SPLENDID ISOLATION

I don’t suppose you want all the details, but I really was fit and well again.  I thought I had eaten something off on Saturday (Japanese meal with lots of raw fish the night before), but as we arrived home Saturday night I was in quite a lot of pain, worse than before in fact.  I took some pain killers and slept, but next day had to go back in (after the neighbours had cleared the snow!).  They removed a few more stones, treated a gall bladder infection and put in a new stent.  I felt better fairly soon and am now doing OK.  No explanation.

Thank you all once again for all your messages of encouragement.  I think it was the fact of the relapse, rather than the illness itself that was so depressing.  I was also helped on my way at a low point by one of the doctors who came to see me and apparently talked to me for a while.  I don’t remember anything she said, except ‘please close your mouth’, but it was a real fillip.  Don’t know her name either, but, for the sake of argument, let’s call her Dr Gorgeous.

We had a shock the night or so before I was discharged actually.  I was half-woken in the night by hundreds (it might have been 6) doctors and nurses and sisters and nursing assistants and other ranks running round, fussing with the man in the next bed.  When I woke up he had been moved out and the whole corner of the ward had been screened off.  

When I came back from hanging around the nurses canteen later that morning, there was only mine and one other bed left in the ward.  It was all a bit odd.  Shortly after that, the other man was wheeled out too, by workmen I think – they were wearing those white overalls and masks that the painters wear.

I sat there on my own for a while, wondering what it was I’d said, sniffing my armpits, etc, and then the workmen moved me too.

It was rather nice though – I was moved to a lovely private room with en suite, etc overlooking the barbed wire perimeter fence and open fields.  The only problem was that the builders had blocked off the corridor with a sheet of polythene to keep the dust out of the hospital, presumably where they were building the new wing, and the only approach to this room was through a sort of polytunnel with sprinklers in it.  The food trolley obviously couldn’t get to the room either, so the builders used to pass my food through to me on a long paddle-type thing.  

I didn’t have any visitors there either, which was a pity, apart from a builder who brought in my meds from time to time.  Still can’t complain; I could watch the sun on the hills, and pheasants and things in the fields, and the guards passing by occasionally, and I could make all the noise and mess I wanted without anyone making a fuss or saying, ‘better out than in’, etc.

It’s better at home though, on the whole (apart from having to keep getting out of bed).