Last Night

This Foxglove is for my Uncle who died last night - he once told me it was his favourite flower. He was my father's younger brother. We grew up with his family in Zambia and he's always held a special uncle place in my heart and always will.

 I spent most of yesterday in Plymouth with my brother-in law looking after his sweet granddaughter who wasn't very well and was still brave and resilient and willing to play peek-a-boo round and round the coffee table and to empty out the kitchen cupboards and scatter their contents onto the floor.... Weetabix, rice cakes, onions, tinfoil - a wonderful game.

I spent most of last night with my husband in the A&E at the Royal Devon & Exeter hospital. He came to meet me at the Park and Ride at 7pm.... told me he had the broken-off tip of a cotton bud stuck down his ear.  We sat for four hours in the waiting room, getting colder and hungrier as the minutes ticked by, me reading the same Woman and Home magazine.....

It's one of the worst things you can ask my husband to do -  to wait with no idea of when something is going to happen, or how long it'll be or if they'll be able to sort out the problem and with nothing to distract him, nothing to eat or drink, nothing he can read and I ran out of conversation a long time ago. But he was more patient and good humoured than I was. The waiting room gradually filled up with people  - on crutches, in a wheel chair, with a fractured hand, a broken ankle and a man with blood on his face and on his coat who walked around talking to anyone, reading the notice boards and drumming rhythms on the chairs. 

During that time we saw a pretty triage nurse, a stern but lovely doctor in a green uniform who couldn't dig it out, a pregnant trainee doctor in a blue uniform who went off with a bunch of keys to look for a special piece of kit to dig it out with, and finally a delicious young ENT consultant in an orange uniform who finally hoiked out the offending cotton bud with a torch and the lethal looking piece of kit.

My husband was so grateful to be able to hear properly again and although I felt like screaming with frustration and tiredness I'm still deeply grateful for the NHS - stretched to breaking point - and for all the wonderful nurses doctors working through the night for us  - kind, cheerful, skilled and exhausted.

I think my husband has finally got the message about not sticking anything in your ear smaller than your elbow - all cotton buds confiscated now.

We got home about 11.30pm - hot marmite toast never tasted so good.