english

No no, don’t worry, I was just visiting a friend and saw ER tonight. She’s also a big ER fan but watches it at home and not with a bunch of people like I do. In the Netherlands they are a bit behind with the series, but not that much, just a year and a half. It’s funny to see ER being subtitled. All the medical terms in Latin, and the names of all the medications, I normally take for granted. But they make much more sense when you read them spelled out on the screen.

I also learned some things because they just happened with my mother a couple of days ago. Like the English acronym for oxygen saturation in blood. I immediately forgot that term, but I know now its value should be above the 90s. My mother had often just 80 or so.

My mother is doing much, much better physically. Mentally she’s not so well, maybe her brain was too long deprived of oxygen, because she has more memory problems than before. Every time I visit her she thinks I’m leaving the next day for Montréal, and she also doesn’t remember who visited her the previous day. Not good. She is off the oxygen tube, and basically she’s now occupying a hospital bed waiting until there is room in a nursing home where she can get the care she needs. Her current nursing home is just too understaffed to be up to that task.

I’ve mixed feelings, on one hand I hope she’ll die soon, because she really doesn’t have much to live for. But I also think that is a selfish thought because it would be so convenient for me if she dies when I’m here. Confusing.
My sister jokes that she’ll get worse again the day before I leave, just so I will extend my visit. I hope not, I miss Montréal, Alison and the dogs.

(Translation: “A suggestion for gifts for the holidays. Goat: 36 Euro. Give a goat.)(36 euro is around 55 CAD)

Thank you for all the donations readers of loglog made to my ‘give a goat’-fund. I haven’t reached my goal yet, but we’re getting there. If you haven’t already donated just click on the banner to the right, pull out your credit card and…

In Rotterdam I noticed this billboard in the train station that encourages Dutch people to give goats as well. The goat fever is spreading. So my Dutch readers that have objections to American charities can also donate a ‘geit’ via Oxfam, if they want. I don’t mind, a goat is a goat is a goat. (Note that Dutch goats are white and cheaper. Just an observation.)

I went to Rotterdam last night to watch a sneak preview and meet some friends. After that we went on a pub crawl until 4 AM. Thanks to my jet-lag I had no problem with that. All four of us were, more or less recent house owners. Hans just bought his house and is in the process of renovating it. I almost wanted to stay to help him. After a short night I first went to a shop where they unlocked my Canadian cell phone so I can use it here as well, and then back by train to the city of Nijmegen. It was a very long travel due to a couple of train-car collisions. Fortunately there is so much track in the Netherlands that there is always a way around obstructions. It just costs a little more time: Double the time, in this case.

Finally arrived in the hospital, I found my mother without her oxygen mask (although she still gets additional oxygen through a small hose in her nose) watching TV. She certainly made a lot of progress. So for now she probably pulls through and the death-watch me and my brother and sisters held the last couple of days will be slowly dismantled.

The head nurse told me that they would like to move my mother to another room, but that there was no free bed available. She now occupies an expensive bed in the intensive care unit, even though she doesn’t really need that intensive care anymore. I’ll bet in Québec they would have put tucked her in the corridor somewhere. Here they only put empty beds in the corridor, although in the news they always complain about the shortage of beds. That must be a lie.

I’m writing this sitting next to her bed with my laptop (but no internet connection here). She looks slightly better than yesterday. She is attentive, although she doesn’t remember anything from yesterday, not even that I was there. And neither that there were plenty of other visitors.
Her lungs are still full of slime, and she can’t get rid of it. Even though they tried to let her breathe without oxygen this morning she’s now wears an oxygen mask again because her saturation levels dropped too low. On the photo above she gets a dose of drugs that is sprayed into her mask, so it looks like she’s a fire breathing dragon.
The staff told us they want her transferred to another, ‘normal’ bed in the next couple of days. Intensive care beds are in dire need, here as well as in Canada. She probably can’t go back to her room in the resting home she was in the last couple of years. They simply can’t provide enough care and don’t have enough staff.

I just had a short conversation with her about dying. She’s not afraid, but very insecure. What happens when she’s dead? Nobody knows, but she’s concerned that it isn’t a good place. I couldn’t comfort her, since I don’t know either. She thinks that her life can end every hour, and didn’t believe me when I told her that was unlikely. But she’s ready for it and hopes it doesn’t take too long. Unfortunately for her her body is used to fight and might not grant her wish. Yes, even though this is the Netherlands, active euthanasia is not yet considered. But they won’t intubate her or restart her heart if it stops.

After a very tiring flight (You had to stand two hours or more waiting in line for the cabin-luggage check at Heathrow Airport. I admit I jumped the queue by pretending I was flying business class, so I had to wait only 35 minutes.) I went straight to Nijmegen by train. That city is about 120 km away from the airport, but although the Dutch public transport system is very good (although very expensive) it still takes about two hours to get there. I entered my mother’s room and she was really happy to see me. She is lying in the Intensive care unit, getting oxygen, is connected to heart and blood pressure monitoring equipment and gets various medicines through an IV-drip. She doesn’t talk very much, but she didn’t do that before either. The pain medication she gets to suppress the pain in her paralysed side makes her very drowsy and lethargic. So that part isn’t new.

Overall her situation isn’t that bad though. Apparently yesterday it was much worse, so bad that my sister had called me and I’d decided to take the plane. She was all blue of lack of oxygen because her longs are filled with muck. However currently it looks like she’ll pull through. Until the next heart failure or pneumonia, which could be next week.

I sit next to her bed and read a little, but the very short night I had in the airplane makes me almost fall asleep.

I just booked a flight to the Netherlands. My mother is in very bad condition in the hospital. She has another pneumonia, is hallucinating and is just plain old.

I’ll update when I know more.

Ghana: Children with goat.
Photo: Darcy Kiefel ©Heifer International

You might have noticed I’ve added an ugly banner to the right of this blog. It’s the holiday season and people are giving each-other a lot of stuff. And that when almost everybody is complaining that they already have too much stuff.

So a couple of years ago I decided to stop giving stuff for Christmas, but instead to make donations to good causes. One of them, and a nice one in my opinion, is Heifer International. They have a great ‘modus operandi’: They buy animals, give them to poor families around the globe, and decrease hunger and poverty because these animals provide milk, cheese, eggs, wool and other useful products. The families are also taught how to breed the animals and they have to give away the offspring of their animals so a gift really spreads in their community. If you want to know more, please go to the Heifer website.

Please contribute to my goal of raising $US 333, please click on the banner to the right and donate some money. It doesn’t have to be much, every little bit helps.

(O, and if you’re not in the US, just ignore the “required” field where you have to select your state, it will work anyway.)

Tonight it is Sinterklaas-evening, a Dutch holiday were people (especially kids) get presents from Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas was the inspiration for Santa Claus but it is of course a much nicer holiday.

Grown-ups give each-other also presents, but they are usually accompanied by a poem or rhyme that makes remarks about the (usually bad) behaviour of the receiver. An excellent opportunity to get even.

This morning, very much on cue, a big box was brought by Canada Post, with an enormous amount of postage affixed. The box contained a dozen of small presents, a drawing and a poem. I have no idea who the sender was (I didn’t read the name on the box) but I bet it was Sinterklaas himself. Tonight, while singing Sinterklaas-songs (MIDI alert), we will open the presents.
Thank you Sinterklaas!

(Update:
The loot: poem, drawing of Black Peter, bag of chocolate money, marzipan fruit, a very useful magnifying glass/tweezer contraption, a reading light, a muchy letter for the dogs (they loved it), a chocolate letter, tree ornaments for the X-mas tree, an oil sprayer, a candle, apple cookies, soap and bath foam, and a bag full of confetti! Christmas came early this year!)

Today I helped a friend to install Windows on her brand new Macbook Pro. It is totally strange to see Microsoft’s awful and ugly operating system on such a nice computer.

I had forgotten how bad the Windows installation experience was, it’s been a while since I used a PC. You have to answer a lot of questions during the installation, so you actually have to be sitting in front of your computer, staring at the minute counter that counts down at a terrible slow pace. On the Mac you can just go and do something useful when you install Mac OS X.

It took forever but it all works and my friend can now play her language course CDs, that are only available for Windows. I hope it helps her to learn to speak perfect Dutch.

First snow day. Yay!