at 4.45 am to leave the house at 6am for an 8am admission in Hull Castle Hospital for angioplasty. No, we're not that far from Hull, but he wanted to go at that time. We were there by 7am. We then spent the next three hours sat in their waiting room because they didn't have a bed. Finally he got a bed at just gone 10 and I came home again. I'd been home for a whole half hour when the phone rang. Grandad needed picking up again immediately, because his blood test from that morning had shown a kidney problem, so he wasn't going to have the angioplasty after all. By the time that was all sorted out, well bye bye Friday. Grandad is, understandably enough, very peed off, and so are we, probably for entirely different reasons.

I'm at a loss to explain how come the diabetic clinic hadn't picked up this kidney problem from the blood tests they perused earlier in the week. That is kind of their job, after all. I'm also at a loss to explain how it was only a month or two again that we were back and forwards to the kidney clinic at the hospital, who pronounced everything absolutely fine. Whatever. Anyway, Grandad has to go to the GP again next week to get tablets for his kidneys (nobody seems to be telling us exactly what the problem is, so that will be fun) and then he'll get another appointment in a few weeks' time to repeat the Hull hospital saga.

The one bright point of the week was that we did get to see our Polish friends who came over on Thursday afternoon; Emily was very happy to see Kate again. Oh, and our caterpillars arrived from Insect Lore too, and are now huge. Four separate deadlines on Monday mean this weekend is yet another round of manic typing on my part, which hasn't improved my mood one jot. Jon put Emily's paddling pool up today and she's spent nearly all day in it, although punctuated with rather too many hysterical screams when a bee or wasp ventured near. Thought she'd grown out of that. Apparently not, although I can't help thinking that the lack of attention she's had from us recently, due to circumstances, isn't helping. So add that to my list of woes/grievances/complaints/moans/irritations.

Next week Emily has an all day birthday party to go to at her friend Kayleigh's house, and on Friday we'll be picking up our new kittens, so I'm fervently hoping for a better week than this one. Just call me Mrs Fed Up from Lincolnshire. ---grump---