The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me (21 page)

The more I thought about this, the more it
all made perfect sense from mum’s point of view. Even though the disease was
eating away her ability to function in the outside world, there was still a
small part of her that was able to make sense of the condition, and represent
it with a pictorial analogy to the rest of us; the fact that the rest of us
were too dumb to understand it was not her fault.

A deep understanding had been forged between
my mum and me with the disclosure of the identity of the little girl. I had
been let into the secret, as it were, and there was a bond between us that had
never been there in former years for either of us. I felt that at last there
was the possibility of making some progress with mum, now that an obstacle
which had stood between her and the outside world had been removed. I felt that
I might be able to reach her now at some deeper level, and that the future for
our relationship held a glimmer of hope.

Ironically, it was only a few weeks later
that our world exploded without warning into a shower of sparks, when I
received a telephone call at work from Charnwood House.

THE NURSE AT CHARNWOOD said mum had
undergone ‘a funny turn’ and had been taken by ambulance that afternoon to the
hospital at Walsgrave.

I left work early and drove straight there,
trying to figure out what a ‘funny turn’ really meant. Had mum just experienced
a slight giddiness and possibly fallen over, or was she at death’s door? I
arrived at reception, slightly breathless.

‘Mrs Rose Slevin, admitted by ambulance this
afternoon from Charnwood House nursing home?’ I said to the receptionist. ‘I’m
her son.’

‘I’ll check,’ she said, without looking up
at me.

Behind me, a queue of people was starting to
form. Most of them seemed to be lost.

‘Ward 52, second floor, lifts to the right,’
said the receptionist, again without bothering to look at me.

The old Walsgrave hospital had been a
familiar place, where the wards had names; the replacement, built on the same
site, is a massive and impersonal thing, like a small, self-contained town, and
its numbered wards are only one sign of this.

I joined a queue for the two lifts.
Patients, doctors and relatives crammed in together as we rose to the second
floor, and I squeezed out when the doors opened. I found Ward 52 and hurried to
its main reception desk.

‘I’m looking for Mrs Slevin, please,’ I
said. ‘She was admitted today. I’m her son.’

‘I’ll check.’

The nurse scanned a computer screen. ‘Oh
yes, stroke victim. Room 17. Through the double doors, turn left.’

Stroke victim.

It was the first time anyone had mentioned
the word ‘stroke’ to me. So that was what they meant by ‘a funny turn’.

I followed her instructions to Room 17, and
went in.

Mum was sitting up on a narrow bed-like
trolley. She looked wild-eyed and frightened. The moment she saw me she began
to chatter, but the sounds she made were completely unintelligible. She looked
from side to side and then back to me, her eyes darting around the room. The
left side of her mouth failed to move at all when she spoke.

‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘How are you, mum?’

I kissed her. The whole time she made
frantic, panicked sounds, as though she were desperately trying to tell me
something, but was unable to get the message across. I stood by the side of her
bed and listened, not knowing what to do, or say.

The door opened and a nurse came in.
‘Hello,’ she said cheerily, ‘are you a relative?’

‘Yes, I’m her son,’ I replied.

‘I’m just going to take her blood pressure.
The doctor will be along to see you in a little while.’

‘Has she had a stroke?’ I asked, already
knowing the answer.

‘The doctor will explain everything to you,’
replied the nurse.

As the woman checked her blood pressure, mum
continued to chatter in a language all of her own. The nurse ignored her.

‘That’s fine,’ announced the nurse,
unwrapping the Velcro band from mum’s arm with a loud ripping sound. ‘The
doctor will be along shortly.’

I rang Heather and told her the news.

‘Do you want me to come over?’ she asked.

‘No, there’s no point,’ I said. ‘I’ll let
you know if there are any developments.’

The doctor arrived and I rang off.

‘Hello,’ said the doctor. ‘Are you a
relative?’

She looked like a 15-year-old schoolgirl –
one who hadn’t been to bed in a week. She brushed her hair casually back from
her face as we shook hands.

‘I’m her son.’

‘Splendid.’

I wondered why that was splendid.

‘I need to ask you some questions,’ she
said.

‘Okay,’ I replied.

She asked me the sort of things she would
have normally asked mum, if mum had been able to understand the questions and
the doctor had been able to understand the answers – full name, date of birth,
home address, any medication, history of strokes in the family, special
allergies or dietary requirements, current medical condition, and so on. I
answered everything as best as I could.

‘Has my mother had a stroke?’ I said,
finally.

‘Oh yes, most definitely,’ came the emphatic
reply.

‘What has actually happened?’

‘A stroke is an episode where the blood
supply to the brain has been interrupted,’ she said. ‘It can happen for a
number of reasons and it’s fairly common among people of your mother’s age.’

‘Is the damage permanent?’

‘Too early to tell,’ she replied, brushing
her hair away from her face again. ‘Every stroke victim deals with their
condition differently. Some people recover almost immediately, some take a long
time, others never recover. Some people recover partially, others make a full
recovery. It all depends.’

I looked at mum, she was still chattering.

‘She also has Alzheimer’s,’ I said.

‘I thought as much,’ replied the doctor.
‘Your mum’s admittance notes haven’t arrived on the ward yet, but I thought
there was dementia there.’

‘What’s the outlook?’

‘As I say, it’s too early to tell. The first
48 hours are critical. If there is going to be any major recovery then it
should start to happen within the first two days. She’ll be well looked after
here, don’t worry. We’ll watch her closely.’

‘I see.’

The doctor looked intently at mum. ‘She’s
very distressed at the moment, we can give her something for that,’ she said.

Then she smiled, shook my hand again, and
left. I hoped she was going home to bed, but I doubted it. Within a few minutes
the first nurse returned.

‘I just have to give your mum something to
make her feel a little easier and a bit more comfortable,’ she announced
brightly.

She gave my mum an injection, and mum was
unconscious before the needle was removed. It was as though she had been shot.

‘There, that’s better, she’ll sleep now,’
said the nurse, and then she, too, was gone.

I stared at mum. Only a few days previously,
I had felt that she and I were making progress with her dementia, after her
confession as to the real identity of the little girl in the radiator. Now our
little sandcastle had been hit by a tidal wave; all trace of improvement had
been washed clean away, and nothing remained to suggest there had once been a
sandcastle there at all.

I waited in that little room for what seemed
like an eternity, although in reality it was probably an hour at the most. Mum
never stirred and no-one came back. In the end I returned to the front desk.

‘Can you tell me what’s happening with Mrs
Slevin in Room 17, please?’ I asked.

The nurse looked at her computer screen.
‘I’ll check for you,’ she said.

She scanned her system looking for the data
that referred to ‘unit Slevin’. It wasn’t there.

‘What’s happening with Mrs Stevens?’ she
called to a colleague nearby.

‘Slevin, not Stevens,’ I said.

More checking.

Then, from the colleague, ‘She’s waiting for
a bed on the ward. She’ll be assessed and the consultant will review her in the
morning. Give us a ring after 10 o’clock and we should know more by then.’

The new ‘program unit Mrs Slevin’ hadn’t
been uploaded yet, so the set of statistics that was my mother was just left
unconscious on a trolley-bed until the great programmer was ready to enter her
into the system. Maybe at the end of the day we’re all just numbers on
someone’s spreadsheet.

I went home to Heather.

I took the next day off work, and we both
waited at home until after 10 o’clock as I had been instructed. Then I rang the
hospital.

The number rang… and rang… and rang… and
rang…

‘What’s happening?’ asked Heather, after
five minutes.

‘Nothing’s happening,’ I replied. ‘It’s just
ringing and ringing. No-one’s answering.’

She went to make us a cup of coffee and when
she returned a few minutes later I was still listening to the ringing tone. By
now, I’d been hanging on for almost 10 minutes.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Heather. ‘What if
it was urgent?’

‘It
is
urgent!’ I replied.

‘But what if it was an emergency?’ she
asked.

‘I suppose I’d have to ring 999,’ I replied.

It’s beyond frustrating to sit there with a
telephone pressed to your ear listening to a mechanical tone repeat itself time
after time with nothing else happening. You are tempted to replace the receiver
and dial again; the problem is, if you’re in a queue you lose your slot and
rejoin the queue at the far end. Of course, if you’re not told you’re in a
queuing system in the first place then you don’t know what to do, so you
continue to sit there until either someone answers the phone, you get cut off,
you die, or the world comes to an end.

‘I’ll make some toast,’ said Heather.

When she came back with a plate of toast for
me the telephone at Walsgrave hospital main switchboard had still not been
answered. I had now been waiting for 22 minutes.

‘Put the phone down,’ said Heather, ‘and
we’ll drive over now.’

Suddenly, a voice came through the receiver,
so harsh and unexpected that it startled me.

‘Walsgrave Hospital.’

‘I’ve been waiting for someone to answer the
telephone for nearly half an hour,’ I said. ‘I thought you had all died up
there!’

‘There’s no need for that attitude. We
are
busy here, you know. It’s a hospital.’

‘I know it’s a hospital,’ I replied, ‘I just
thought you might be able to be a bit more efficient on the switchboard, that’s
all.’

The line just went dead, suddenly replaced
with the dialling tone.

The receptionist had cut me off.

I stared into the plastic receiver, as
though by giving the telephone a really hateful look I might actually scare the
thing into being more co-operative next time.

‘She’s put the phone down!’ I gasped,
incredulously.

‘What did you have a go at her for?’ said
Heather.

I put the receiver back on the cradle.

‘Come on,’ announced Heather, putting her
coat on. ‘Let’s go over there.’

We entered the hospital grounds and followed
the snaking lane around the perimeter until we eventually came to the car
parks, where we drove around in circles several times until we finally found a
space; it was almost full, and it was only 11am. We walked to the main entrance.
Outside the revolving doors, a number of people were standing smoking in the
rain. I noticed one man dressed in pale blue pyjamas and red slippers, a
cigarette in one hand and a steel upright stand supporting a saline drip in the
other. His pyjamas were wet through. There was also a very elderly woman
sitting in a wheelchair in her dressing gown and slippers who looked like she
had been smoking out there all morning. Over our heads, a recorded metallic
voice boomed: ‘Walsgrave Hospital is now a non-smoking hospital. This includes
the grounds and car parks. The hospital administrators would like to thank
everyone for their continued co-operation with this policy.’

We walked through the large revolving doors
and went around to the right of the reception desk towards the elevators. As we
passed by, a telephone was ringing but no-one was answering it: a gaggle of
women sat at the desk gossiping and joking, ignoring the insistent sound.

I started to walk towards the desk. I meant
to ask the people who were paid to answer the telephone if they understood how
important the call they were ignoring might be to someone, but Heather read my
mind.

‘Leave it, Martin,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t
matter.’

‘It does matter, though,’ I said, but I
walked past.

There was a huge queue for the lifts –
patients in wheelchairs, a man on a trolley with a tube up his nose, and
several visitors holding bunches of flowers. When the doors opened, there was a
rush as we all piled in. I smelled lilies.

‘Doors closing,’ intoned a metallic voice, as
the doors shut.

‘First floor,’ announced the voice, as the
doors opened again. ‘Doors opening.’

Helpful
, I
thought.

‘Going down?’ asked the man at the front of
the crowd on the first floor.

‘No, going up!’ shouted someone at the back
of the lift.

‘Doors closing,’ announced the robotic
voice.

The lift jerked upwards.

‘I wanted that floor!’ said an elderly man
with a walking stick, who was standing behind me. ‘It didn’t give me enough
time!’

A few people shook their heads and tutted.
The old man managed to push his way nearer to the front of the crowd.

‘Second floor,’ said the voice. ‘Doors
opening.’