Critical Care visit

Before we set out for Papworth hospital, a two hundred mile drive, yesterday morning, I found enough time to prepare a Sunday sermon for my visit to Blaenafon, to cover two services for Rufus while he's on holiday. With stops to eat and traffic jams on the approaches to north south motorways it took us four an a half hours. The hospital is on the edge of the Cambridgeshire country village of Papworth Everard, half way between St Neots and Cambridge, where it has grown up over the past forty years as a global centre of excellence for heart surgery and transplants. In three years time, a new Papworth hospital will come into service on the same site as Addenbrokes hospital in Cambridge, teaching centre for the University medical department.

We met Ann, had a catch up chat, then went into see Eddie, still unconscious and on a ventilator, but showing signs of physical movement and an eventual slow painful awakening, although this could take several days, after the kind of surgery he's endured. His colour and vital signs are good, and like others among the two dozen patient in Critical Care he has a nurse at the end of his bed watching a monitor screen, that reports not only on his condition, but is a control panel for his medications, being delivered to him by a bank of pumps feeding into the same intravenous line. It's state of the art tech, while the discipline and dedication of the staff team is classic excellence. The ward is busy, if quiet apart from the variety of electronic beeps and blips issuing from various devices. "Like a spaceship" somebody said.

No more than two visitors per bed at a time are allowed. Facilities for those accompanying patients are modest. The atmosphere in the visitors day room could be described as subdued and tense. There's nobody waiting who isn't having a hard time, except for little ones who have no idea of what is going on. I wondered if there was anyone on duty supporting patient visitors, or what chaplaincy arrangements there were, but I noticed nothing on the walls to tell me. 

There is accommodation for those needing to make an overnight stay while visiting. Having had a night without sleep, Ann checked into a hotel a few miles away, to get a good long rest and decent breakfast. Clare and Ann agreed to spend another night at the same hotel, and I drove them both there before setting out for home. I was unable to cancel my Sunday arrangements at such short notice, as Rufus was out of the country on holiday, not contactable. So I had to return the same day. On Monday work begins on re-fashioning the back garden, including new tiling for haphazardly covered hard surfaces. My task, to move all the flower pots and troughs into our neighbour's garden for the time it takes to get the job done, and get the shed ready to be moved onto the grass for a while.

The roads were reasonably quiet all the way home, but driving in the dark on intermittently unlit country roads was not enjoyable. There was a road closure on the Gloucester outer ring road which prevented me from accessing the A48 Chepstow road. Diversion signs were unclear and erroneously, I ventured a few miles out in deep darkness on the A48 towards Tewkesbury without finding a sign of a diversion. I had to go right back into town and pick up the inner ring road to find my way to the A48 to continue the last sixty miles of my journey. Still, made it home without incident, and after a bite to eat and time to relax, went to bed late and thankfully slept well. It's quite a while since I last drove four hundred miles in one day.