You won’t believe what happened here last Friday, Nora – you really should have been here!

What a state to be in!  All those years looking after Tom as he went down with one ailment after another and then I go and find him on the bathroom floor next to the pile of dirty washing.  It’s a good job Julian was downstairs having a cup of tea with me as I’d have never got him up onto the bed on my own!  That crash he made would have woken the dead!  Down like a sack of potatoes, he went.  He terrified the cat and even gave the dog a funny turn.  We rang the ambulance and the next thing, there he was, wired for sound like the Blackpool illuminations with all these bleeping machines and flashing lights.  I hate hospitals – the smell, the heat, why is it that hospitals are always so hot, yet doctor’s stethoscopes are always so cold?  Answer me that, Nora.   

I was wondering how long he might stay like that – you know I had three hungry teenagers wanting their tea – I couldn’t sit there like that if he didn’t even know I was there. “Nurse!  Nurse!”  I said, but what a palaver, none of the staff there spoke plain English and I couldn’t get a straight answer.  I said to Julian, I said, we’ll just stay another half an hour, then I’ll nip back, walk the dog, feed the kids and I’ll come back even if you can’t.  Julian was really so good through it all.  Oh, you know Julian, our Nick’s pal.    All I’m saying is, he was perfectly alright before he went to bed, ate his curry all up, drank his beer, oh, I know, I’ve tried, believe me, to make him cut back on all this rubbish food what with his diabetes – I know he shouldn’t be drinking beer, full of sugar is alcohol, but the trouble with Tom is he loves all the things he shouldn’t have.

When we was first wed, he was so handsome in his navy pinstripe on our wedding day – thought we’d go on forever, but then once the kids arrived, we were too busy looking after them to pay each other any attention, then, to rub it in, he goes and gets poorly with his sugar levels, then it’s one ailment after another – he was never well.  I thought more than once he’d gone and slipped into a coma because he always seemed to be asleep!  He never could be bothered with all that diet, exercise and testing blood – “it hurts”, he said.  All those tablets would make anybody rattle, no wonder he was always forgetting which ones he’d taken and when.  I felt sorry for him, but I felt even sorrier for me!  Nobody should have to listen to another person moan and complain as much as he did.  Spoilt everything from the kids’ birthdays to holidays to nights out.  What few friends we had started avoiding us!  He’d sit in the chair all day watching the racing – me and the kids started calling him “the lump in the chair”.  Then, he started staying in bed – the lump in the chair became the lump in the bed!