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Claire was discharged from hospital yesterday as she is much better than she was. She is taking tablets to control the sickness which will hopefully do the job and allow her to eat and drink fairly normally. She’s been signed off work for the rest of the week to allow her to recover some more and adjust to the tablets. It’s really nice to have her home again as the house was feeling kind of empty

Spent an hour or so today reconfiguring the external mailhubs with the new simple config. No complaints so far so I guess it’s working That was my main task of the day, spent the rest of the time doing Remedy queries and catching up outstanding emails which is pretty common for a Monday. Left at 16:00 as it’s my cover night, which was nice and quiet as usual.

We had a card through the door the other day saying that we needed to contact British Gas so they could do an urgent safety inspection of out meter. From previous visits I know this is a load of bollox as the only part of the meter they inspect are the numbers showing how much gas we’ve used. They just want to make sure we haven’t been fiddling them.
Anyway, I phoned the 24 hour automated service only to be told it’s open Monday - Friday 8 till 8… Still, it bodes well for the 24 hour cover they keep wanting to bring in at work

Went and saw Claire again this afternoon and was delighted to see she was pretty much back to her old self. She’s still on the drip to rehydrate her and having injections for the sickness but they seem to be working really well as she only has sickness spells infrequently now. She even managed breakfast and lunch today which is the most she has eaten for a long time!
The Doctor is hopeful that she can be released tomorrow if she continues to make good progress which is obviously excellent news. I suspect she’ll be given pills to continue to treat the sickness at home and hopefully that should keep it under control for the rest of the pregnancy.

In related news, I’m still unimpressed at the cleanliness of the ward. I managed to spill some coke on the floor today so borrowed some tissue to mop it up. The tissue was totally black by the time I’d mopped it up so the floor must be filthy. The hospital seem to be spending more money on signs everywhere warning that cleanliness is important rather than actually spending it doing something about it…

Went to see Claire today in hospital, thankfully she is doing much better than she was yesterday. She’s been through 3 bags of saline so far to get her hydrated and was on the fourth whilst I was there. She has also been given injections to try and stop the sickness and heartburn, which seem to work fairly well though the sickness was starting to come back at the end of the visit.
As we thought, she has been diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum, which is basically extreme morning sickness. This can be pretty serious as it’s easy to get very dehydrated as you can’t keep fluids down.

The doctors seem to think Claire is likely to be in for two or three days whilst they monitor her condition and try and stabilise the sickness. She’ll probably them be prescribed some strong anti-sickness drugs before being released, which reading up on the condition seem to help most people have a fairly normal pregnancy. I’m back off to see her tomorrow so hopefully she’ll keep on improving and be allowed home soon.

It was quite interesting being in a hospital as I haven’t been near one for ages (thankfully!). I was quite interested to see what was happening with regard to infection control (MRSA always being in the news). When entering the department everyone is meant to use some antiseptic gel to clean their hands. I’ve yet to see a single person use this, including medical staff. Also you’d think general cleanliness would be important. Today Claire found a bedpan in her bedside cupboard full of some moldy and quite frankly scary looking gunk, probably left over from a previous patient. The lady next to her found a moldy sandwich in hers. I fail to see how hospitals are ever going to beat MRSA and other bugs if basic things like this are missed.

On the plus side the staff seem friendly and efficient, if very busy and Claire was checked on a few times whilst I was there. We’ll see how things go tomorrow