Visit To Father

In normal circumstances I would have been off along the coast to photograph and witness the storm surge damage, but I was simply exhausted and did not leave the house until early evening.

I phoned Eddie to hear about the state of Cley reserve, which sounded worse than the 2013 storm surge. Sadly with no protection from the sea, this will happen time and time again. All the hides are immersed in sea water up to the hide flaps in the central hides (Daukes's etc), the A149 is still flooded and inaccessible. Beach Road is 'neck high' in water. Eddie walked along the West Bank to get to coastguards to find the 'beach hotel' filled with shingle again as last time. The loss of wildlife will obviously be substantial. Whilst the rest of the coast faired better, Cley has suffered badly again. More information along the coast here.

I left my house to visit Father and to help him with his tea at 6pm. I arrived at the hospital to a 'bloody' scene. When I walked into the bay on the ward, my Father was obviously not himself and was fidgeting, confused and clothes were stained red with blood. Its sounds worse than it was – he had just pulled out his cannula before I turned up I was told. With nurses busy feeding patients, I decided not to wait and managed to change the sheets and Father's pyjamas myself with help from a lovely nursing auxilliary towards the end of my mission. Father had been fine all morning I was told and had eaten all breakfast and lunch and was conversing normally and was relaxed etc. They had noticed a change in him this afternoon and apparently his potassium levels were low and this can sometimes cause confusion in someone. A bag of potassium was being given intravenously, but with cannula out, this was not going in now! He ate all his tea with me, which was something.

I had no intention of staying all evening, but I ended up doing just that. Another cannula was inserted and the potassium was restarted. Father got worse and looked like he was hallucinating – he was tugging at sheets, clothes, me, the bed rails, everything. He would not keep still for a second and was rambling continuously about everything and nothing. I stayed to stop him pulling out the cannula again, which would have happened if I had left, but I had to go in the end, it was obviously going to continue through the night. I asked staff to ring me, if he became any worse.

I sighed as I walked out of the hospital – such difficult times, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. The seven days of antibiotics finishes this coming Tuesday. The question is, how Father's body will react after that? Will it want to go on or not? I diverted to the garage shop for a chocolate fix and collapsed on the sofa at home.