Thursday 27/2

The end of another day. I stay here in the library for as long as I can. My room does not catch the sun and is dull. Here the sun is golden through the leaves. I have ABC FM playing - an Irish tune. Oh - to dance! An ambulance screams by, passing the plodding trams. Home-bound traffic. Life moving - in motion - outside. All quiet here except for the cries of the lady who has bad dreams of falling. She has been "yelling/crying" intermittently all afternoon. I surprise myself that I can force it to the corners of my mind. Perhaps because it's daytime. At night it is always more chilling. The cries are the mad wife in the attic (Jane Eyre - The Wide Sargasso Sea)- ignored by staff and others. It seems so to me, anyway. If I dwell on it - there-in my own madness lies, and I have achieved a kind of balance this week. I am holding fast to it.

But This morning it almost came undone again. I cried. Any problems set me off and today. When trying to find out what the next move was, I rang the surgeon's secretary. During our discussion, I confirmed my 11 week check-up appointment on the 16/3. She promptly told me I did not have an appointment on that day - that he'd be away. It turned out she'd made it for 16/2 and had listed me as "not turning up". No apology for her silly mistake. But, as she could hear my distress, she is now trying to do more about getting me into rehab earlier. I was angry because I would have turned up in a wheel-chair taxi, with daughter helping, only to find surgeon not there! why don't people do their jobs properly? Virgo's require less stupidity in people!

Yesterday, as I sat here a Greek man wheeled in his old mother and sat with her. He talked with me more than her. How awkward relatives are. They do their duty by coming in for a short time. They barely connect and then go home. They see the surface only. I looked at the old lady and realised that she was the one who cries out at night. It was a secret I held. He told me that a fall had ceased her independence. That she had now become silent and different. I could see why. These rooms, though neat, were not her home.

Another elderly lady, 97, who has moved in next to my room, sat talking gently to a friend about her past. "I was a good wife" she'd say. "I built up a business...." And suddenly you see identities, personalities shrink. She was trying to sum up. To hold onto who and what she had been. As if it was all seeping away in this place. It is as if the visit of the friend normalises her (as it does me) but at night I hear her calling "sister...sister" over and over. She has forgotten that you press the button and they will come. So - I press mine because I cannot bare that she is helpless and in need. The other night, and again last night, her loud scream woke me. There was running in the passageways. She had fallen out of bed. Fractured a hip. It happens so easily. Now she too calls out at night and mutters in her sleep. Misses her family.

There is one nurse who narrates all that she does....."turning on the tap"...."pulling down the blind"...lifting the legs into bed"......it is awful. Reminds me of "The Cuckoo's Nest." She is on automatic pilot. She is not a thinker. One day I asked how she was...etc and any personal stuff was deflected quick-smart. The narrating is spooky. More tomorrow.