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I went down to check on my dear wife. She was breathing deeply but woke to try and speak. She was completely incoherent at first. When I said it was only me she mumbled: "Thank god for that.""I thought it was them." Which could mean almost anything. It presumably meant a fear of more morphine being administered by the early shift nurse.
Only 60F indoors. So I got the stove going with some difficulty. There is no direct light on the stove without turning the main, overhead light on. So I used a torch. We have always had torches all over the house due to the almost total lack of adequate light switches. There never was a proper light in the bedroom. It used "borrowed" light from the other end of the attic. Where we lived out the last two and a half decades. My wife insisted on leaving the light on during the last few months. Downstairs was always much colder and darker.
I went outside to clear a path to the house. More snow has fallen overnight. Probably only about another inch or two had fallen. No sign of nurses' footprints. A cat dashed off into the darkness.
There followed a desperately needed cup of black coffee. The morning's starter motor.
Nearly 4am. Now what? Socks! I had washed my sock backlog overnight. It needs to go in the spin drier. Our top loading washing machine doesn't do it well enough with only 1000rpm spin. We don't have room in the bathroom for a "proper" washing machine. So we have a small spin drier under the bathroom sink. Tiny Thomas drains into a washing up bowl placed temporarily on the floor. I am not supposed to leave washing in the machine overnight. However, I had no choice if I wanted clean socks today. I promise not to tell. If you don't!
The socks were spun and hung on the clothes horse by the stove. The concertina clothes horse was bought by my wife from a local secondhand shop in about 1970. Her initial, light blue, paint job has become slightly worn over a busy lifetime! She held it together with zip ties when I failed to repair it. The securing pins had finally rusted away. I started to make her a new one but stumbled on finally fixing it together. So it took up space in the living room for a year. Not that there was room for it anywhere.
4.30. The stove has gone out after the first block had burnt away. I had thrown another in but it didn't catch light. Throw in more split kindling and a screw of newspaper. A satisfying conflagration soon followed.
Breakfast did not start well. I filled my wet, freshly rinsed mug with porridge oats instead of filling the bowl. So I tipped out all the dry stuff. Then cunningly used milk to rinse out the remaining flakes into the bowl. I added the raisins and resumed normal muesli practise and consumption. Though I readily admit that stirring in the raisins was not as effortless as usual. It was like having oversized gravel in a concrete mix.
There is another pending problem. My favourite, organic porridge oats comes from a supermarket which does not offer a delivery service. You think all organic porridge oats taste the same? Waddya mean you don't start the day with porridge oats?
This was a life changing habit suggested to me by a hospital specialist after years of digestive problems. I used to have a mountain of different, popular cereals and lashings of sugar. Then found myself starving and exhausted only an hour later. Classic energy depletion following a sugar bomb. I owe my entire fame and fortune to home-made muesli. [Coarse, organic porridge oats + organic raisins] Don't bother with the widely advertised muesli. It is full of crap. Which is why they have to advertise it as value added. Porridge + crap.
4.45 Breakfast over. Only another 3½ hours before the doctor arrives. I'd better do last night's washing up.
5.00 Washing up proved to have too few items to make it worth the effort. My wife is not generating much in the way of crockery nor cutlery. I can already feel a reorganisation of the kitchen manifesting itself. Her cupboard full of 50-20 year-old paint is on borrowed time. I offered to remove at intervals but she would not hear of it.
She could have had a proper washing machine in all that wasted space. Even a much larger fridge freezer, but no. We didn't need either apparently. She washed everything by hand in the bath until much later. She "didn't want" a washing machine! Until the tap water grew so cold she could bear it no more.
Now I look back and measure our more recent times here in replacement, top-loading washing machines. Whirlpool, Bosch then Whirlpool again. I repaired two of them just to keep them going. Using obscenely expensive plastic [deliberately fragile] mouldings made in China. All of these machines were total crap. With built in obsolescence. So glaringly obvious that it ought to be a crime against humanity.
All of them designed by men, of course. Probably wearing thick rimmed glasses and an asymmetric, designer haircut. Just to prove they are working well above their pay grade. Even though they have their own, private parking space for their Audi twin-arseholes shitmobile.
Don't even get me started on Gram ceramic cookers! Three rings [of four] have stopped working. The top oven element sags right down to the oven floor. Simply because they forgot to fit a retaining clip. Rust bubbling up all over the top paintwork. With large areas of blackened rusty metal.
She still insisted on continuing with it. Even thought the "designer" markings were completely illegible without her [always nearby] magnifying glass. If I replace the cooker or washing machine I will feel guilty for evermore. That she did not live to enjoy them. Perhaps she simply saw them as tools and unworthy of serious consideration. She was always very careful with money.
5.30 and the stove has gone out due to a lack of fuel. The temperature has climbed to 65F and the soapstone cladding is nicely hot. The room will stay warm for at least an hour.
6.00 I was nodding off at the computer. So I went back to bed and managed to sleep for another hour.
7.00 I have relit the fire with some shattered scraps of oak. Which my wife had saved in a cardboard box from a failed firewood purchase. I brought home a trailer load. Only to find it was quite literally wet. Oozing water wet. Instead of the much more expensive "oven ready" firewood. Which the local timber yard racist had illegally claimed. And, which I had fully paid for. Just as it had been on the previous times we had risked it.
Several years of storage, under cover, are needed to dry out such wood for burning. Not much help when you need to keep warm here and now. Crooks abound. Even here in idyllic Denmark. They are still claiming they have vast stacks of "oven ready" dry firewood on their website.
We changed to imported, compressed wood briquettes after that. Which meant we haven't been back for their sopping wet "oven ready" firewood. I am burning the scraps now. So that my wife enjoys the warmth of her sacrifice of time and effort to save us some money.
My wife is sleeping with shallower, more ragged, occasional inhalations. Her head is straight now and more naturally poised. Instead of being eerily twisted upwards. Staring blankly at the boarded living room ceiling above my head. Her dark-ringed and deeply sunken eyes and protruding cheekbones are less obvious in the softer, natural light of dawn. The discoloured, anatomical drawing, naked sinews of her now, tiny neck are safely hidden by the duvet drawn up to her chin.
There is a brighter northern edge to the grey overcast. What passes for a local hill is warmly lit in orange. Snow clings stickily to almost everything. Picturesque, if you like that sort of thing. She never did.
8.00 The nurse has just washed and cleaned my wife in readiness for the doctor's visit. My wife had a little apple juice but some went down the wrong way. That hasn't happened before. I have to tip the tiny egg spoon very slowly so she can sip in her own time.
9.00 The doctor and another nurse have just left. They needed my wife's verbal confirmation that she was not to be resuscitated if her heart stops. My wife said she needed more time to make that decision.
There was considerable discussion of the awful way she was treated after she left hospital. The whole weekend passing with her in agony and robbed of her dignity. Lying on a bed sore on a thin foam mattress on the carpet in the living room. Unable to rise to urinate. Peeing into the same towels she always laundered so fastidiously.
I had to keep pushing towels under bottom to soak up the pee. In desperation I rang "the acute nursing service" number for advice. To be told my wife no longer existed in "the system." She had booked herself out! Only on the coming Monday would service be automatically restored. Monday was three days away!
I mentioned to the doctor how they kept offering her foods in the hospital. Which she would never have touched before she became sick. The constant noises at night and being subjected to painful procedures and injections. Our rural cottage is completely silent at night. Her tiny, shrunken arm was blackened from wrist to armpit by needles. The total lack of response when I asked for nurse in the hospital. Even when I went to the office and asked for a nurse. Two hours passed without any response at all!
Then the terminal cancer verdict right out of the blue. The nurse scowling down at my wife as she tried to complain to the doctor about the food. My wife insisting that she should be sent home early. Instead of waiting for Monday. With three more days without ANY palatable food or drink.
They had weakened her considerably already. By denying her suitable food. She said she was starving and bursting to urinate! She could no longer cross the corridor to the toilet. She wanted to use the toilet chair but there was no bag attached.
I had to stop a nurse in the corridor and ask for help! Finally my wife could pee with some dignity. I left the room and left her with the young nurse. Was my wife really meant to pee in the hospital bed while wearing only her own, tiny nickers? There didn't seem to be any lack of staff. As they hung around socialising in the large office. The receptionist scowled at me when I tried to talk through the open door way. How dare I invade her territory?
The whole hospital experience was a terrifying nightmare for her. She had finally been persuaded to go there to see about her eating disorder. Now she was terribly lonely and wanted me to be there beside her. Just like I always am and have been for nearly 55 years. I couldn't sleep on the floor in her room. So I was at home 58km and 70 minutes away.
She just wanted to get home and rest in her own bed in complete privacy. Except that she was too weak and in pain, by then, to rise 1" off the living room carpet. Let alone climb our steep stairs. She wanted to get home from the ravings of another patient. Who kept her wake all night with his endless coughing and shouting! The doors to all these rooms were left wide open for easy observation. By any passing stranger.
I have been asked to write a report on the acute nurse's brush off. I'll also mention the repeated lies by the home use, hospitable bed providers on the Friday she came home. Twice they rang to say a bed was on its way. Their later failure to provide the patient hoist. Which was ordered by the first attending staff on the following Monday. Along with the bed and [unused] toilet chair. The first home help had to literally manhandle my wife onto the bed from lying on the floor. Causing my wife to have an acute bout of trigeminal neuralgia in her jaw. Her face was hideously distorted by the intense pain of her bed sore and a hideously painful weekend.
9.30 My wife is now sleeping normally. Time for morning coffee and a roll. Dull the rage!
10.15 My wife is still sleeping. She did not want any apple juice to slake her thirst when I asked gently. Her breathing is more rapid and laboured now. The agreement is that the nurses will only call once a day and not at night. With visits from the home help service too. There will be no more morphine unless she is in pain and I call the nurses directly. The doctor will ring me tomorrow for an update.
11.00 My wife is still sleeping. Her breathing is rapid but at spaced intervals. No, she still does not want any apple juice. So I added another briquette to the fire and left her in peace. Her mouth is open again. Though her head no longer has the morphine distortion. Freed of the drugs she has a much more natural posture today.
I am torn by guilt for wishing her an end to her suffering. Another few hours, or perhaps days, will not extend her real life measurably. The uncontrollable tears will still be shed. It is only a matter of when.
13.00 Still working on my mug of tea. I had an early lunch to help fill the empty hours. Time borrowed early must be repaid, with interest, later on. It will be a very long afternoon!
A health worker called earlier. It was agreed that they need only visit once in the morning. Unless, I ring them to request a later visit.
My wife is sleeping but requests water via a sponge lollipop or apple juice occasionally. She seems more alert but has choked twice today on the tiniest of drops. Which is a worry. I think her face shows she is more unwell today. Though still not in any pain.
A nurse gave me some idea of how the cancer slowly takes over as the body and brain withdraw. Eventually the brain shuts down and the heart stops. Resuscitation risks finding the patient has already died from oxygen starvation. Further prolonging the misery.
I have just rembered to drag the green, recycling bin the 100m along to the main drive for emptying tomorrow morning. My extra black bags of rubbish were still lying there where I left them. Though the black bin had been emptied. I wonder how long those black, bin bags last before they break down? It will be an interesting experiment. What a strange way to run a business! I'd bet they actually believe that their employer pays their wages.
The car has been moved away from the intended position of the recycling skip. Arriving at 8.00am tomorrow. There really isn't much room to manoeuvre in the drive. My car will be trapped if it doesn't all go exactly to plan. With a promised half hour turnaround from delivery. 10 minutes should be easily enough to dump it all in. Particularly now that I have compacted everything to the minium volume. I'll have to speak to the driver when he arrives. He may be willing to wait for loading. Rather than drive away and come back again. That could more easily be done outside the gate. To avoid him struggling along the much narrower drive inside the garden.
Afternoon and evening. A couple of health visitors came and went. My wife's breathing grows shallower. She complained of not being able to breathe. Some expression of pain was traced to one of the pillow props. Which were intended to tilt her away from her bed sore. This was easily remedied.
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