Italian doctors are thorough but slow
I've been in Italy for the last few days to see my mother who is in hospital.
It is very hard to say whether it is serious or not; she had been losing a considerable amount of blood through her faeces and was taken into hospital to receive some blood transfusions and to undergo a series of tests.
The hospital is new, clean and more than adequately staffed. The doctors sound competent and are very thorough. They think they might have found some trivial skin growth near her 72-year-old appendix scar that could be the origin if the bleeding, but they need more tests to confirm.
Unfortunately, for some reason to us unknown, the tests are performed one week apart. This means that today is the start of her fourth week in hospital.
And because she only just had cataract surgery, she cannot read, do crosswords or crochet, so all she does all day is lie in semi-darkness, pray, and drink pint after pint of water to prepare her bowels for another test.
Her rosary beads - and her patience - are by now nearly worn out.
Saturday 8 September 2007 at 10:44 am
[...] now I'm told that my mother has been in hospital for a week. Same medical problems she had a few months ago. She is waiting to hear what they think she has this time, hopefully in a few days and not after [...]