At roughly 8pm I arrived at a packed A&E waiting room and told that Annie was docked in a corridor somewhere and that I needed to wait until she was allocated a spare bay in the A&E ward before I could see her.  Roughly half an hour later I was called in by a nurse.

Annie told me that her ambulance driver was furious at what had happened in between the time.

Before her arrival at the hospital, the doctors at the hospice called the hospital to ask if there was a bed in the AMU (Acute Medical Unit). They were told that there was a bed free for Annie and the ambulance crew came immediately to take Annie literally from her bed in the hospice to the one allocated in the AMU at the hospital. However, on arrival, the AMU was heaving –  corridors weaved with a zig-zag of blue curtain walls for the overflow of patients. As a result, Annie and I were placed in a cold corner of A&E from 8:30pm until 2:00am this morning when a doctor finally came to deal with Annie, hooking her up to an IV pouch of antibiotics (Meropenem).

An hour later she was taken for a chest x-ray; one thing they’d like to also rule out is a possible blood clot on the lung (we would like to see that ruled out too!). Then at 4am we were finally allocated a ward. Ironically, the good news was that the ward was not going to be in the AMU. Instead, they had located a very quiet ward on the ground floor where temperature and temperament were notably more conducive for the kind of respite we hoped God would provide Annie with. My prayer (see previous post) was that the Lord would carve a channel of peace through the chaos of the AMU ward so that Annie might not undergo the same week she had just before Christmas. It’s taken some time, but that prayer has been answered in God’s way and in God’s timing.

I have just arrived home at it’s roughly 5am so I suspect I will surface a bit later tomorrow morning.

I know that a number of you were praying through the night and sharing words of encouragement over SMS text. May the Lord bless you with rest and peace. Thank you for bearing our burdens in the strength that the Lord provides.

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. – Galatians 6:2

R&A