Plans were made to move him onto the surgical ward.
Along came the porters and we gathered up his belongings and we left the safety of the ITU with one staff assigned to each patient 24 hours a day, onto a ward with 10 other patients and not as many staff.
When his bed was parked into its space, and his nurse said goodbye, we felt a little bit insecure. All the machinery had been taken away apart from his morphine and catheter bag. The insulin monitor had gone too.
The girls and I hung around for a while and made sure he had settled in, putting his things away in his cupboards, while nurses came and did obs and wandered off.
I had to remind myself that intensive care is a different world to a normal ward and this is they way it has to be, and that was the way it was.
Over the weekend, everything was pretty normal. Ady wasn't allowed to eat anything except ensure drinks. His choices were chocolate, banana, vanilla or strawberry....oohh what to have for breakfast !!!!
Visitors came and went, and so did the ensure drinks.
Ady spent some of his time toddling up and down the ward with his new friends he had made. They walked along with their zimmer frames, catheter bag dangling over the front and open gown at the back, support stockings and slippers on !
He complained to the consultant that his legs were very painful, and pointed to the painful part to which the consultant said " I'm not surprised since you have had your legs in stirrups for four hours" Oh, the embarrassment at that thought !!!
Ady was quite aware that he was by far the youngest on the ward and that the age of his children was the age of the other patients grand children.
In all, a good weekend was had and Ady was recovering well. They even took the morphine away cos he didn't need it anymore.
On Monday morning I had a call form Ady, in floods of tears. He was absolutely beside himself, sobbing and he didn't know why. Anything I said, made no difference, so off I went to the hospital to see him. (Thank the Lord for the mothers dinners they were cooking!).
We sat on his bed and closed the curtain and just cuddled while he cried.
When I left, the consultant was called. They agreed to remove his catheter and let him have a cup of tea and some toast. They told him that once he had done a poo, that was his ticket home and that was all he was waiting for.
At Ady's request, I cancelled his visitors for that day and sent my sister to see him. She checked with me what he wanted to hear and what he didn't and she turned up with a bottle of squash and a good shoulder. Ady was pleased he saw her and Diana hoped the visit had gone well....I think it did!
On the Tuesday, I rang Ady in the morning and he seemed much happier...he told me that he had had a shower with Carlos !!!!!! CARLOS I said, and who the feck is he !!!!! To my relief, Carlos was a nurse who helped him to the shower to freshen up.....Thank God !!
On Wednesday morning, I got a call from Ady to say that he had done a tiny poo, and that was good enough, according to the consultant , to go home...YAY !!!!
The physio came and checked his lungs and made sure he could walk up the stairs and we packed his bags. The nurse gave me instructions on dressing and cleaning his wound, which was stitched from his belly button to his pubic bone and off we went. HOME !!
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