Needing Time

One of the things that occurred to me too late as I watch Pam's gradual deterioration was that her inability to turn her head made it impossible for her to read the time on the clock-radio that I have beside my bed (which is next to hers) during the night.  This fact has now been exacerbated by the need for her head and torso to be elevated while she partakes her overnight PEG feed - this would make it impossible for her to see the clock-radio, even if she wasn't disabled.

Pam would derive benefit from our lounge room chiming mantle clock, that can easily be heard from the bedroom, chiming something on the passing of each quarter hour. It, of course, also struck the time-value upon the hour.

Sadly this clock, affectionately known as Clarie the Clock, has been in my family since I was 9yo (1958) and was starting to get a little cantankerous in recent years. Its latest period of repair was from early October until just yesterday (Saturday). Here it is, almost as I type...

Here's the insides, as they recently were in a vice at the jewellers. There was a need to wait and see what the exact nature of Clarie's cantankerousness indeed was, before it could be rectified by the friendly magicians who work there...

The penny dropped for me when Pam eventually complained during that umpteenth period of Clarie being crook, that she had no way of knowing what the time was if/when she woke up during the night - although she declared she had worked out how to estimate it from the food delivery display on the PEG-feed pump. The pump is activated at 9:30pm and delivers 48ml/hr, so when she does the maths in her head she can convert a reading of, say, 170ml of food delivered to it being a time of around 1am; she figures 170 divided by 48 roughly equals 3.5 hrs since 9:30pm - so it must be a smidgen past 1:00am. One thing is for sure, this degree of brain torturing helps her get back to sleep!
(I'm so glad that Pam still has her full mental facilities - it's so depressing, on the other hand, to know that her physical facilities have almost been reduced to diddly-squat!)

As you saw in the above picture, Clarie is now back in the lounge room doing its thing, but I've already bought for Pam a projection clock-radio as a Christmas prezzie. This will project the time onto the bedroom ceiling so that we both can see the time without even trying, but I'll still require Clarie to keep going nevertheless, until I drop! (And I mean it!  :)  )