I guess most people think of Frank Sinatra when they think of the song “The Best Is Yet to Come”. Well, for those of you who don’t get that excited about auld blue eyes, there is an alternative: The Scorpions, one of Germany’s finest music groups, have a song with that title too. “And the best is yet to come. I know, you know that we’ve only just begun, through the highs and lows. And how can I live without you, you’re such a part of me and you’ve always been the one keeping me forever young – And the best is yet to come.”

While the best IS yet to come, today was pretty good. Having been out house hunting for the early afternoon, I went to see Pádraig a bit later than usual. On my way in, a doctor told me that in the morning, his left lung had collapsed again – and they didn’t quite understand how and why that was happening. As a result, the drainage producing a vacuum to allow his lung to expand again, had not been removed and will stay there for another five days. So, I walked in to Pádraig to tell him about the apartments I had seen. I looked like as if he was asleep. But then, when I called him and started to talk to him, he first opened his right eye (which is closed most of the time ‘normally’) and then also his ‘good’ left eye. When I took his hand and was telling him about my house hunting adventures, he was with me like never before. It was amazing and really emotional. When I told the doctor, he said that he had been quite awake when the Oberärztin had visited earlier in the morning. For the first time, I felt like as if Christmas was getting very near.

Another nice thing happened yesterday that we had been asking for for months: Pádraig  got a visit from a dentist who will get him something like a mouth/teeth guard. And here, we did not even ask for it. Frau Doctor Oberärztin organized it all on her own initiative as she had observed that Pádraig was still grinding his teeth from time to time – and we wouldn’t want him to wake up with bad or damaged teeth!

We have seen people, their needs and their bodies, being neglected because they were not ‘awake’, because they were in a state where, as one doctor once told us, in the past they would have sent them to a  ‘home for the incurables’. In an article in the London Independent, Liz Hunt reported last year that “they may languish for up to six months in the general ward to which they were first admitted.” – Pádraig was there for almost four months, and we have seen a patient kept on an acute ward for more than two years. “As a result”, she writes, “more than 80 per cent of (these) patients are undernourished when they are eventually admitted to a rehabilitation unit. They are usually constipated, suffering muscular contractures, and have been lying looking up at a ceiling. ‘It is not surprising that the brain is not functioning properly under these circumstances. We get the nutrition right, then their bowels and bladders,’ Dr Andrews says.” – Dr Keith Andrews being the director of medical and research services at the Royal Hospital and Home in Putney, London. We may add, that we have come across patients with dropped feet and whose shoulder blades had been dislocated by ‘accident’. While there are 20 beds for mid- to long-term coma patients just in Putney, similar to the number of these beds in the Schön-Klinik, there are 3 (!) in the whole of Ireland, with a waiting time of approximately a year – which, putting it very mildly, at least borders on neglect.

Take my hand, the best is yet to come
Oh can you feel it in the air
It’s in your heart and everywhere
We got to keep that dream alive

Today’s German Music Tip
Aki Bosse, Die schönste Zeit (2013). This is the most up-to-date entry in the ‘German Music Tips’! with some really cool:) one-liners. Check out these, for example:
“Es war 1994 und wir wussten nicht wohin. Also gingen wir in dein Bett.
“Und Berlin war wie New York, ein meilenweit entfernter Ort.”
“Dein erstes Tattoo war dann der Refrain: “It’s better to burn out then to fade away – my my, hey hey”.”
What’s hot
Dentists in ICU and What is yet to come
What’s cold
Pneumothorax
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
“Was wir nicht können
ist irgendwas wiederholen
wir können nicht zurück
und warum sollten wir auch?”
(Aki Bosse, Die schönste Zeit)

Twitter: @forPadraig
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web: http://www.caringforPadraig.org