Hello again,
The start of 2006 has not been the best. After trying to spend time with my family and close ones (hence the low fequency of post) and spending a wonderful christmas holidy with them there was a very bad event on the night to monday the 2nd of January. I was at my parents house and up and awake around 3 o’clock in the morning. I hear a loud boom coming from upstairs, and when I run up to see what made this noise I find my mother laying on the floor outside her bedroom.
The shock is immediate and I lean over her to talk with her and see if she has any injuries to her head. I manage to get contact with her and ask her, while holding her head with my hand, if she knows what happened, who she is, who I am and where she is right now. She manages to reply to all of my questions, but in a very silent voice. I feel my hands wet and realize that she is bleeding a lot from her head.
This is of course making me even more scared, and I manage to wake up my father. Together we get my mother dressed and after a lot of hassle (she fainted while we tried to walk with her down the staircase) we manage to go to the car and get her to the hospital.
The ride to the hospital was probably the longest one in my life. Even though it didn’t even take 10 minutes to get there, it felt like forever.
Then at the hospital, we got her out of the car, on to a bed and inside the emergency unit and one of the rooms there. I was in there with her all the time, holding her hand and making sure that she knew she wasn’t alone. Though, seeing my mom laying on the bed and moaning out of pain was very hard… she was in a lot of pain, especially when the doctor and nurse washed the wound and sutured her up (with 3 stiches). The cut was almost 6 centimeters long, so you can imagine huh?!
When this is done, we take her to the observation unit of the emergency department. What upset both me and my father was that there no free rooms to put her in, so she was forced to lay in the hallway. She got a temporary screen around her bed, but she still couldn’t relax and get the privacy she wanted and needed. Her bed was positioned next to the coffee-room, so when she was sleeping both my father and I could be inside this room to rest up (neither of us got much sleep that night as you can imagine).
Finally in the morning, my mother is able to get her own room and rest there. I joke with her and say: -”You will probably share room with a crazy person.” and what do you know; she is sharing her room with a senile woman who is escaping her bed all the time etc. We giggle a little about this, and then we say goodbye for a while, as both my father and I needs to go home and get some rest.
In the meantime that I am home, my mom calls from her bedside telling that she is getting moved to another room, and after 17 in the afternoon, me and my father go to be with her. My mother is feeling sad that she needs to be left over night, as she is getting a fever and not feeling well at all. Me and my father do our best to keep her spirits up, and my dad goes to buy her a crossword magazine and some mineralwater – those small things that she likes.
Seeing my mom crying in her bed wasn’t easy, as you can imagine and the worry was all over my body… it was like poison running through my veins. Though, me and my mother keep in contact over the phone throughout the night and I also call our relatives and her closest friends to tell them what has happened, and so that they’ll call her in an effort for her not to feel alone. (this is something my mom thanked me for afterwards by the way)
To continue the story: My mother was being held the whole of tuesday for observation and this was also a worry for her – yet, she understood that this was for her own good and that it was done “just in case”. We go to the hospital on the evening again… and finally on wednesday morning she is allowed home, where she spent and is still spending the whole days on the sofa. (I’ve been acting nurse and cook for her since).
Something that did make me wonder was that one of the doctors in the observation department said that she would get to a neurologist within the next 6 months, yet this is way too long time. Though, when my sister called up the hospital she got hold of another doctor that said the same thing, and that our mom should get a referral to a neurologist within the next couple of weeks. My mom did receive a calling to make do a MRI, yet no word about the neurologist.
The above says a lot about the Swedish healthcare, which in my and many others’ view, isn’t working as it should. It is both in-efficient and when being in a period of need the feeling I got was one of nonchalance by many of the hospital staff-workers. I can say that I am not an over-demanding person, and that I am keeping cool in situations like when my mother was in the hospital, so I am not being over-sensitive nor am I out after complaining just to complain. There were some very nice nurses, which did a very good job and who were very friendly and compassionate. Then there were those that didn’t seem to care at all, and not to mention the doctors…
Now, all seem to go for the better, my mom is not in the pain she was when she returned from the hospital, she isn’t as dizzy anymore and she is able to eat normally… If she gets an “ok” from the MRI and the neurologist, things will get back to normal in no-time, we all hope.
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