Awful Night
Karen had an awful night. She had a temperature of 39′C. She was sweating so much they had to put her back on an intravenous drip of saline. Generally a very uncomfortable night.

When I arrived (8am), she was ringing wet through. I kissed her on her forehead and it was just moisture. Her sheets had so much sweat on them they were soaking. First Job was a bedbath. I asked one of the nurses to give me a hand, but in the end 2 of them came in and did it. They changed the sheets and her nighty and she felt and looked so much better after the wash. Her temperature was down to 36.6′C.

She has an infection and until the bedbath they were unsure of where it was, but it was clear after the bedbath that she has an infection where the staples were that run from the left to the right hand side of her body at the bottom of her belly. This was swabbed to see what kind of infection it is. She is on multiple anti-biotics to sort it out. We also took the opportunity to use Mum’s MRSA lotion (Ultra). We couldn’t use it on any of the wounds, but we could use it on her legs and arms.

The fan we had been using to keep kp cool had broken. We aren’t allowed mains-powered fans for some reason (they spread the germs), but they don’t seem to mind the little hand fans. I phoned Ronnie and asked if she could get a new fan.

No Breakfast
She didn’t feel like any breakfast because she still felt hot and bothered.

The Sleep
After the bedbath and getting into a nice comfy position, kp fell asleep. I was a bit tired myself so I pulled up the chair bed and got it into a prone position and hopped on with a pillow and pulled it up to Karen’s bed at the same height to form a double bed. As I did so, I banged kp’s bed. Normally any banging like this gets a “tut”, but when kp saw what I was doing (effectively lying next to her to sleep), she smiled

Occasionally I would open my eyes and check she was ok. For a lot of the time she was asleep, her eyelids were open. It was very weird. She was kind of looking into space (in each eye to a different part of space also). I will mention this to a nurse.

Elevenses
After out joint snooze, the tealady came round and offered kp some tea. She got a big beaker of tea, and kp and I shared it out into 2 cups.

kp:- Let’s have elevenses
dp:- Do you fancy some Maltesers and Minstrels ?
kp:- Yes please

Wahey. Karen normally turns chocolate down. But she was up for a cup of tea with hubby and some chocolate (courtesty of Lee + Tracy, yesterday’s visitors). That was nice

Her drip was then replaced with one that provided a higher supplement of Potassium.

Visitors
We had another snooze until Ronnie, Michelle and Adele arrived at lunchtime. They brought with them 3 mini-fans all of which sound like a plane taking off. kp wasn’t keen to keep one switched on ‘cos of the noise.

Ronnie, Michelle and Adele helped me get Karen into a nice sitting-up position when I made a real blunder causing kp a lot of pain.

Before you move kp, you need to take the slack out of the sheets and I did this fine, until I came to the head. I pulled the sheet like I would normally do, but in doing so, I moved the pillow which must have scraped kp’s head wound. It hurt a lot. Sorry Love

I am back at 6pm. No more pain love I promise.

kp was uncomfortable but had a generally settled evening. She had half a bowl of vegetable soup with a quarter of a bread bun that Glenn got from the hospital cafe.

She slept most of the evening while I filled in my Income Support forms from the DSS

Took me about 1.5 hours at which point she woke up and we did some turns to get her comfy at which point she rewarded me with :-

kp:- You are being so patient
dp:- Thanks Love. I really appreciate that, but I think it is you who is being patient.

Good Old kp.

I gave her the night’s tablets.

Switched off the drip which had just finished.

And left her to sleep……………………