A long & emotional Day at the Hospital

Monday 24 November

Louis and I had a bit of a lie in until our diary reminded us that we were due at 7a Endeavour Street at 9am to return a few things to storage and collect a couple of items to take back to Banjo! Accidentally I picked up more than a couple of things... oops! Swung by Zoom for a coffee and chuffed to see The Nukes on a poster up on the wall - the same show I'd seen up in Kerikeri back in September.

After that Louis went off to see Jono on the North Shore to do some drum tracking for a track he’s working on - while I hung out with Amy & Dilligas and did a jigsaw puzzle 🧩 So lovely to spend time with my baby boy - he seems fairly forgiving for the abandonment, and I think he is happy to be living with his sister Amy!

We met up at the hospital around lunch time and waited with Nat, then Hannah too, as Sara & Helen were in radiology getting a scan on her abdomen which was still causing trouble. Walking up and down the corridors to keep busy and get my Fitbit steps, I saw a gorgeous dress walking towards me - looked up and realised it was being worn by Petro who I used to work with at Family Action back in 2021. She is now a social worker at Auckland Hospital and it was lovely to catch up with her again.

Eventually they came back and we were visited by several rafts of nurses, registrars, doctors and surgeons who all decided that this much pain, so long after the surgery, was not good, that there was air inside Helen where it shouldn’t be and she’d need urgent surgery again to investigate/cure/disperse it. Fortunately, as we were being delivered this rather confusing and devastating news, Fiona Burns, daughter of one of Helen's best friends arrived fresh from the airport. Being a doctor herself, she was able to explain to us exactly what they were telling us, but in layman's language, and along with Amy, their medical knowledge came in really handy.

After a difficult conversation around "quality of care" (euphemism for "what if something goes wrong"), Helen was wheeled down for the surgery within the hour.

We knew from their post surgery call at 9.30pm that it wasn’t due to an infection or a ruptured intestine, but that the gas/air had likely seeped into a retro peritoneal cavity during the original op and it seems it had now been dispersed. So here we are, at midnight, Sara, Louis and I waiting for the call to say she’s back on the ward so we can go say good night… and wait for what the morning brings.