She made the best of things with heroic goodwill, but it was not easy. ‘Nights are the worst,’ she said to me once. ‘I hardly sleep. Nights are very long.’
I am sure they were. To be awake, uncomfortable, and scarcely able to move for hours on end must have been a torment. I asked her about getting a nurse to shift her position.
‘There aren’t any nurses overnight,’ she said. ‘Well, not what I would call a nurse. There are all these different women who come from an agency. You never see the same one twice, and they are so slow. I don’t know what they are supposed to do. They amble around, or sit chatting, but you can’t ask them to do anything, because they won’t.’
I thought of my own months of night duty as a student nurse, when we were constantly on the move in a ward of thirty beds.
‘But what about the night sister?’ I said. ‘You could ask her to get the nurses to move you.’
‘I haven’t seen a night sister since I’ve been here,’ she said simply.
The ward was hot and claustrophobic, but the summer wore itself away and autumn brought with it cooler weather, which was a relief. Many times X-rays had been taken, but, to Leah’s disappointment, each time they showed that the leg had not healed and the huge plaster could not be removed. She would have to stick it out.
In November, after five months of discomfort and immobility, it was finally taken off and a knee-to-ankle plaster was fitted. She was overjoyed, and when the nurses brought her a Zimmer frame, she practised walking with the zeal of a young athlete training for the Olympics. Finally, she went to a rehabilitation centre where, to her delight, she had a room of her own. There was a high staff/patient ratio there, and she had a lot of physiotherapy. At last, the short plaster was removed, and life skills were introduced, such as walking up and down stairs, taking a bath and shower, using the kitchen, cooking a meal. She was determined to succeed, and within a fortnight, after six weary months in hospital, Leah was ready to go home.
Leah was treated entirely by the National Health Service, and from my observation as a visitor, I would say that she received good treatment throughout. The ambulance emergency treatment on the night of the break was impeccable, and the fact that she survived was little short of a miracle, and due entirely to her hospital care. Having been trained in the old school of nursing, when discipline was rigid, I was a bit shaken by the free-and-easy attitude of the nurses, but I think that is just my age – everything has loosened up in the last fifty years, and no one today would put up with the sort of nonsense that manacled us young nurses. There was, undoubtedly, a relaxed and cheerful atmosphere generated by the nurses. They sat on beds, chatted and laughed with the patients – things we would never have dared to do. I had the uneasy feeling, though, that no one seemed to be in charge, and I discussed this with Leah.
Leah agreed. ‘I’ve been in several different wards, both here and in the main hospital, and I could never have told you who was in charge.’
The main hospital was superior in every way to the long-stay geriatric hospital. But this has always been the situation. There is no point in looking back sentimentally and moaning, ‘It was better in my day.’ because it was not. The drama and excitement of surgery, acute medicine, emergency care, have always been the aspects of medicine that have attracted staff, and the career structure of the professions reflects this. An ambitious young doctor or nurse will rarely go into geriatrics if he or she wants to get on in the profession.
On the whole, I would say that things are probably better today than they were half a century ago. Staff shortage is no less acute, but at least Leah was in a ward with only fifteen other patients, and there was a reasonable distance between each bed. In my day, wards contained between thirty and forty beds, with about two foot of space between them.
Leah spent about four months in the geriatric hospital. In general, she was treated with kindness, courtesy and professionalism. The weariness and boredom of her situation she coped with in her own way, through mental activity and engaging with staff, who seemed to go out of their way to keep her spirits up. Quite simply, they were good to her.
2008
HOMECOMING
Leah was discharged in December under the care of her GP, a district nurse and a home help. She occupied a beautiful ground floor flat in a large Victorian house that was divided into twelve. She was the oldest resident and everyone knew and liked her. Something akin to a reception committee was waiting in the hall to greet her when the ambulance brought her home. She was thrilled, and not a little touched, by all the attention.
However, she was basically alone, and had to manage. Indeed, it was what she wanted, as she was fiercely, almost aggressively, independent. Her grandson begged her to come and live with them in Israel, but she refused. It was pointed out that she could afford to pay a carer to live in for a while. ‘I should hate it,’ she replied. ‘I have to learn to manage by myself.’ And slowly and surely she did. Every step with the Zimmer frame was tortuous, every turn to get something from a cupboard or the fridge was frightening to watch, but she wouldn’t let anyone do it for her – ‘I’ve got to do it myself,’ she said. The neighbours, Suzy and Sandy, and her cousin, Carmela, did the shopping for her, and brought in cooked meals.
Predictably, the home help didn’t come up to scratch. ‘She just flicks a duster around the place, doesn’t do anything properly, but I suppose I will have to put up with her until.’ I can do it myself And once, ‘I was disgusted! I gave her my sheets to iron. I had washed them’ – and she had, God only knows how – ‘and she only had to iron them, and put them on the bed. When I went to bed that night, would you believe it, I found that she had only ironed the top and bottom of a folded sheet, and not opened it out to iron the middle. I have never been so disgusted in all my life! I had to get up at 11 o’clock, take the sheets off the bed and iron them myself. I will never give her sheets to iron again – never.’ The thought of Leah stripping a bed, manipulating an iron and ironing board whilst clinging to a Zimmer frame, then making the bed in the middle of the night, sent a shiver down my spine. But I kept very quiet on that one. I have never ironed a sheet, to my recollection. My attitude is – if you can’t give a thing a shake and put it on the bed it’s not worth keeping! But I could hardly say that, could I? I didn’t want to end up in her ‘disgusted’ book.
Her social life intensified. She couldn’t get out, so people came to her. She revived her former bridge parties, and played with ferocious zeal, I was told. Bridge is a very difficult game, requiring a quick mind and memory skills. I resigned myself to being wiped off the Scrabble board, although she had the kindness to tell me my game was improving. I found, to my surprise, that I was concentrating fiercely, working out all sorts of sly strategies to outmanoeuvre her, but I never did, she was too quick for me. Then I realised, not at all to my credit, that I was getting irritated, and was determined to beat her. But the craftier I became, the more did she, and she was always one step ahead. Incidentally, she also kept the score, adding it up in her head as we went along. I tried score keeping once and got into such a muddle that she took the task from me without a word.
Steve and Sandy were very good to her, coming in each day to see if she was all right and if she needed anything. They had a baby who was between a year and eighteen months old at that time, and they brought him in to visit her every evening when he’d been bathed and was in his pyjamas ready for bed. Some toys were kept in Leah’s flat so that he could play. The two seemed to love their time together, and I have seen that little boy in the hallway, crawling towards her flat and lifting his hands up towards the door. Even after she had gone, he continued to do this for several months.