Day Seven..

I didn't expect to be writing the blog from the hospital today. But here I am, sat in my usual place. My armchair tucked in close to the right-hand side of Gail's bed, she's lying on her side facing me, eyes closed, but not asleep.

We managed a couple of walks around the hospital today. For a theraputic change of scenery. Thankfully, this hospital benefits from some really nice variations of scenery. We went to the Conservatory and sat for a few quiet moments. That's something that's so very hard to find in this, and probably every other, hospital. Quiet. This is a very big place, with many dedicated rooms and spaces: The Relaxation Room, The Conservatory, The Chapel. But when there's people in them, there's noise in them. You can't escape it... we emit noise. We're in a massive complex, it's a gated community the size of a small town, so it's not surprising that there's constant noise.

On a typical week day a thousand nurses, doctors, outpatients, relatives, consultants, cleaners, students, inpatients and the Professor, walk through the labyrinth of corridors, waiting rooms, treatment rooms, wards, and other exotic and mystifying rooms. The main corridor linking the two wings of the hospital, aka the Glass Corridor (shown in these pictures), is like walking the pavements of a shopping mall. Today, however, it's Sunday, and unlike 'open-all-hours' shopping malls, there's not much going on here and there's hardly anyone around. So happily, we have found our sanctuary of peace on this sabbath day, in The Conservatory. We're both sitting very quietly, reverently. The peace is broken when Gail reminds me that we haven't got long, she has to have a new bag of fluids attached. Gail's brain might be fogged with tiredness, but she' got her mind's eye on the clock, (it'll take a lot more than HDIL-2 to cloud her near cosmic sense of time) and she beckons us to leave our haven and return to the bustle of the ward.

One of the Prof's registrars came to visit Gail earlier. She explained that no firm decision could be made on when we could go home (Gail's desperate to get home) until cardiology, oncology and renal meet up tomorrow to discuss her case. Prof would have the ultimate say. And that's pretty much it. We don't know if Gail will be returning for her second HDIL-2 cycle in a week's time. And we don't know how long Gail will be asked to remain in hospital. The registrar made a valid point, she said, looking directly at me "We wouldn't want anything to happen to Gail while you're half way down the M5." It worked. I was sold the insurance policy! But Gail, being a lass born up north in Yorkshire cut in and said that she could self-administer the anti-clotting drug Fragmin. "Just give me the drugs," she said, "I can do it myself, I've done it before, and we can get back to the children". Touché! That word 'children' is a good one to use in situations like this. That coupled with her admirable self-dependency... can't argue against that, surely? Well apparently you can. You can't live life without insurance. Fair enough. We await the judgement from the experts in the morning.