“I am very organized darling, my suitcases are packed and if there are any last minute items you would like me to bring just leave a message on my answering machine. I will be out a lot of the time over the weekend seeing friends so don’t worry if you can’t reach me Can’t wait to see you both. I will call you again before I leave on Tuesday. I love you.”

Smiling I put the phone down.  I was feeling very happy.  My mother was coming from England to stay with me and my husband Julian in America. I was looking forward to seeing her.  My mother was a professional clairvoyant and on top of that a lot of fun.  Also she’d promised to give my friends psychic readings during her stay.  So there was quite a welcome wagon waiting for her.

Julian and I chose to enjoy the weekend at our cottage on Long Island. We were very glad to be there as the weather was nice and the garden was beginning to look quite beautiful.  After a busy morning and a delicious lunch we decided to take a leisurely nap in the early afternoon.

It seemed that I had just laid my head on the pillow when I began to dream of my mother; she was in a very agitated state.  I was talking to her on the telephone, and there was a lot of chaos and loud noise in the background. She seemed very frightened and was telling me in a state of confusion that she felt she was going to die. She was disoriented and her words were slurred and disjointed. The next moment she seemed oblivious to me and her concentration was directed toward her watch and mumbling that she hadn’t much time left.  I began shouting in the dream to get her attention but to no avail.

Merryn & Mother

I awoke in a panic and told Julian, “something awful has happened to my mother.” I immediately telephoned her but there was no reply. Frustrated I tried to contact our close friend Ronan who had a key to her apartment in emergencies, but he was out.  I finally reached him on Sunday morning and he immediately drove over to her apartment.

When he called me from her home he said she wasn’t there, but reported that the kettle was still plugged into the wall and the bed unmade. She had obviously left in a great hurry. Now we were really worried. He asked some neighbors if they had any information about her and eventually a man told him that a woman had been taken on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance a day or so ago. Unfortunately he didn’t know which hospital.

Ronan proceeded to call every hospital in the area and finally tracked her down. She had been taken to a state hospital near her home. He raced over there and phoned us from her bedside. I tried to have a conversation with her on the phone but she made no sense at all.  It was just like the dream.

Julian and I took the first available flight to London.  We met up with Ronan at the airport and drove immediately to the hospital. Even though she recognized us she was not really coherent and her voice kept trailing off in mid sentence. I asked the night nurse, “why has she been taken off the Intravenous Drip” and the nurse replied “your mother has been given the equivalent of two full IV bags and that seems to be enough. She is also on antibiotics, and so she should be fine.”  We felt very uncomfortable with the prognosis as my mother didn’t look or sound fine at all. The next morning we contacted her private doctor who got the clearance to admit her to The Princess Grace Hospital in London. She now was holding her head in her hands obviously in great pain telling us “I feel my head is about to burst.”

She was admitted to the new hospital where the doctors told us she was totally dehydrated due to a chronic bladder infection. Her blood pressure was so high she was in danger of having a stroke at any moment. They said they would continue with the antibiotics and placed her on an IV drip for four consecutive days.  After certain tests she was given the correct blood pressure medication and the headaches ceased. In fact it took quite a while before she became truly coherent again.