Do you want Steak Knives with that?

And the week from hell is drawing to a close.

It amazed me how quickly I adapted to a new routine.  Get up, feed the cats and the fish, go up to the hospital.  Come home, do some of the myriad things that need doing (only some, but still).  Sweep the bird seed off the veranda, feed the birds.  Go back up to the hospital.  Come home, make phone calls, flake.  Wake up, repeat.  Second verse, same as the first:  just a little bit louder and a whole lot worse.

My smaller portion is still doing it tough.  He now has fluid on the lungs to contend with, and is very, very short of breath.  Two or three words have him coughing and a sentence leaves him stuffed.  So the physiotherapists are torturing him with deep breathing exercises.  Which make him cough.  Which pleases the physiotherapist.  And while I can see the necessity it breaks my heart to see his eyes bulge and the perspiration break out from the sheer pain of coughing through multitudes of stitches and tubes.  He is back on oxygen, but at least the catheter and one of the drainage tubes has been taken away.  The bruises on his arms where they have been inserting things are spectacular.

He believes he will be coming home on Monday or Tuesday.  I really, really hope he is wrong.  I don't want him home until they are on top of the infection, his breathing is OK and he is eating again.  And until he/we have learned how to manage the colostomy.  And of course I couldn't track the doctor down today.  So presumably will have to go to the hospital at the crack of dawn on Monday.  Sigh.

Still, as I said in an earlier post.  I can do anything if I have to.  And that philosophy hasn't let me down yet.

And on a completely unrelated note.  I have been rereading Mary Poppins on the buses and while waiting for medical procedures to finish.  I didn't think she was the epitome of sweetness and light as portrayed by Disney.  And I was right.  Bad tempered, conceited and self confident to the point of egotism.  Much more interesting..