Carbis Bay.
The Mousehole Male Voice Choir.
Laughter. The undecipherable Manchester accent. And Cornish Methodists. All these things are close to my heart, and Jean is at the center of each.
It was while I was planning the next Cornwall trip that she fell. While fixing herself a pot of tea one fine evening, Jean turned around. Something in that movement started her tipping, and then she couldn't stop. There was a kind of 'crack', and it was, in fact, a broken hip.
Rising up, or rolling over, or moving in any way at all became obviously impossible, so she took hold of her pendant, the kind that if you give it a squeeze, an ambulance is alerted. She squeezed, and an ambulance was alerted, but - and this is the hard bit - there were 17 ambulances stacked up outside the hospital, and it would be 9 hours before one would reach her.
When her daughter arrived, they two lay together on the kitchen floor, waiting and praying, praying and waiting. Jean was no stranger to ambulances, having been rescued before. Once, she fell over in her garden and couldn't get back up. Nothing broke, her head was fine, and she felt perfectly well. It was just that she couldn't 'shift'.
"When the young men came to get me, they were so jolly (it was apparently complicated getting her back up and they had all got the giggles) that I thanked them over and over whilst they carried me into the house!"
But this time would be different. She has been in 3 different hospitals, had surgery, contracted two infections, and found herself in a ward with dementia patients. She didn't have anything against the dementia patients, but said, "It would have been nice to have someone to talk to."
I think that although she is so smart and alert, the hospital didn't realize she is actually 35, not 90!
She came back to her house, yesterday, and I am willing to bet that the nurses, the Sisters, and the doctors all miss her presence there. She is a light in this darkened world, and is not ashamed to say why that is.
The Lord is her Shepherd.
See you along the Way!
the SconeLady
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