My tailored Oyster card

It seems as if I'm going through a new phase in my life. No, it's not about being 30 and thus having a kind of midlife crisis, but it's all about the alarming amount of hospital visits I have on my tailored Oyster card.

It all started a month ago, when my grandma had to undergo an emergency surgery. She was in a coma for five days and on the ICU for two and a half weeks, and now she's getting better, albeit slowly and with careful baby steps. Either way, I prefer that, because then the chances that she'll recover completely are a lot bigger. My grandma has been in the hospital for more than a month now, and she's regained some of her strength, but I'm still a little bit suspicious when it comes to complete recovery. She's lost about 20 pounds - and that's a rough guess - and she has aged quite a lot. However, I support her as much as I can by visiting her on a daily basis. Until today, because today my tailored Oyster card led me to another place.

Today, my mom, had to undergo a complicated back surgery. We had to be in the hospital at 7 AM, which meant madrugar (Spanish word for getting up very, very early - beautiful, isn't it? I mean, the word of course, not exactly the action itself...) because the hospital, which has a renowned specialist for this kind of operations, requires a 40 minute drive from my home town, so I woke up at 5.30 AM and got up a quarter of an hour later. Normally I'm not that kind of person and I easily get headaches after getting up so early, but until now, I've been fine, just fine :) My mom, on the other hand, is a little bit worse, because she's in a lot of pain. Right now, she's asleep, which is better, but when she's awake, she's in terrible pain. I hope they can do something about it!

Either way, I don't really like my tailored Oyster card. I'd rather get the usual one, so I can visit London one day - finally! However, at the moment, my Oyster card has been reprogrammed to hospitals instead of the London tube, and that's not exactly something good. I haven't visited hospitals on such a frequent basis in my entire life! And both these operations were kind of unexpected... I have been in psychiatric hospitals for an extensive period of time, but that's still different, very different indeed. A surgery is a completely different story.

So for now, people, I'm off. Please keep my mom and grandma in your thoughts. Both of them still have a long way to go. And when I say long, I mean long, very long. Keep those fingers crossed!