Head Full Of Wrong

I don't much like hospitals. Of course, that's a sentiment so common that it approaches cliche, but I feel like I should mention it. I, and other members of my immediate family, have spent far more time in hospital than, wait for it, would seem healthy. Bad-dum tish.

Yesterday my father was admitted to hospital, and I couldn't be happier.

Even writing that now feels strange, like I've entirely missed the point of hospitals being a place where you go when things are going badly. But after weeks of watching my father's health spiral rapidly downwards, it's a relief to know that he's finally going to get some help.

The NHS gets a lot of grief. There seems to be a neverending stream of complaints, of newspapers packed with tragic stories of mistreatment and MRSA. Of course, that's because the loudest people are always those with complaints. People who are satisfied just go home and get on with the rest of their lives; they don't feel it necessary to contact the tabloids to say how well everything went. I know how they feel, because I shan't be contacting the newspapers with a glowing report of yesterdays events, but I feel like some record should exist of how things sometimes go exactly right. Hence, here I am.

So, yesterday afternoon I took my father to his GP to have his latest worrying development examined. After a brief - and, miraculously, early - session, the doctor recommended that we go to the hospital. While we waited he wrote a letter of admission, and while we were travelling to the A+E department he telephoned ahead to ensure that they knew we were coming and that we  wouldn't have to wait. We were taken virtually straight from reception through for examination, which was performed promptly and efficiently by an exceptionally friendly and helpful nurse. Within minutes of that examination he was getting treatment, and within two hours he was on a ward.

He's already perked up overnight, and while things are still bad and there are still numerous worries around his health, the response so far has been exceptional. And it's amazing what a knock-on effect this good experience has had; the rest of the family are far more at ease, and far more confident that we'll be able to get him through this.

He's not out of the woods by a long way, and he'll be in hospital for a week at a bare minimum, so I'm not counting my chickens just yet. All the same, to stretch the metaphor to breaking point, this is the first time in a long time that I've even acknowledged the existence of chickens, and even potential chickens are an improvement.

There's a big problem with making a commitment, even to yourself, that you're going to do something every day, and it's this: no matter how enthusiastic you are, or how good your intentions, you never know when something's going to come along and kick your face off.

That's been happening to me lately - unforeseen circumstances of least desirable kind, which have conspired to make my life a very unpleasant place to be, and which have leapt, jaguar-like, straight to the top of my list of priorities with an ease which reveals just how flimsy and unimportant everything else I was doing actually turned out to be. Thankfully, these circumstances have not affected my ability to construct long, overly complicated sentences which do not so much get to the point as meander nonchalently around it, casting longing glances in its direction, as I have now proven twice in a row.

I have had to make a hard decision, and the conclusion I've arrive at is this: I have to indulge myself more.

The dreadful circumstance I referred to before is the rapidly declining health of my father. I'll not go into details, but what started as a painful but relatively harmless injury has seen his health spiral out of control. It's been a genuinely harrowing time, and I don't know when it will end. My reaction has been to concern myself primarily with him: I have basically become a part-time carer, sharing the responsibilities with my mother, which has meant that I have set aside my own needs and desires in order to best look after my dad.

It was when my hair, which is generally collar-length, reached the base of my shoulder blades that I knew something had to change. I love my father, but I'm trying to rebuild my own life. Much of what little progress I'd made has been undone in the last few months. I have become housebound, not through depression but simply because I've needed to be around my dad; unfortunately, an obvious side effect of that has been, wait for it, a resurgence in my depression. I want to take care of my dad, but I also have to take care of myself.

So, I'm going to go back to doing some of the things I used to enjoy doing. Blogging is a small start, and represents more of a mental shift than anything else: for a while now I've been unable to concentrate on anything other than my father's illness, and returning here will hopefully mean that I'm able to start concentrating on other things. Next tuesday I shall have my first driving lesson. After that I shall have to look for a job. Hopefully these steps will lead to other things; having the ability to be more outgoing should lead to me actually being, well, more outgoing.

The trick, of course, is to try and find a balance between taking care of myself and taking care of my dad. I suppose that's the balance that all carers struggle to find, and I wonder how well I'll be able to do it. I will worry about my dad no matter what I do, and I want to help look after him, but at the same time I have to be slightly selfish and worry about my own life.

At the very least this marks my return to the world of blogging. Beware, internet, beware.