Hospital Entrapment

It would be remiss of me to publish a post this week and not mention that my dear Mum has been in hospital for a week. She, who is so strong and always just gets on with whatever needs doing, has been laid up with some stomach problems. She hardly ever gets sick but when she does, she does it spectacularly and gives us all quite a fright. I'm happy to report that she is improving although we don't know yet what further treatment may be required.

It would also be poor form for me not to sing the praises of the medical staff at the hospital, who go about their work with such care and professionalism. I'm almost certain that the nurses are 'angels who walk among us' as only angelic beings could do what they do. The sights, sounds and smells of a hospital are enough to turn the stomachs of mere mortals. At one point last week as I was skulking in the corridor, practically overcome with the fumes of the ward and contemplating the benefits of a gas mask; when a nurse came out and proceeded to fix herself a big mug of tea into which she then dunked a Rich Tea biscuit.

Initially, Mum wasn't up to a lot of visitors but this past weekend, I thought it might be a nice idea for the kids to pop in to cheer her up. The children wanted to go into the building that we have passed by many a time and  about which the older ones always say, 'that's where I was born.' I thought it would also be good to reassure the kids that Grandma was not on death's door as the first thing they always say when told someone is in hospital is, 'Are they going to die?' (Is that just my kids or all kids I wonder?!)

The children were under strict instructions to behave and not bump any of Grandma's tubes and other paraphernalia. I hadn't really given much thought to the fact that the hospital was an exciting place for them, an adventure playground of sorts,  with extremely long corridors for my little one to practise her skipping in, elevators to be ridden,  buttons to be pressed, soap dispensers everywhere filled with lots of frothy bubbles and worse of all, a revolving door in the entrance way.

I must admit that it was all going brilliantly. They behaved impeccably whilst visiting Grandma, enjoyed the views from the third floor and then we made our way back down in the lift to the ground floor. We were almost out the doors, drama and incident free when as I stepped out into the sunlight; I realised that the two younger ones has decided to take a few extra turns  around the revolving doors. On their third or fourth 'ride', they ended up jamming the doors. As luck would have it, the doors jammed with them trapped in the middle part of the doorway where they could neither get in or out of the hospital. If that wasn't bad enough, exactly opposite them on the other side of the revolving doors also trapped, was an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair and his carer.

At this point I figured that the doors would automatically release within a few seconds or minutes so did what any sane mother would do, walked off and pretended that the children weren't mine.

Who says Motherhood is for wimps? I can assure you that it's not!