Monday 30 October 2000

Pic of the day: Another landscape picture. I didn't take any photos at the hospital, nor do I plan to do so.

The son and the father

At breakfast, as I bit into my first mouthful, my heart started to beat more laborously, and I got a sinking feeling in my guts. As the first shock wore off, I remembered that more often than not this "loss of pressure" feeling has heralded just a sudden diarrhea. While inconvenient, it is hardly on the same scale as the things going on in the hospital. So off we went.

My brother drove me to the hospital on his way to work. Once there, I sought out the lavatory (bathroom, restroom, or whatever euphemism that may keep you from getting this urge to wash your hands after reading). Here I found that in the men's section half the stalls were in disrepair. OK, so there were only two, but it really brings home the sad state of Norwegian health care in general.

***

There's not much I can do about Norwegian health care; but there was a time when I would have been willing to try. Good computer systems can make a difference. And the information systems in Norwegian hospitals have been late, clumsy and different. Information from one system had to be printed out and then written into another system; and meanwhile the patient suffered.

But I don't make large software applications anymore; and anyway the problem never was a lack of programmers or software developers. There's something fundamentally wrong with the way our hospitals are organized, as it is also in many other parts of society.

Even so, there are many great people working here. I spent all workday at the hospital. My mother was partly lucid, but could rarely find her words. It is sad to see a poet that way. A couple times she mentioned that she should die or even that they should kill her. But there will not be any need for that. This time it's for real. Only a major miracle can keep her from crossing over quite soon enough.

***

My earthly father is holding up well enough. He is by her side almost all the time, only leaving to get some food now and then. Whenever on such an errand, he will climb the stairs rather than use the elevator, six or seven storeys at a time. So I guess that's where my fondness for stairs come from... along with many other traits.

Well, actually not only for food. Eventually he decided to go to town and get a new definition dictionary. The old one (which I remember from my childhood) was all worn out from all the crosswords he's been solving...

And so he left, silently, after dinner while my mother was sleeping. How typical that it would be such a thing that eventually lured him away! Silently he left, and I know not when I shall see him again. Plans are at best fleeting now. Tomorrow my youngest brother expects me to come to them, though it may be later.

My sister-in-law showed up near a quarter to four in the afternoon. We waited for about half an hour for my father to come back, but then we left when we saw him coming. My mother was sleeping. Which was probably the best she could do, all things considered.