The funny thing about weekends at hospitals is how desserted they are. Take the canteen,  for example. During the week, this cavenous 400 seat dining room is packed full of staff,  visitors and the odd adventurous patient who’s managed to sneak away from their ward for a cheeky fried slice. Today, Sunday, the canteen looks like this:

And it’s not just the canteen that empties out at the weekend,  the entire hospital becomes a ghost town. From the bustling corridors during the week, packed with hordes of staff, patients,  students, visitors, medical sales reps, builders, contractors, postmen picking up the mail and all sorts, to the eerily quiet weekends, the contrast couldn’t be more stark.  It really is quiet baffling and impressive that the nhs has managed to coax the entire country (we’re reliably informed that all hospitals are just as quiet at weekends) into only being ill and requiring medical care Monday to Friday in order to give the medical staff, administrators and catering staff the wekend off!

Fortunately for Savannah,  aside from the reception not being open and a few less junior doctors knocking about, it’s business as usual in her little corner of St George’s and the heroes of the neonatal unit are cracking on with doing their darndest to fix her up.

It’s a bit premature to write anything upbeat about her progress since starting on the steroids as, in Doctor Chris’s words this morning “she was so sick” when they began this course of treatment on Friday, that although the early signs are positive, there’s a long way still to go.

So whilst we hold our breaths (some of us quite literally. ..naughty SJ) and wait for things to develop hour by hour and over the coming days, we had the excitement of a birthday party last night which got us both out of the hospital and house again at the same time amd was a nice distraction for a few hours.

Fascinating as the little anecdotes about, and pictures of, the hospital canteen are….here’s a little pic of Savannah giving Mr Giraffe a big (relatively speaking for someone with arms only 5cm long) cuddle as he’s been rather stressed about his poorly pal of late!