My weekend was … eventful.
I woke on Saturday morning to discover Bilbo the Moxie was walking funny, with his back legs crossed and his tail down.
I rushed him to the vet where I speculated that he’d blown another anal gland. The vet sighed and took him out the back – to avoid stenching up the examination room – to check.
He returned a few minutes later and said Bilbo’s glands were just fine but he really hadn’t enjoyed having a finger up his butt.
The explanation for his leg issues remains a $170 mystery … he was sent home with some anti-inflammatories for DD to administer while I was in Newcastle for the weekend.
As we left the veterinary surgery my mum messaged to say my dad had fallen and hit the back of his head, but was refusing to go to hospital.
I said I was running a bit behind schedule but would get there as soon as I could.
When I arrived my dad was asleep and I didn’t have the heart to wake him.
I sat with him for about 45 minutes then left two Dubai chocolate bars beside his bed, as it was his 85th birthday on Friday.
As I left I got a text to say the eldest had a skiing accident while away with his dad, plus an accompanying pic of him with a fat lip and various other cuts and bruises.
Oh no!
Then I popped over to see my friend Megz and wish her a belated happy birthday, before heading to my sister’s place to walk her dogs.
We’d only gone a block when my phone started crazily beeping with messages from my mum and sister to call them urgently.
My dad had been found by the nursing home staff in a pool of blood after falling AGAIN. An ambulance had been called.
I rushed the dogs home, jumped in the car, collected my mum and headed to the hospital.
Dad was pretty smashed up – bandaged head, bandaged leg, possible cracked rib, possible cracked eye socket.
He opened one feeble eye and started raving to me about the amazing chocolate he’d discovered beside his bed earlier.
I delightedly informed him that it was a birthday present from me and he asked if I could please bring more next time I visited.
Awwwww.
Then I asked him how he fell. He said he tripped when he got out of bed to put a chocolate wrapper in the bin (Dad is a bit OCD) …
Eeeeeek. So my birthday gift both brightened and ruined his day.
Many hours followed, tag teaming with my mum between the waiting room and the ambulance bay as only one family member was allowed to be with him at a time.
I ducked out for a quick dinner with friends, then picked Mum up around 9.30pm and drove her home, with Dad still in the ambulance bay and no sign of his scans.
I went very wearily to bed, then rose at dawn to walk my sister’s dogs as the full moon set in a sky streaked with the pink rays of sunrise.
I grabbed a quick brekkie with my friend Kim, then headed to Christchurch Cathedral to watch my wonderful friend, The Very Reverend Katherine Bowyer, Dean of Newcastle, preach.
It was a very moving sermon about loving your neighbours (and decrying the war, famine and political pestilence rife in the world right now). I gave her a huge hug afterwards before heading to Bar Beach for some quick whale and dolphin spotting before picking my mum up and heading back to the hospital.
When my sister arrived to take over, I drove Mum home and hit the freeway back to Sydney for a very slow return journey. There were major crashes heading both south and north.
What a weekend. Totally knackered. You couldn’t make this shite up. Shaking my head in disbelief.
Song of the day: Boom Crash Opera “Onion skin”
housegoeshome 
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