The Cerebral Mum

We have to be at the hospital again tomorrow. I am now beyond exhausted.

It is only 9:30 and I am fighting sleep and trying to write poetry while I have nothing to say, while I don’t even want to say it. I am angry at nothing, as though there were wasps inside me. I am grinding my teeth.

I hate these days that have passed, this week that didn’t exist. The phone calls that didn’t get made. The appoinments that didn’t get kept. The forms I didn’t fill out. The mail that didn’t get posted. That hovering sense I’ve forgotten something important, that everything is about to come crashing down.

My house of cards.

I want some space to clear my head and breathe and stop waiting. There won’t be time for that for a while.

At the moment I feel shattered. So I shall go to bed with a book I probably will not read and fall asleep while words swim abandoned on my pillow.

Oblivion until 6am, bundling baby into the car without his breakfast.

I am now 4 poems behind in the 30 Poems project but I have had a couple of long days. On Monday night I went to bed at my usual time; around 2am. At 3am I was woken up because someone needed my help. I crawled back into bed around 7am for half an hour’s sleep before my usual morning routine and then got Cas and myself prepared for a visit to the ER.

I know I said recently that I like waiting rooms but the ER is an entirely different kettle of fish. It is always an awful environment, with the misery and frustration vibrating through the room even more unpleasant than the florescent lights.

We arrived at 11:30am, spent 5 hours in the waiting room, waited another hour and a half in the ER for a bed before waiting 2 hours for blood results which needed to be retested as there was a lab error. At 8pm someone else took over my hand-holding role so that I could get Cas back home to bed.

Today there was an ultrasound appointment at 3:30pm before returning to the ER to get a clinical decision. That involved 6 hours in the waiting room, more time waiting for the doctor and more time waiting for the specialist before we finally arrived home at 12:30am.

If I wasn’t so drained, there are many things I could write now: Sketches of the other people waiting (some sympathetic and some angry), appreciation for the staff (each and every one was wonderful), descriptions of the drama within the ER (the teenage car accident victims, and, yes, the guy that pulled a knife) but I just don’t have it in me.

Healthwise, my friend is fine. There are just some… er… let’s say, women’s issues that have to be dealt with but there is no danger and no long term worries. We have tomorrow off before it’s back to the hospital on Friday for more waiting, and then a procedure, and then it’s done.

But this post is just to say I’ll be keeping you waiting a little bit longer. Hopefully I’ll get some of my catch-up done tomorrow but if I can, I’ll be trying to catch up on some sleep too. My usual services will resume Saturday.

You might have noticed that I used various forms of the word wait several times in this post. That should give you a fair idea of how the last two days have been without me serving it up with saffron.

There is no spice in me right now.

Cas and I have spent a lot of time in waiting rooms since he was born. I’ve just added it up and there have been over thirty appointments. There have been the usual weigh-ins and vaccinations of course, and then the GP, paediatrics, audiology, pathology, ENT, plastics, and Cleft Clinics.

Even leaving aside the days after he was born waiting in the hospital for the registrars and the speech pathologist, and leaving aside our recent stay waiting for all his post-surgery examinations and medications, he has still spent a month of his short life, 1 day in every ten, in waiting rooms.

When you’re alone, sitting there trying to read a book or playing with your phone or just trying not to let the fluorescent lighting crush you, time is interminable. But when you have company, and I mean the best company, it’s almost not long enough.

Everything is fascinating with a baby. When he was tiny and couldn’t do much, everything he did was compelling and it was time away from the chores surrounding me at home. Once he got a little bigger, the linoleum was a source of interest, the bad art he pointed at on the walls could be exclaimed at and described even though he couldn’t hear me clearly.

And there were all those people he could stare at, and all their cooing and praise for me to enjoy.

Now that he’s walking, I let him lead me by the hand to inspect our audience. Occasionally he warms to them and graces them with smiles. Occasionally he will perform. And time flies.

I like to think that time moves faster for his audience as well. Waiting rooms are so oppressive. Small talk is uncomfortable, and even whispers are uncomfortably loud. A child gives everyone an excuse to relax their boundaries, forget about the stress of why they are there and just breathe.

Perhaps I’m wrong, and for some we are an annoyance but I let him explore the people as much as the place freely. As a single mum, with not much contact with the outside world at the moment, I like that he is not shy of people. He is not gregarious; he’s a watcher, but I people his world with strangers and that’s the best I can do. For now.

So we like waiting rooms.

Well, Mum had been here for more than half of her holiday so it was looking like she’d be gone before Caspar had his surgery. All the information I had been given about a date was that I would be notified 3 weeks prior.

And then the phone rang.

Eleven days.

The surgery was scheduled for the 17th. They would send out a letter with the details.

“So that has all the information I need, like what to bring with me to the hospital?” I asked.

“Um. It just has general information,” says the faceless, knowledgeless one. And that was it.

When I hung up the phone, in spite of having been waiting eagerly for the date to be set, in spite of not being the least bit squeamish or worried about the operation and in spite of having kicked up a bit of a stink to get it scheduled as soon as possible after being dicked me around with my ENT appointments, every last cell in my body was trembling.

Eleven days.

With Mum here, there has been little time to dwell, or work myself up into a high-strung mess but it hasn’t been far from my mind. There is just this senseless restlessness, a kind of squirmy, uncomfortable anticipation. This gnawing feeling that there was something that I should be doing.

Of course, there was nothing that I actually could do. All I could do was wait.

I did keep wondering about what on earth I needed to pack. The last time I was in hospital was when Caspar was born and it was all strictly BYO. Bring your own formula, bring your own feeding equipment, bring your own nappies etc. Did I need to bring everything a baby needs for a five day stay? Formula and nappies are not so hard, but Caspar is eating three solid meals. How much fridge space would I have for his food? And what the hell could he eat after the surgery anyway? How much appetite would he have?

The documentation I received from the Cleft Clinics way back when said that he would need to be eating off a spoon and drinking from a cup but when I asked the surgeons to clarify that I was told not to worry about it. Should I be worried about it? Caspar has long since passed the spoonfeeding stage and is very much attached to feeding himself toast soldiers or steamed carrot sticks, and in spite of trying several different styles of baby cups, cups have proven to be a very efficient way to create more laundry for myself and a not very efficient way to provide sustenance.

So I called the hospital and was told that food, feeding equipment, nappies and bedding would all be supplied. I was also told that if I decided to stay (Huh? The CleftClinic told me that I would definitely be staying!) they would provide me with a sheet. A sheet! What does that mean? Do I sleep on a chair for five days, or something? So calling has left me with more questions and I have packed a ridiculous amount of clothes, toy, books etc.

And unpacked.

And repacked.

Twice.

But at least tomorrow, I will actually be doing something, and this nervous energy will have somewhere to go.