Choosing....

How do you choose what to put here? Should it be an everyday chronicle? What I had for breakfast? The socks I am wearing? The strange dream that woke me this morning at four am? The reason why I wake at four nearly everyday? The unreal, perfect Magpie I saw driving home tonight? How do you choose?

Yesterday I wrote about the day before, so there is a symmetry if I write about tomorrow, today.

My father, 73 years old and disabled, will be driven to the Hospital and "put under" as he calls it. He will joke with the nurses, my Mother will roll her eyes at his naughtiness and then she will leave him to be treated; all the while worrying without showing.

His Consultant will then attack the facets of his spinal column with over twenty injections of a cocktail of painkillers and steroids. He will feel nothing. The constant pain he has had for over ten years and his increasing frailty will be suspended. He will float blissfully in a sleep-haze, able to put aside his pain-soaked-wakefulness, and annoy all the other patients with his legendary buzz-snore....he can move double-glazing in and out!!

We are so used to his problems that we do not discuss the actual condition any more; it is chronic, progressive and, at this level, rare. He has to wait four months at a time for his treatment and the final month is always the worst; not just for him but also for that rock - my Mother. Tonight he will be taking his morphine and will ask her about the time he has to be there and which hospital it is. She will tell him, not for the first time today and then, a few hours later, he will recall all the wrong details. Pain relief is a wonderful thing.

After they have stuck him, he will sleep and the staff will get concerned; again my Mother will explain that he does not sleep well, not even with his morphine, and when they give him the chance he will grab the pillow with both hands, slam his face into it and stay under for as long as his body can get away with it. She will wake him - none too gently once the medical staff have given up trying - and bring him home. He will be sore, sleepy and still unable to stand up straight.

Then it will happen. A miracle of sorts. He will gradually over the next seven to ten days begin to straighten up, from the four feet eleven he is hunched over at now, to the five feet seven-ish he usually is. The blush will come back to his face, less and less each time as he becomes more and more grey to my eyes; worn out by pain and morphine.

After a few days of steadiness on his feet he will get brave; gathering up his spirit and pushing himself to cross the living room without his frame to aid his steps, to the grumblings of his protective wife. He will smile and stick out his tongue - she poked him in the face with a wet paintbrush the last time (they were decorating at the time). Nose and chin covered in plum-blush-white he turned to me and put on his best puppy-dog eyes; then he faced her. She laughed, plunging me back to my childhood and our home full of their giggles, Dad chasing us, tickles and silliness.

Next week, I will walk into a room with my work colleagues of twenty-three years to find out what the future holds or how much longer our careers will be allowed to continue. The stress is tangible with the announcement being the only topic of the day, everyday. But that night after I have finished work and we have dissected the decision and left the premises I will be going to tell those two strong, fore-bearing, paintbrush-wielding nutters the news.
Others will be thinking of their mortgages, their children, their future; my feet are planted firmly - I want Dad to be standing up straight and my Mum smiling.