JUST WHEN YOU THINK ITS ALL OVER …

Our first place to stay, highly recommended! 

 K came out of Intensive Care some days ago, the impact on us has been so overwhelming that I can't actually remember which day. It happened with almost no warning; we went to visit him and a rather hatchet faced lady doctor said that he was moving upstairs today. We thought that this was cause for celebration and waited for an hour to accompany him and the bed to the new ward.

We arrived at a room absolutely full of people, chairs, baggage and heat to K's new quarters. It was heaving with people and obstacles and the nurses on the new ward were nothing like the nice people we had left two weeks before in Urology. K is a heavy lad, all his limbs were swollen and immobile, he needed tracheotomy care, feeding via a tube and syringe and for us to keep him clean and tidy. Anna and I looked at one another with complete horror, because neither of us had a clue where to start, but most of our time was spent dealing with all the mucus from a serious chest infection which happened every time K took a breath. We went through 200 plastic gloves and mountains of tissue trying to keep the infection at bay and this was tiring but OK since K was unable to move his hands to begin with.

I can't imagine what it must be like to emerge from two weeks of darkness to the light of day with all this plumbing and wiring sticking out all over, but K has been only a little agitated so far.

View from the Brods

We worked in 5 hour shifts round the clock to begin with – sitting with Kimon and just falling into bed with or without something to eat and drink when we got to our room. We were lucky that Stavros Niarchos, a shipping magnate, donated a hostel for families within the hospital grounds and after lots of to-ng and fro-ing to satisfy the administration, we got a very nice room there. Our lives were saved by Katerina, an English speaking nurse who agreed to come in to look after K at night, initially for two days, but she was so good that we realised that we had to keep her on for now.  We were limited in what we could do because during the day we had to take turns to work and sleep and even together couldn't shift Kimon up the bed or over to one side. We are not sure why the ward nurses are so hostile or unco-operative, but it is almost asking for a gold mine to get a complete set of sheets and pillow case every morning, let alone a draw sheet, which would have made life easier. This all sounds very negative but there is plus side of this in the families in the same ward doing their share of caring because day to day life in the midst of everybody else’s crises is a bit like a soap opera and there is wonderful sense of looking out for each other. I have seen two ladies keel over with the work and strain of it from our room alone.

There are the elderly couple in one corner. Old Dad is in the bed and his poor elderly wife is there day and night arguing with him and asking him questions of a personal nature in a very loud voice. There are obviously 3 or 4 who are extremely elderly and not expected to come home. Our best bit of luck was finding that the private nurse of the patient in the next bed to Kimon who also had a tracheotomy was very kind in helping with the suction tube when Anna and I couldn't stand to see K suffering any longer. Lena is a very experienced nurse from Georgia and a great source of knowledge and the odd greek coffee when her patient is quiet enough to let her make some!

The harbour at Heraklion

Then there are the ward rounds, masses of them each day. Sometimes Doctors, sometimes nurses, sometimes doctors and students, the cleaning lady, the pills ladies, the doctors again, the food trolley with liquid stuff for K. Each time one of these packs of people arrive, all the families are herded out of the room, no matter if you are in the middle of syringing up milk or recording the quantities on a chart. To begin with, we were annoyed with all this disturbance and couldn't get on with anything, but that was before I armed myself with a chair and tote bag to sit in the corridor and catch up with messaging before we could go back again. There have been days when we have been stranded in the corridor for almost an hour. Now that K is beginning to mend and wants to fiddle with all the nozzles, wires and scratch his moustache and eyebrows, as well as objecting to the oxygen masks and tubes, it is a relief to get out of the room and let someone else worry about it for a spell.

5 new puppies in the hospital grounds

Angel Nurse Katerina has taught us the rudiments (no pun intended) bed- bathing and changing Anna and I have clocked it in theory but in practice, K is just as heavy as ever and no amount of tugging and heaving can get him shifted so my back is very sore and we have to help our Angel when she comes in the evening and rely on one of the ward rounds to sort K out in the morning while doing the things we can manage without doing ourselves a nasty.

I gave K a shave this morning and trimmed his moustache. We needed to do this so that we had a better chance of reading his lips when he is trying to speak. It's all very difficult, but we are persevering. Keep praying for his Carers as well as for him because we are showing signs of wear and tear! x