Tuesday 29th June

Life is a blur.

My friends take me to Farmer Jones' shop. And I buy bread, oranges, salad leaves, chard, tomatoes and cheese and other good things. Everyone asks after the Old Man.

We go home and eat some of the bread and cheese. And then they take me to the Hospital while they go off elsewhere.

The hospital is quite clear that aftercare for the Old Man is organised by our GP practice.

But I don't really understand why - if he is a patient of one of their consultants (who as far as I know has not visited him during this crisis) - who sends him to another, pretty distant, hospital for an operation - why they then play no part in aftercare from the operation that they said he had to have?

"Catch 22", I guess.

I am focusing on the drug/blood test issue which appears to be central to his stability.... as I understand it. I mean I'm not a doctor but I soon may have to contemplate training as one.

The individual dose unit prescribed by the GP is larger than that of the Hospital. So it seems to me that this alone, plus a less frequent blood test regime, is bound to make the drug/blood relationship lumpier. But I get treated like an idiot and just have to have the Warfarin action time explained to me all over again.

The Hospital also keeps talking about him coming home this Friday. Now, Friday may be convenient for the hospital - but they plainly have no notion of life in the real world.

I have to keep making clear to the staff nurse (doctors are lords and rarely talk to peasants) that after Friday 5pm we poor mortals in need of medical attention are at the mercy of the "Medical Out of Hours Service" which consists of a doctor in an office in the Community Hospital: not answering the phone and not leaving his/her cubbyhole if they can help it.

Our GP's phone is automatically routed through to them after about 5pm on the Friday. That goes on until the Monday morning. The state I am in - I find this very worrying.

Never mind. I will remember what the nurse on the first heart ward said.
"Forget about doctors - just dial 999"

But he does look better. I saw his first totter across the ward. Today the physio says she will take him to try the dummy stairs in the gym.

All this must have been a relief cos I sleep through till gone 8 am the next morning.