There are classes for the mothers of babies, but there’s no helping with your mum and dad growing old
Old people’s wards are hell for old people. Geriatric wards are bedlam, bonkers, bananas. A toothless woman screaming when left alone, a cry that reaches the high hospital ceiling. A woman effing and blinding – the polite curtain will not protect her from the indignity of a nappy change. A woman who lives the same moment in repeat, dressed up for going home in a bright red anorak, over the dressing gown, asking for the key to her house, saying over and over: “Am I going home today?” Or a woman who shouts at the nurses: “Stop treating me like a plate of mince.”
Earlier this year, my parents both ended up in hospital at around the same time and the cause was the same thing. Antibiotics. Or rather, dehydration caused by antibiotics. My mum was first; she was so dehydrated she was having visions. Antibiotics revolutionised the treatment of bacterial infections in the 20th century – but for old people they can dry the kidneys, give them fever, nausea, nerve damage and affect their balance.
The acute assessment unit was like Dante’s vision of hell: abandon all hope, ye who enter here
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