Ward 7 (day 26)
Anita is still in hospital in the north she has been there for 26 days now. For the last two weeks I expected her to be transferred but medical complications mean thats not happened. The infection she had on her chest spread to her blood and she has had some strange reactions to the antibiotics. She has also had an abnormal heart rate which left her quite poorly on Saturday. Hopefully that is all now under control and it’s possible this week that she will be transferred and assessed in a psychiatric ward close to home. That should determine at what point she will come home, it could be fairly soon. I hope it is, for her sake but it also makes me queesy to the pit of my stomach. There is no one on this god forsaken planet, who I can love like I love her but I am having to try extremely hard to be positive. The memory of leaving her on that ward full of very old people lies like a dead weight in my heart.
A few months back I received an official letter warning me to make sure any pills or knives where out of her reach. I didn’t like treating someone as intelligent as Anita like that and I had never told her to do anything in the past. From a purely selfish point of view this put me under incredible pressure, something that is not going to let up anytime soon. My spritual beliefs, that we are all set challenges in life that are our destiny, make things clear in my mind. I don’t know how society judges her but the thought of her being mad is total rubbish. She has to get psychiatric help because she’s sane but outside of any other help she can get. She really needs to be getting the sort of theraphy she got after the brain injury. No one will be massaging her left arm now, stuck on that ward. No one will give her lots of physiotheraphy in the psychiatric ward. I know she will blame herself for this set back and the lack of mobility she will have as a result. It’s all down to that shocking brain injury, nothing she does can be wrong having so many important things taken away. She has been to hell and not come back yet and is entitled to be unhappy with her lack of freedom. In the year ahead I will have to try and convince her to live, but like a caged butterfly.