From guilt trip to gratitude via Galway hospital

MUM had an appointment in Galway hospital to see a consultant about some test results. I do the hospital runs while the sisters WhatsApp their support.

That’s the deal. I don’t mind. I’m the eldest and I like being ‘in charge’ of Mam but I do hate an early morning.

We set off at 7am. Neither of us had slept a wink, partly from worry about the results, but mostly from the having-to-get-up-earlyto-go-somewhere-early thing. Being late for an appointment is more a cause for sleeplessness than serious illness.

Mam distracted herself from nerves by talking. Also, it’s her job to keep me entertained so that the two-and-a-half-hour journey doesn’t drag. However, during our family gossip, I missed my turn and had to go back several, annoying miles. I muttered murderously and turned on the radio. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘my fault for talking.’ I didn’t reply. It was raining and I hadn’t had coffee. Plus I’d lost my driving glasses, and couldn’t see properly. I stopped at a garage outside Tuam and attacked my machine coffee with such urgency that I burnt my gullet, then wolfed down two deli sausages, causing immediate indigestion.

‘Are you eating?’ Niall asked when he rang to check I didn’t miss a turn. ‘Yes,’ I snapped. ‘We’re in Ashford Castle enjoying a leisurely breakfast.’ He hung up quickly.

ITOOK another wrong turn in Kiltimagh, squinting to see the road names. Eventually I got on the N17 and the straight run into Galway City.

‘Be careful at the car park,’ my sister WhatsApped me. ‘It’s a strange turn.’

‘How strange can it be?’ I thought. For the record, the Galway Hospital car-park turn is in a very strange and stupid place. When we finally arrived, there was a queue for the car park. ‘You’re a saint to do this love,’ my mother said.

I drove around the car park and eventually saw somebody about to leave, so I stopped and waited. A man behind me beeped his horn. By the grace of God alone I did not get out of the car and embed a shoe in his ear.

Galway hospital, and I have to say it, is a rotten hospital. The staff are lovely, and there are helpful volunteers to show you around the maze, but the actual hospital is a mish-mash of run-down, badly signposted corridors and miscellaneous buildings.

We queued in Outpatients and got a ‘number’. In the waiting room I picked up VIP and read about Amanda Brunker’s life five years ago, until I was shamed into giving my seat to one of the many infirm people who were gathering in the corridor.

Eventually, we got out of waiting room hell and met with a friendly male consultant who looked the same age as my eldest teen. He checked that Mam was on the right meds and reassured us that her test results were fine. I WhatsApped the sisters: ‘Good few miles left on the clock,’ although in that dark part of my mind I secretly niggled: ‘All that for nothing?’

Mum, I could tell, was a bit the same. ‘Good job we came. Did you hear what he said? If it was left it could turn nasty.’

‘Yes, but we didn’t leave it and you’re fine.’ It came out like I wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ ‘It’s nothing,’ I said, but not with enough emphasis that she wouldn’t know it was, in fact, an enormous sacrifice on my part.

‘God,’ I thought, ‘I’m so horrible to my mother.’ She showers me with compliments and, in return, I guilt trip her. Exactly how it is with my sons.

I drove around the car park five times looking for the exit, then realised I hadn’t paid for the ticket. It’s called God’s punishment.