Time stands still during hospital bank holiday weekends. Doctors that are so young you have to stop yourself from asking what they want to be when they grow up sit at the nurses' station trying not to make eye contact with anyone and even worse than that Costa Coffee on the ground floor shuts at 3. We are still in Kings. Memories of our island summer are fading fast - this time last week we were still looking at the lights on the water but it was our last night all together. Now we have slipped like automotans back into hospital behaviour - changing shifts and hats and juggling Rose and Felix between us. Almost like we've done it before.
We lose three working/scanning days with the bank holiday and nothing happens except higher and higher doses of morphine, three enemas, drips and lines and lots and lots of sick bowls. Just a regular family August bank holiday then.
But today it's business as usual on the ward - the admissions flood in and proper doctors who are the age of my friends and not my children are back at work. The hotlines between Kings, the Marsden and Stanmore start up again in an attempt to make a plan.
My plan - we have an MRI today at Kings to hunt down whatever is pressing on whatever and causing the pain so that the Marsden can radiate the bastard to kingdom come, we can ease off on the crazy levels of opiates that Rose is taking, she emerges from her morphine coma and comes home. Today.
Kings' plan - similar but maybe not today.
Stanmore decision - no MRI. Too much metal in her prosthetic leg for the magnet.
Back to the drawing board and another day lost. Running out of days. The new elephant in the corner - so many elephants, not enough corners - is that Simon goes back to work on Monday.
