Cream teas and hospitals

Oh dear, it's been a while! Not helped by our pc giving up the ghost, E dropping her laptop and breaking that and the shitty back up laptop J rescued from the bin at a previous job deciding it didn't want to use the internet! We do now have Dad's pc plugged in here though, and his monitor as it looks like the problems with our pc were too much for ours and it gave up too. Handy having my lovely new Blackberry but as I can touch type at about 100 words per minute on a keyboard I find it hard going using a phone on the internet. Very useful to keep in touch with friends though.

Cream teas - today was the summer fair at R's school and the Family and Friends (PTA) were doing the cream teas so as secretary I went in with R & S to help out. 3 hours on my feet and they're sore and I'm tired but it was nice. Just no one offer me a cream tea in the next few days!

On Wednesday I got 2 letters about R, both sent from the same hospital, one in each envelope. The first one said she's being admitted on Monday so phone and tell them if we are going and the second to say we had to attend the pre admission clinic on Friday or they won't admit her! Rang the pre admission clinic to say do we really have to attend the clinic as it's a 3 hour round trip to Manchester and we really don't need to go through the pre admission stuff after 15 years of operations and appointments. Luckily the bloke agreed and so we didn't have to get down to Manchester for 9.30 yesterday after all, phew. Rang the other number to confirm we're going so at 8am on Monday that's me and R off to find the new Children's Hospital. Last time I went to a hospital in the same area it was about 10 years ago and we got hopelessly lost.

R hasn't had surgery on her windpipe for 3 years now and then they used an experimental technique on her laryngeal web. They apply a drug used in chemotherapy to her trachea where the web is after stretching and leave it for a few seconds. It stops cell division and helps to prevent the webbing growing back as fast. Going 3 years instead of 2 hopefully means it helped. She should have had a scope after a year but when she went in they told her she could walk to the operating theatre instead of going on the trolley which meant when she started to panic when almost there she ran behind a door and screamed and refused to move any further. After getting her back on her feet and back to the ward she cried for a couple of hours and we ended up coming home having had nothing done.

We've talked a lot with her about how this is to improve her breathing and how breathing is very important and she seems calm about it at the moment. She understands that she gets out of breath easily and that her voice is husky and quieter again and that she needs to have this surgery to help with both of those things. She wants to go on the trolley and I have talked to her about sometimes people can be given medicine before an operation to help make them a bit sleepy and calmer. She wants the medicine so I've said we'll talk to the docs when we get there and ask about it but I can't promise they'll give it to her. Hopefully when they see in her notes how she reacted last time they'll give her something!

Everything else is plodding along mostly, will maybe blog about other happenings this week if I get time tomorrow. J and S are off rallying, well J is marshalling and S is going along to watch the cars. I was going too but with an early start and drive first thing Monday morning I didn't fancy having to be ready to be picked up at 6.30am tomorrow! (NOT and early bird me!)