Fiona's Quiet Life

“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.

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