Never Say Die

I never thought I would be writing this, sitting in Mum’s room at the hospital.

“It couldn’t be! There must be something wrong with your X-Rays. I have never been sick in all my life!” she flatly told her Doc earlier in the morning. Unfortunately there was nothing wrong with the X-Rays and Mum reluctantly accepted her fate and was admitted to the hospital last Thursday evening as a typical case of “pneumonia”.

She was given a two-bedded room on the 6^th floor, sharing with a young woman who was recovering from dengue. Pneumonia and dengue, phew! What a combination, I thought. We helped Mum to settle in and left her with our maid, still grumbling and insisting that she was not sick

The trouble began when she started to wander around the wards and later, to our horror, pulled out the tube which the Doc had stuck into her vein for intravenous administration. I shall spare you the bloody details but our maid said she had never seen anything so frightening in her life!

Anyway, the tube was put back and she was given stern warnings by the nurses not to touch it again. She quietly obeyed and much to our relief, we heard no more of a recurring episode on our subsequent visits to the hospital.

But that’s not the end of the story. The day after she was admitted, the hospital moved her down to a less isolated four-bedded room on the 4^th floor and during her four night stay, she kept the nurses on their toes. Before long, she insisted on being sent home. She worked herself up to such a state that her b.p. shot up to incredibly high levels! So to appease her, our maid had to take her on several “tours” of the hospital in a wheelchair for her to let off steam.

To cut a long story short, Mum was discharged the following Monday morning much to the relief of the nurses. She was exhausted when she arrived home, having refused to go to sleep until 3.30 a.m. the night before!

Nobody likes hospitals, least of all Mum .and I don’t blame her for feeling uncomfortable in one. Being surrounded by sick people with gaunt faces doesn’t help much to boost one’s recovery but more often than not, one has no choice but to bear it out.

Now as I watch Mum sleep like a baby on her own bed at home, I am reminded of the time when I was small and was down with measles. I gave everyone a difficult time, so I was told, but Mum was the one who took everything in her stride and made sure I got well again. Funny isn’t it how our roles have reversed with the passage of time. “You’re not my mother, you know!” she growled at me the other day when she stubbornly refused to do as I suggested shortly after her arrival home from the hospital. Well, maybe I had been over-zealous in my duties as a concerned daughter but then I had only good intentions!

Mum is someone who will “never say die” as the expression goes. I must say I admire her grit and tenacity which sadly I have not inherited from her!