Another afternoon at the hospital

I have just got back from visiting Edna. I left home just after 2 and I have got home just afer 4. Every hospital visit takes at least 90 minutes out of my day. This is one reason why I find it all so tiring.

Another reason is that I find the visits themselves tiring. I am trying to work out why . I find talking to her so difficult. She often gets lost in the middle of a sentence and then she gets frustrated and upset. That is usually followed by a statement of resignation. I can't beleive I have been so slow to realise this but that is undoubtedly the reason she has stopped going to the common room at Fosters. She HATES the fact that she forgets things.

She looks around the ward all the time I am there smiling at people as if she knows them. Half the time I am sure she doesn;t But when she has stopped smiling at them she then tells me things about them. Apparently Gabriel (male rehab assistant) has 4 children - 3 girls and a boy. Now it is possible she HAS discussed things like that with him - but it seems unlikely because he is afrocarribean - and her attitude to all non-white races is sadly anachronistic - and very un pc. At times the things she says embarrases me. So I find it diffcult to beleive that she would have that sort of converstaion with him. It is even more unlikley that she would remember such details.. So I am sure that when she tells me things like that they cannot be true.

What I am puzzled about is why she thinks she HAS been told these things? Or even worse why she is deliberately making them up. I am guessing its because it gives the illusion of normality in her life.She is a bit of a nasey parker and always likes to know what is going on round her.

Today she made a very telling statement. She said she doesnt belive in life after death - but that hell is here on earth.

She came out with other stuff that cannot be true -like somone doig laundry for her. I think she was getting mixed up with the girls at Fosters. I think a lot of the thigns she tells me are like that. They are things that have happened - or that she has been told - but not in the time and circumstances she attricutes it to when she tells me.

I feel I am damned if I do and damned if I dont as far as correcting her ins concerned. If I DO manage to find a flaw that makes it obvious that what she has said isnt true, she gets upset. If I accept what she says at face value - and then it becomes obvious to her that she MUST have been wrong, she will get upset that I haven't corrected her.

I think the visits are so tiring because of the mental effort and stress or talking to her.

Pretty obvious really

Dear God where will all this end?