Lady Cilento Hospital

Today I went to visit Aidan in hospital,

This is the new Children's hospital in Brisbane. For us it is further away but train and bus gets us there in about an hour and a half. This morning being Sunday I checked the times for weekend travel and the web site gave me the next available time of 9.06 am. Thank goodness Warren had taken me down early as the train rocked up at the usual time of 8.55 am. Takes just over an hour to Roma Street and then the buses go from there, there are about six buses that we can take and had had to wait no more than four minutes. Five stops and then Mater Hill which is the hospital stop and a couple of hundred metres walk.

This is a poster of Aidan taken when he was four, it is on the second floor. He was at the Starlight room for a visit and I took him to get a photo with his poster, he wasn't all that happy about it as lunch was about to be served.

This is the wishing tree that kids can add their wishes to, it is opposite Aidan's poster.

A hospital visit

Today I went in to visit Aidan and was surprised to see Sheridan there, I had forgotten that she had a few days off work! He had to interview an "old" person for a school project. Sheri wrote out the questions for him and asked me the questions and wrote down the answers. Doctors and a cleaner came in while he was doing it, its a busy place, his room. Had just enough time to go to the family room where he played and we had a coffee.

Lunch time and as he has to be isolated on the ward, we selected his lunch and took it to him. Sheridan and I took ourselves off to the Sushi Train cafe which is just outside the hospital probably a couple of hundred metres. I had eaten there once before but we had ordered off the menu today however we just picked dishes as they came around.

I will be going into hospital again tomorrow and I have been asked to bring in some more cones. Grampy got him a remote car last week and he wants the cones to drive around and he would like some craft stuff.

I finally got to the library and Spotlight this afternoon so have books to read and sewing to do, I needed (wanted) some patterns to make some tops for myself, have plenty of material just need the inspiration to do something with it, hopefully new patterns will be it.

Blasted mobile phones

Very rarely do I get a phone call on my mobile, not that i am complaining about that and I don't like to be without it, (usually I don't quite know where it exactly is anyway.)

This morning I went to get my hair cut and then across to the libary, I could have walked but 800m carrying heavy books doesn't do my shoulders any good so I drove. As I am driving and the radio is on, there seemed to be two songs playing, thought to self "Some-one has stuffed up". I like to listen to a local station thats a further up the coast and I think it is a community station. As we both worked on community radio, its easier to tell now when there is or has been a stuff up. I parked and turned off the car, music still playing oh, sh.....its my phone! Now to find it in my bag, I now have a handbag insert with lots of pockets, brilliant except when one doesn't know which pocket the phone is in. Got it just as the music stopped.

It was a message from Telstra telling me that if I use 10 minutes of text time in the next week, i can get 150 minutes free, yep like I need that! Seeing I send about one text every month and my phone is paid up for the year, well $70 worth for up to a year, doubt if I will use that.

Got my next fix of books and did the groceries for the week, finally on the way home and blow me down my phone rings again, at least this time I did know what it was but I was driving and figured tat it was probably another deal. As i arrived home, Warren is out the front with a back pack on, he is heading to the bus stop to end up at a hospital, he had tried to ring me to say he was going. A friend had been admitted on the weekend so he was going visiting.

Mobile phones are good and handy and Murphy's law says that they will ring when doing something else. Very hefty fine if phone is picked up while driving but it is a big temptation to do it.

Trust me! Out of the mouths of babes.

My youngest grandson is in hospital at the moment and I went to visit him yesterday. I arrive and hes watching cartoons on TV as well as being hooked up to an IV drip, "Hi Nana!" he says and goes back watching. I said to him that I saw on the wall that he had gym later that morning, "Yep" he says without taking eyes off the cartoons. "You can go and have a coffee" "I have just got here" "Not now" he says "When you take me to gym, big people can go and have a coffee then." Nothing like being told what to do from a six year!

The physio girl comes in and asks if he's ready to do his huffs and puffs (they need to paddle his back etc to loosen the mucus on his lungs)everyone gets real excited when he is able to cough and spit after each position. Another physio person comes in to ask if I was taking him down to gym (it saves one of the nurses having to walk him down). He got dressed after, must have street clothes and shoes and socks to go to gym and we wander down thru the lifts, outside the hospital and past the cafe. "Oh Nana, when you get a coffee, could I have a coke please?" "Sure, I'll bring one for you when I pick you up." The calories in coke are good for him. The receptionists know him of course and tell us to go thru to see Stu, Aidan likes "the boy" at the gym. Memory like an elephant except for names so he just refers to him as "That boy" (Stu would probably be mid thirties!) Aidan checks out what he is doing that morning and sees me still there, "Go on Nana, coffee time!" I leave after checking what time to collect him.

After gym, Aidan wants to go back to his room via the lifts, I'm not as confident using the lifts to get back but he is insistent that he knows the way and presses 4 in the lift. No, not that way so we go back down to the first floor and walk to the main entrance,I was intending to walk around to the lifts by the car park and then up. Aidan tells me that we can use the lifts in the main foyer, I'm not so sure. "Come on Nana, Trust me!" says the boy. Again we go up to the fourth floor and as soon as we step out, he says "Whoops, wrong one!"
Back to the bottom and then we go the way that I knew, finally getting to his room, where the clown doctors were waiting for him. Six months ago when he was last in hospital, he didn't want to know them but this time he was quite happy to spend a few minutes with them.

Seeing him is like a breath of fresh air, he always makes me chuckle.