When I arrived, kp was asleep. Asleep is too light a word, she was very very deeply asleep. She didn’t hear

• Me arrive
• Marie tell me everything that occurred on the afternoon
• Mum and Dad arrive
• Mum and Dad discuss things
• Nurse shouting at her if she wanted soup

She even scratched her head in her sleep, said “Ow !!!!” ‘cos it hurt and still didn’t wake up. Seriously.

I can’t remember if it was Marie shouting “Karen” or something else that woke her. Even when awake, she didn’t realise Mum and Dad were here for a minute or two.

She had had a VERY tiring day. The morning I have already mentioned in Part One. The afternoon was jam-packed according to Marie.

• The nurses came in to change all kp’s dressings.
• The consultant who performed the initial pelvis operation on Karen visited to see how she was doing and to inspect her wounds. This meant all the newly done dressings had to be removed.
• He was very pleased with the wounds and advised a new type of dressing.
• The nurses came and redressed all the wounds according to the consultant’s wishes.
• Then the physios arrived and gave kp a gruelling physio session with lots of pain (all necessary of course). At one point, the 2 physios were each working on a different kp body part and both were painful. The physios couldn’t work out if kp was saying “Ow!” at the move they were doing or their partner physio was doing. They asked Karen to come up with a different “Ow!” for each physio. Oh, how Karen laughed !
• Somewhere in the midst of all of this was a change of sheets requiring multiple moves.

In a nutshell, kp had a very active afternoon. When Mum and Dad arrived and kp finally woke up, we had some really good laughs. I was amazed that kp had the energy as I could have sworn she would not wake up.

One particular moment I can recall was when Mum was trying to reassure Karen that she would get some compensation for everything she had been through.

Mum:- Oh, you will love. You were nearly dead !

kp was belly laughing at this !! She knows my mum can be a bit “foot in mouth” at times.

Another moment of hilarity is when a member of staff, (Mrs Overall), came along the ward and we could hear her say many times to each different patient :-

Mrs O :- Would you like some Butterscotch Pie ?

This got funnier and funnier as she got closer to Karen’s room. She speaks very like Mrs Overall and when she said it in our room, we had to try very hard to mask our laughter. Mum failed dismally.

Lots of laughs – a great night with a bit of a downer to end.

kp had some sickness and diarrhoea which wasn’t very pleasant. As soon as she had finished, she was out for the count. I barely made it to the door before she was fast asleep.