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From A to B
Oct. 31st, 2025 08:30 pmToday has been... a bit of a day. I had lunch with some very dear friends who have been on the wrong end of, let's say, a situation; it was one of those situations where nobody actually deliberately did anything wrong, but quite a few people who should have known better were extremely clumsy and hurt people, and should really have apologised for that at the time and then gone on to learn from their mistakes so they didn't make the same ones again. Dealing with people who have been through trauma is not easy; it requires a great deal of care and wisdom, and in particular it requires listening. There is always a danger of accidentally retraumatising someone, because you don't know where the triggers are. That is why it is of the utmost importance to keep checking in with them and then listening carefully to the answers they give you. That, as far as I'm concerned, is basic... and nonetheless a number of people failed to do it. There were a number of other ramifications as well, several of them connected with my friends' autistic toddler (who is, incidentally, an Awesome Little Dude and nobody is going to tell me any different), but that lack of listening and seeking feedback was the nub of it. I knew there was a major problem going on, but today, for the first time, they went into full detail about it and it was a great deal worse than I'd thought.
And then there's my mother. She's 87 and she was admitted to hospital a little over three weeks ago with a serious gall-bladder infection. Had she been younger and fitter, they'd have just had her gall-bladder out, but she probably wouldn't have survived the anaesthetic, as she is quite frail. So instead they filled her full of antibiotics, which cured the infection, but... even though she's technically medically stable now, she's not in a good way. She is having serious difficulty eating and drinking, her blood pressure's so low she can't stand up, and she's been hallucinating (though at least she does know she's hallucinating; it is really frightening when you don't, believe me - I went through that when I nearly died in 2016). She and one of my sisters both live in the same town, which is where I was born, but although there is a hospital there, it doesn't have overnight beds for some reason; so she's currently over 30 km away, and my sister's been commuting back and forth every day except Sunday (when she can't for other reasons). So what is now about to happen is that she's going to be discharged to my sister's house; she and her husband have done some reorganisation so that Mum can have a room downstairs, and they've set up a hospital bed in it. And obviously I am quite anxious to get up there while she's still in a fit state to recognise me, because we're not sure she's even going to make it to Christmas. That would be fine if I drove, or at the very least could walk about normally and therefore use the trains, but negotiating train changes in a wheelchair is a bit of a lottery to say the very least, and there is no direct train from anywhere near where I am. The problem with disability assistance on the railways is that it's either brilliant or not there at all, and you don't know which it's going to be.
So. We shall have to see what happens. At the moment I'm investigating possible ways of getting up there by taxi/car (the whole journey by taxi would be horribly expensive, but I may be able to get a taxi as far as my other sister's house, if she's able to get up there herself); but right now it's all a bit fraught.
And I have still not heard anything back from the drama group, but that is rather the last thing on my mind right now.
And then there's my mother. She's 87 and she was admitted to hospital a little over three weeks ago with a serious gall-bladder infection. Had she been younger and fitter, they'd have just had her gall-bladder out, but she probably wouldn't have survived the anaesthetic, as she is quite frail. So instead they filled her full of antibiotics, which cured the infection, but... even though she's technically medically stable now, she's not in a good way. She is having serious difficulty eating and drinking, her blood pressure's so low she can't stand up, and she's been hallucinating (though at least she does know she's hallucinating; it is really frightening when you don't, believe me - I went through that when I nearly died in 2016). She and one of my sisters both live in the same town, which is where I was born, but although there is a hospital there, it doesn't have overnight beds for some reason; so she's currently over 30 km away, and my sister's been commuting back and forth every day except Sunday (when she can't for other reasons). So what is now about to happen is that she's going to be discharged to my sister's house; she and her husband have done some reorganisation so that Mum can have a room downstairs, and they've set up a hospital bed in it. And obviously I am quite anxious to get up there while she's still in a fit state to recognise me, because we're not sure she's even going to make it to Christmas. That would be fine if I drove, or at the very least could walk about normally and therefore use the trains, but negotiating train changes in a wheelchair is a bit of a lottery to say the very least, and there is no direct train from anywhere near where I am. The problem with disability assistance on the railways is that it's either brilliant or not there at all, and you don't know which it's going to be.
So. We shall have to see what happens. At the moment I'm investigating possible ways of getting up there by taxi/car (the whole journey by taxi would be horribly expensive, but I may be able to get a taxi as far as my other sister's house, if she's able to get up there herself); but right now it's all a bit fraught.
And I have still not heard anything back from the drama group, but that is rather the last thing on my mind right now.
