Means and Needs

needs: Hospital- after, reentry and recovery

I was so relieved to be going home from hospital, until I got there. When I am in hospital with my girl, my world is small and immediate and our family life is muted, for that time.

The doorway greeted me with a murder of small bags of washing from each day in hospital. I could always overlook my beloved and my dude living their double half-life when the other half of our family was in hospital. As the relief faded, other parts snapped into unwelcome focus and I could see all the little bags of our life had piled up. There was a fridge full of food bought for a family week we didn’t have and appointments missed, tickets cancelled, mail to open and bills to pay. The rhythm of the school term had slipped away, but it was there, ready to ambush. My carers leave had been swallowed whole, while my bones ached with traces of hospital furniture. Pressure at my beloved’s work had built steadily and he needed to wrangle that space. While these outside pressures needed to be addressed my inner cyclone simmered. I had been wound tight bedside for 8 days and now that she was better, that her horizon held a future I wanted for her, I was uncontrollably unravelling and then life hit unpause and came at me.

There was some pretty mild huffing and puffing while undertaking domestic chores, and some hysterical overreaction to not finding the grater triggering rapid house organisation and a quick purge for good will. As if tightening the reigns on my immediate environment is going to help wash away the last 8 days. Wherever my eyes fell, it wasn’t good enough, it was not good enough, I was not enough.

I returned some calls but less each day. I sorted some of the to-do list, but less each day. I opened some mail until I forgot to bring it in. My spells in front of tv got a little longer and the expectations of me and those around me began to slide. I was in free fall. 3 days since she was discharged and while she was high fiving, which was all that I wanted, I was feeling a like our family life was a colander and I couldn’t hold the water. Everything was fall through and taking me with it.

And then came the flinching and the pinpricks. It was little things, my brain would slow and stop and I would not really engage in the family life, and then little pinpricks of embarrassing things, things from long ago when I was kid, when I was a student, when I was just starting out, when I was in mothers’ group 10 years ago, all started revisiting me, and they were random things that I didn’t really see a connection to but there was a connection: I was not enough. I was not enough.

Something had happened to my girl, and even though it was over, it had happened. Now that it was over, I was awash with this feeling, I was not enough, not to stop something happening to my girl.

That night my beloved checked in and even though the bags under his eyes were entrenched and there was a stressful little pulse under his right eye, and he was greyer and pudgier, he checked in and I whispered back.

“I’m not ok. She’s okay now, but I don’t think I’m ok. I can’t get a handle on it”

“I know. It’s over now, for now, I know”.

needs: Hospital and discharge

The path to discharge is the holy grail, ultimate quest, the ring, the answer, the spell, the magician’s wand. The path to discharge is the hero’s quest and yet it always comes as a surprise.

We are in a glaze of gradual improvement and have fallen into our own hospital routine. And there we are in Rounds, the Big Kahuna glances at the chart and looks at her with a smile. “I think we have to say good-bye” and suddenly we are going home. My mind reels, but how? What next? She is all bubble gum fairy floss joy and my questions are shooting through me. The Big Kahuna provides a broad reference to follow up and delegates the exit strategy to the nurse. That’s enough for me to let the questions slide. Until the nurse comes to check that we are being picked up in the next couple of hours.