“I knew your love of melodrama would get you into trouble one day” i said to my 78 year old husband at visiting time on night while he was in hospital.
“they have threatened to arrest me if I attempt to leave the hospital grounds” he said with a twinkle in his eye, I had the feeling he might try just out of mischief.
He had not known who I was for some time and it was great to have him back, he had been given something to keep his heart going some years before but it had been slowly poisoning him, giving him the symptoms of having dementia, a both heartbreaking and sometimes comical side effect.
He was there because some weeks earlier he had said he had a retention and was unable to pee, I hated calling a doctor because it usually ended up with an ambulance and hospital but he insisted so a doc was called. we duly arrived in accident and emergency where we waited and waited, eventually he pees, I am sitting with him and i hear the urologist say to somebody else ” she’s looking for a social admission”.….. i.e. he meant I was fed up looking after Basil.….……this was so untrue that even to this day it makes my cry to think of it.….…anyway somebody else looks at Basil’s notes and realises there is more wrong than just difficulty peeing, and he is admitted.
a better urologist realises he is in kidney failure and a wonderful consultant realises that his apparent dementia is caused by one of his large array of medicines.….….….after that it all got better, he fairly quickly came back to knowing who I was and his behaviour while distinctly odd at times got back to nearly normal.
it was when he was back to his old self , well nearly, there was a bit of actual dementia there, that his love of melodrama got him into trouble.
i was a bit worried going in that friday night visiting time, would he take it as a betrayal that I had agreed to a 72 hour section under the mental health act, i had been stuck in traffic after the afternoon visit when my mobile phone rang, I couldn’t answer immediately as there was nowhere to stop, at last i pulled over and rang the person back , it was the consultant, “thank goodness you phoned back ” he said “we need to section your husband before 6 p.m. tonight,.…. I went into a slight shock,.…. “he has threatened to cut his throat” said the doc. we can’t get hold of his daughter, you need to authorise it now.… i worried a bit,.…” he dosn’t mean it”, I said “he occasionally makes the gesture of cutting his throat for dramatic effect but he is a man who is trying to stay alive as long as possible”, “that is as maybe” says the doc “but once he has done that we have to keep him safe, it is only till Monday” . so i said OK.……then I worried that his daughter would think I had betrayed him in some way.……I needn’t have worried.….. ” about time too” was her humorous response to the fact that i had ’ had ‘him committed’
so as i say i was feeling a little anxious at visiting time, we were a close couple and for me to agree that he was ‘mad ’ enough to be detained seemed huge to me.
he thought it funny
he was a man of huge intellect and still had 98 % of his faculties, he could see why it happened.
every so often in his last few months he would mention his being sectioned under the mental health act with pride.
so who would have thought there would be a person with the identical email address as my brother except for one crucial dot.
