I was briefly persuaded to row when I was at university - a fact I rarely mention in public, because it tends to be met first with disbelief, then hilarity. I am 5'2" tall, and what Precious Ramotswe refers to as "traditionally built". It's a straightforward mechanical problem - oars are just levers, and tall long-limbed rowers make them into better levers. This would have been glaringly obvious to the assembled rowing club when I wombled through their door that bright spring morning so long ago. I was put into a boat with three other girls of similar stature, and we hacked up and down the river for half a term, while our cox and our coach took it in turns to berate us. We rowed in one race, which we lost comprehensively, and then split, citing artistic differences.
The worst position in the boat was bow (the person at the end), which is where I was duly consigned. Since we were a no-hope boat, we did not have the benefit of the tannoy address system that the Oxford and Cambridge boats will have enjoyed on Saturday. If you were nearest the cox, as stroke, you received the full force of their orders bellowed into your face; if you were furthest away, in bow, you had not the faintest idea what was going on. The one thing I took away from my rowing career was the sheer terror of "firm pressure". When the cox yells "firm pressure", the whole boat rows, as one, with all their might, for around about two minutes. Those two minutes would invariably feel like two years - two ghastly, awful years; firm pressure is a sentence of death to the inept rower. At every stroke, seats slide up and down on the runners, while oars slice, haul and feather over the water. Rowers must be perfectly synchronised. Slow down and you crunch into either the seat in front or behind, damaging your shins or your bum; skimp on the effort you put into your fetch, and your oar can be wrenched out of your hands without warning, risking the loss of a tooth. A runner can stop if they have a stitch because only their own two feet are involved - a rower has to keep on rowing, no matter how savage the pain.
You've probably guessed what I'm going to say next. Yes, trying to work as part of a team with the hospital, is a lot like my recollection of rowing bow in that boat. You might think you know where you're going because of that nice chat you had on the bank before you got in, but suddenly you're out on the water, you haven't a clue what's going on, and you're trying to guess what you're supposed to do from watching the flying backs of the people in front of you.
The week before Easter, the problem was persuading the hospital to part with Julie; the week after Easter the problem was persuading them to take her back. Oddly, they gave the exact same reason - short-staffing - for both problems. She came to us on Easter Saturday, expecting to return to hospital on the Sunday evening. We made the decision to keep her for another night through to Easter Monday, but it was the hospital who then asked us to keep her at home for first a further night, then two nights. I wasn't complaining - I was off work, I was rested from my Paris trip, she was generally in a good mood, I was glad to be with her - but I hadn't prepared for it, and it was tiring. Eventually I had to ask them to take her back this morning so that I could honour a long-standing arrangement to meet a friend. By that stage Julie was exhausted too and quite keen to go back.
The outreach worker arrived to collect her this morning, and I discovered that there was now a whole new plan of which I had had no inkling. It is time, it seems, for Julie to Spend More Time At Home. All the planning in which I have had any involvement has revolved around varying medication and ward life, and I have felt despondent that no one was talking about discharge. But now it seems that they have come to some internal decision that she is to return home, and I am taken aback by the speed! This is definitely firm pressure, I think, trying to remember which end of the oar is supposed to go in the water. Last week we thought staying an extra night was daring, but now from this weekend she is to come to us from Friday through to Tuesday every week. Is that OK? asks the outreach worker, pausing briefly.
Well, I was supposed to be going into work to do some interviews to recruit a new person into my group, I say tentatively. When are the interviews? I don't know - when we can arrange for people to come in - I can't say yet. To my dismay, I find that my diary is vanishing in the usual hail of Julie-commitments: can I pick her up on Friday after lunch? She will need to attend for therapy session on Mondays. You will need to bring her back on Tuesdays. I know now to look carefully at the blank spaces in the plan: in the spaces in-between she will need continuous supervision, by me. There will also need to be backup plans: exit routes in case she finds it impossible to stick to the plan. If she might need bailing out, I can't go into a meeting and switch off my phone.
I do need to keep some time free to work, I say nervously, but I know from long experience that this vague "free time" will not do - I need definite commitments or the schedule will ride straight through them. At work, I will have similar conversations in which people try to get me to commit to holding meetings and I will be desperately trying to remember which week of Julie's discharge plan we are on, where I am supposed to be, and whether I am involved in a backup plan. I have to remember to keep breathing and not panic. Collapsing dramatically in the bow is not really an option.
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