Category Archives: hospital

Wednesday 27th April 2016 – TODAY DIDN’T GO …

… according to plan.

And I suspected that from the very beginning with having gone back to the restless nights again. I didn’t have a very good sleep and I was in and out of the bathroom a couple of times too.

I vaguely remember going on a little ramble during the night too – I was in Crewe up at the junction between Nantwich Road and Gresty Road with my mother and my youngest sister – although it wasn’t her at all but Zero, she who has featured on these pages a couple of times. But what we were all doing there I have no idea at all.

The coffee this morning wasn’t as good as it usually is and so I confined myself to just one mug. And I forgot one of my pills today so I had to take it later. I hope that that’s not going to cause a problem.

And once breakfast was over, I collected my now-dry washing from the laundry room and then came back here to tidy up my room. I’ve thrown out tons of stuff and I’m now back to having stuff of more-manageable proportions.

At 13:15 I set off to the hospital for my interview with the girl at Social Services. But that didn’t go according to plan either. That’s because I found out that I’ve been summoned back to the hospital tomorrow for 14:00. They need to x-ray my chest before they fit the chemo port and as my surgery is timed for 08:30 on Friday, then it’s Thursday afternoon. I have to stay the night too, so this means that I’ll be leaving here tomorrow morning. There won’t be enough time to start searching for accommodation, so they are going to negotiate for me to come back here for two weeks.

Actually, that will fit in nicely with my plans. My friend Hans is coming to Brussels for a week at the beginning of May so I’ll be here to meet him. And it will also give me an opportunity to recover from the extremes of the treatment. And then for the remaining two weeks of the month I can go back to France and fetch a few things that I need. I’ll be struggling for clothes of course but there’s a washing machine here and I’m sure that I’ll manage.

So having walked all of the way to the hospital, I turned round and walked all the way back, stopping to buy some fruit on the way.

For tea tonight I had another one of those falafel bread things with a portion of chips. And that was rather chaotic. Just one person working in there tonight and there were about 12 people in the seating bit and 5 of us at the takeaway counter. The poor guy was running around like a headless chicken and ended up by burning the chips and having to start again. But at €5:50 for a huge tea like they serve up there, it was worth waiting for.

I also had the same pudding as last night – four slices of the ginger spicy cake thing topped with the soya cream stuff. And it was just as delicious as it was yesterday.

So tonight I’ll be having an early night. And then after breakfast I’ll have a shower and change my clothes. I need to look pretty for tomorrow at the hospital. After all, the girl at Social Services told me today how sweet and nice I was. I mustn’t disappoint her, even though she clearly doesn’t know me very well.

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Thursday 21st April 2016 – BACK IN THE HOSPITAL AGAIN!

But I nearly wasn’t! I vaguely remember the alarm going off at 08:00 and had it not had a snooze setting to ring again 10 minutes later I would be still asleep now, I reckon.

Mind you, this isn’t a surprise. Although I was soon asleep after watching another Bulldog Drummond film, I was awake again at 00:35 and once more at 03:00. And that time, I was awake for hours, even watching dawn slowly filter its way through the curtains. But I must have gone back to sleep at some point, if only to sleep through the alarm.

Mind you, I was on my travels during the night, and strangely enough, I wasn’t appearing in my first voyage. I vaguely remember a young, rather inept parish priest who was continually having difficulties with life in his parish, to such an extent that his bishop and a canon came down to see him. At some time during the proceedings the bishop and his canon ended up locked in the police cells due to something that had happened involving the priest, and it was up to the priest to convince the authorities to release them, not that anyone had any optimism that he might be successful based upon his track record to date.
But once I had gone back to sleep during the morning, I found myself with my brother (and I do wish that my family would stop becoming involved in my adventures). He had a BMC 1300, the same metallic green colour of my Vanden Plas and it had broken down somewhere in a small French town. He’d pushed it into the town square and left it outside some friendly person’s house and that was where it stayed. I was then roped into have a look at it. The first time that we went down there to see it, I had a good poke around and couldn’t find any reason why it wouldn’t go – it all seemed fine to me – and the friendly neighbour made us both a cup of coffee. The second time we went, I could still find nothing wrong with it and this time someone (a friend of ours but I don’t know who it was) brought us a couple of huge plates of macaroni. There was so much that I hardly made a dent in mine and in the end we left out plates on the dinner table of this neighbour. On making enquiries of my brother, it turned out that what had happened to the car was that one of the driveshafts – the left-hand one – had tightened up. I immediately suspected the CV joint but that wasn’t something that we were going to fix then and there, so I needed to go and fetch my trailer and hope that wecould winch it aboard. I reached in through the window of this house for our plates, passing my brother’s plate to him, but I upset mine and half of the macaroni went all over the floor.I apologised to the neighbour about that but he was quite OK about it, which was quite nice of him. And then I asked my brother about what he intended to do about thanking the neighbour who had kept an eye on his car for him, made us both coffee and so on. My brother didn’t think that he needed to do anything about it, which I thought was rather mean of him. I reckoned that a bottle of whisky was a good idea, but then again, it wasn’t really a concern of mine.

At breakfast this morning, we were a strange crowd. There was only one person whom I recognised, and all oth the others seemed to be quite young couples. We seem to have had a dramatic change of inhabitants overnight. And whoever made the coffee this morning – it was nothing like as good as usual.

I was on the bus at 09:45, sitting next to the girl with the viola whom I had seen on the bus last time that I’d come here. And by 10:10 I was at the reception. It didn’t take them long to see me either and I’ve had a drain fitted in my arm. They also weighed me, and it seems that I’ve gained 3 kg since last time. That doesn’t sound right to me.

They gave me a blood test and while waiting for the results, Sophie the trainee doctor who had seen me last week called me in to see her. After giving me a good going-over (including another feel of my groin) she told me that I need to come back next Thursday 28th April. They’ll give me a series of X-rays and fit a chemo port in my chest, then on Friday I’ll start my next session of chemotherapy. I’ll be here, apparently, until the following Monday and believe me, I’m not looking forward to all of that – not in the least. 5 days – and 4 nights – in hospital. I hope I have a room-mate who doesn’t snore!

Another task that needed to be done was to give me a scan of my legs. This swelling isn’t improving and they are worried that I might have another nomadic blood clot. But it seems to be a problem about water retention. Perhaps I should ask Terry to give me a tap on the ankles.

But although it doesn’t seem much like it, there is good news. Firstly, my blood count is at 9.1 and so I didn’t need a transfusion. That cheered me up a little. As did the news that the mouth-wash and the anti-biotics can be stopped as soon as the supplies run out, which will be in about 2 days, I reckon.

I wasn’t in the mood for jam butties for lunch so I settled on a visit to the shop in the foyer. They have a selection, would you believe, of vegan food and although the chick pea salad looked vaguely interesting, I settled on a vegan spiced loaf. I ate half of it and the rest I can add to the supplies up here.

On the way back here (I walked back, by the way) I found a wallet on the car park. I was tempted to take it to the police but I’m trying to keep a very low profile while I’m here because, as regular readers of this rubbish will remember, I’ve had more than my fair share of run-ins with Belgium’s finest in the past so I don’t want to go looking for interaction, so I brought it into the hospital downstairs and handed it in at the desk, giving a little white lie that I had found it outside. The net result will be the same, in that seeing as the owner’s identity card is in there, it will find its way home eventually. But just without my involvement.

Leuven was packed tonight, I don’t know why, and I had to wait 25 minutes for my pizza to be cooked, such was the pressure in the kitchen. And it wasn’t as good as usual either, but I suppose that they were rather rushed.

So once again, it’s an early night for me and then a relaxing day with nothing planned for tomorrow. So I’ll have a nice quiet day totally free of interruptions. Just you watch someone come along now and spoil it.

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Tuesday 19th April 2016 – LAST NIGHT …

… as predicted, I settled down to watch one of my Inspector Hornleigh films. And, as anyone who has been a regular reader of this rubbish for any length of time would have predicted, I fell asleep before the end. The film was still running and it was a scream from one of the performers that awoke me, right near the end. I was in half a mind to go back to where I fell asleep and watch the film from that point but instead, I turned off the laptop and went back to sleep. That seemed to be a much better idea.

It seems that last night’s subject was cats – or, at least, it was during the early part of the night. I was back at Vine Tree Avenue again and everyone had come round to see me – all kinds of the usual suspects whom you have seen making appearances in these nocturnal rambles – and everyone brought a cat with them. All of the cats were put in the hall while we had a little “do” and then when the evening was over, I opened the door between the kitchen and the hall and all of the cats came in. All kinds of cats there were, all different colours, and to my surprise we hadn’t had a single moment of squabbling like you get when you usually put a bunch of cats (or children) together.
Talking of children, I was in Neston a little later with the daughter of a friend, and we were looking for my cats (whatever they might be doing in Neston I really have no idea). We managed to find three of them but Tuppence was being stubborn (like she sometimes was) and this young girl made some kind of comment about her.
I don’t know what it was that woke me so dramatically at 04:30 but I was soon back to sleep, and I’d moved back to Crewe by now. Up near the Liberal Club in fact. And I was parading with the Home Guard, Captain Mainwaring’s platoon in fact, and the issue of the gun cropped up. For those of you who don’t know the film, there’s a scene in there where an elderly man turns up on parade with a shotgun, the only weapon the troop has, and Mainwaring insists that he should have it. I’ve always thought that that was rather a silly decision, not the least reason being that because he would have been the only person with a gun, he would have been the only person firing at the Germans, so they would naturally fire back at him and that would remove the head of command from the Home Guard troops (with Mainwaring, that wouldn’t have been much of a loss, but there you go). Anyway, last night, there I was, and there the subject cropped up again. I suggested making the owner of the gun a Lance-Corporal, giving him two privates to assist him (all of which would have enhanced his ego and brought him on board) and thus forming a ready-made light artillery section whenever more substantial weapons appeared on the scene. I’d seen some builders and they had a stack of about two dozen trenching shovels – very thin-bladed shovels on long pole handles – and I’d fancied liberating one of those for use on the farm. But here I was on parade with a three-metre pole with a spoon on the end (with no idea what I would do with this). I was sent off to patrol around the corner of Richard Moon Street (which bore no resemblance whatever to the real Richard Moon Street) and down there was an ancient garage that I had never seen before. It had a bodyshell of an old Lotus Elan and the bodyshell of an old 105E Ford Anglia, both white, both covered with dust and green mould from standing for so long and both on sale at £100. Behind them was what remained of an old Mark II Ford Zodiac, yellow, and which was also for sale. But this place was a treasure trove. There were the remains of a 1920s hand-cranked petrol pump and all kinds of things like that, all overgrown and abandoned and I would have loved to have spent a day or two going through everything that was here.

But then the shower down the corridor woke me up again. 06:35 this time, so it looks as if these early-risers are in for the duration. So much so that when I went down the corridor for breakfast, there were just two of us there. Judging by the amount of bread left in the bread container, everyone else had been and gone already.

Back in my room, I had a nice relaxing morning not doing all that much but as the time drew on, I went and had a good shower and changed my clothes. I need to look my best (and smell my best too) for the Social Services department.

I went off on foot to the fritkot as I fancied chips for lunch. When I arrived, they were just closing even though it was still 5 minutes to 2. But I persuaded them to make me a portion, which they did, and then, seeing as it was a nice day, I took my courage in both hands and set off to walk to the hospital.

And I made it too, despite it being uphill all the way, and I was early too. That gave me enough time to have a drink, which I reckoned that I deserved too.

But the Social Services weren’t really all that helpful, in the sense that they haven’t really come up with something definite as yet. They’ll be “in touch” but they could be in touch anyway without me having to go all that way there. There is however some talk about a place in a … would you believe … monastery, just as I predicted. I hope that they have a good laundry where I can get rid of some of my dirty habits, but they need to improve the monotonous food. Regular readers of this rubbish know that there are only two brothers who work in the kitchen of a monastery – the chip monk and the fish friar.

Once I’d organised that, I went off to the Day Hospital to find out when my next appointment is – and it’s on Thursday – this Thursday – at 10:30. It’s a good job that I went to enquire.

Caliburn was next, and I moved him around the car park and rescued the shampoo and the toothpaste. I’ll have more stuff here than I will at home at this rate. And then, seeing as the afternoon was even nicer, I walked back here, all the way. And I know that I have done it too, but then this time last week I had difficulty walking to the bathroom so it’s a major step forward and I can be quite pleased with myself. It’s not quite a 10-mile hike around Montreal but I’m getting there.

Tonight for tea, I had a vegetable stir-fry with rice. A huge helping for just €5:00. And now I’m ready for bed.

But I did watch an interesting film that I found on the laptop. It’s a story about logging in Russia and they had all of the lorries doing things like driving along rivers with huge bow waves swamping the bonnets, and with the cabs almost totally under water. It’s frightening stuff and puts into perspective how easy the road is around Labrador, especially now that they are improving it.

So I have a day off tomorrow. I’ll be taking it easy I reckon because that walk is making me ache all over. Still, I’m proud of what I managed to do today.

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Friday 15th April 2016 – THE EXERTIONS OF YESTERDAY …

… were clearly far too much for me.

I managed to keep on going until about 16:40 and then I had to crash out. And I was out until 20:25 – stark out too. Far too late to go to fetch something to eat but luckily I had brought down here from Caliburn a packet of the Rich Tea biscuits that I had bought in Zoutelande the other week, so I polished those off instead. But I didn’t feel in the least bit like it, I do have to say.

But yesterday, I’d kept going until about 23:00 without an afternoon kip and this might explain some of the problems that I had this afternoon, although I did have a reasonable sleep. I don’t remember much about where I went during the night, except that I had some exciting company. I was in a pub where I’d gone to meet someone whom I knew, but when I arrived, I found that this person was sitting at a table with a couple whom I’ve known for 40 years. It was very nice to see them, that’s for sure – in fact it’s always nice to see friends, make no mistake – but I was hoping to have an intense chat with this person but was unable to do so with these other people there.
And later on, I was with two people whom I know who live in Germany. I was working for that weird American company again and so were these two people, and this time, I’d managed to make the company work like it should have done and people were amazingly co-operative. Not like that place at all.

I had toast again for breakfast, and the coffee was just as good as always, and then I had a quiet hour or two in my room until the cleaner threw me out. That gave me the opportunity to go off and do some shopping as well as visit the pharmacie to sort out the prescriptions.

I’ve also seen the manager of the accommodation here. I told them what is going on about my stay in Leuven and they have told me that I can settle up when I leave – that seems like a good plan. And I have an appointment with the Social Services at the hospital on Tuesday so we may well know more after that.

I enjoyed my lunch – I had a healthy appetite for once and soon made a mess of that, and then I had my mega-crash-out this afternoon.

But all in all, I wish that I could put an end to all of this. I don’t have the energy to do anything and, what is even worse, I don’t have the inclination.

That’s what hurts the most in all of this.

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Thursday 14th April 2016 – TODAY’S THE DAY …

… when I find out if the first lot of chemotherapy worked or not. I hope that it did, because I don’t want to go through too much more of it. Horrible, nasty stuff!

And so I celebrated by finding the toaster (in the cupboard under the sink), and had toast for breakfast. and a second mug of coffee too, seeing as how it was so nice. I dunno who makes the coffee at this place but they can come and make it for me any time they like.

I needed it too because I’d been well away on my travels during the night. It was something of a disturbed night, tossing and turning and waking up, and so much of what happened and where I went to has long since disappeared into the mists, but what I remember of it was all pretty exciting enough.

I started out with Nerina yet again and we were on our travels in Europe. There was a magnificent site that, to me, could only be an Iron-Age hill-fort but no-one else seemed to agree with me, and some of it had been demolished. I took Nerina to see it and gave her something of a lecture about it, explaining that it was maybe dating from the Visigoth or more likely, perhaps the Merovingian era (although neither lived in hill-forts, but we mustn’t go letting facts get in the way of a good nocturnal ramble now, must we), and that regardless of any rumour or speculation (because the Merovingians have always throughout history been treated as something quite different, even by the Church, and some have even speculated that they might have been spacemen) were just another unknown wandering Eastern tribe that finally collided with Western “civilisation” during the great Western migrations. And I pointed out loads of things that related to the hill-fort that had caught my eye. I didn’t realise it at the time that my “lecture” had drawn quite a crowd and a family came over to me afterwards and asked me to give them a guided tour. I explained that I knew nothing and was merely interpreting, as an amateur, what I was seeing, but they were most insistent.
A little later, I was in Crewe, right down the end of West Street by where Barlow Brothers scrapyard used to be, and I had a pick-up that was towing a trailer. I was out of the vehicle doing something on the verge when a huge lorry went past and the draught sucked my pick-up off down the road. I was sure that I’d applied the handbrake and left the pick-up in gear, but there it was – going off down the road. I ran after it but it was long-gone, and suddenly it burst into flames, going faster and faster down the street. A horse of mine (now, what would I be doing with a horse?) leapt off the trailer and ran back towards me. It was on fire, and quite badly too by the looks of things, but a passer-by threw some water on it and doused the flames. I had a look at the horse and although the hair was charred, the skin looked okay and so I debated as to whether I should call a vet as I put it back in my back garden. But my pick-up was long-gone by now.
And even later, I was driving along a dual-carriageway, “my” side of which was under heavy repair and the road was limited to one lane and was in dreadful condition, so most vehicles were driving the wrong way along the outer lane of the other carriageway. I attempted to do the same but was cut up by a big van so had to continue trudging along, and at the next break in the central reservation, the same big van cut me up yet again. I ended up at my doctor’s, on the second floor of a tall terraced house, right by the side of this dual-carriageway and by now the road had deteriorated into one massive construction site and vehicles were picking their way through it as best as they could. Some young boy in a souped-up American sports saloon of the 1970s was driving like a maniac and as we watched, he clipped a small car coming the other way and turned it over, and spun into a pick-up and totally flattened it. He, of course, escaped unhurt. The small car that was on its side, the construction workers used one of their machines to try to turn it right-side up but they dropped it into a water tank and had to fish it out with a fork-lift truck. After all of this, a small woman with a shaven head emerged from the car. All of her worldly belongings were in the car, ruined by now, and she was destitute. She looked quite shaken and so I beckoned her up to the doctor’s. When she arrived, I explained that the doctor was busy but we would let her go in next for a check-up. She was clearly upset, and was going on about her car and her goods and however was she going to find a mortgage to replace everything?

Having resolved the issue of breakfast, off I toddled to the hospital. My appointment was at 10:50, and do you know what time I was seen? Anyone from the UK would never ever guess correctly – they would be at least a day or two out – but I was seen at 10:50 precisely – bang on time.

They took a blood test from me and fitted a drain in me, and then I was told to wait in the waiting room. And wait I did – for all of about half an hour when I was summoned to see the doctor – a nice young female trainee who can soothe my fevered brow any time she likes. I told her everything – about my arm, about the compression in my chest, about the loss of appetite, the fatigue, the nausea – absolutely everything, and she poked and prodded me just about everywhere – right at the end she asked me “may I feel your groin?”. Well, who am I to argue with that?.

She then went off to consult her professor, and came back 10 minutes later. “We need an ecography of your stomach”.
“When is this likely to take place?”
“14:15” she replied. You can see that we are clearly not in the UK. That was only 90 minutes, not 90 days away.

So I had my ecography and then went back to hear the news.

And I suppose that you are all dying to hear what is going on, aren’t you? Well, I’ll tell you, but it doesn’t make pleasant reading – not for me and probably not for many others either. But here we go.

Basically, the embolism is back in the right arm. It seems that the veins in there are not good enough to support a drain. This means that everything will have to happen in the left arm, and the veins aren’t all that much better in that arm either and they are worried. In view of everything else that is likely to happen to me, more of which anon, they propose to fit a catheter port in my chest. This news (the catheter in the chest, not the embolism) has filled me with complete dismay.

Secondly, they have detected some gallstones. These are by no means a problem but they are blocking a good view of my intestines. They are talking about sending a camera down, but this, I assure you, they will do over my dead body. I’ll suffer like this before I suffer like that.

Thirdly, the chemo hasn’t worked as well as has been expected and so I have to have another transfusion. I had one pochette on the spot then and there, as well as an injection to stimulate the red blood cells.

Fourthly, I have to go back for more chemotherapy, and that’s fixed for 29th April. This is after the end of the 15-day period during which I’m allowed to stay here, so something needs to be done. Those of you with long memories may recall that I was given “advice” by that guy in the European Union’s Social Services department, but the net result of that as been zero. He hasn’t even bothered to reply to my e-mail, never mind do anything about the issues involved. What a waste of time that was!

However, the girl from the Social Services at the hospital seems much more helpful – she sought me out today at the hospital and we had a little chat, and she thinks that once she knows what the programme is, she might be able to help me find somewhere to stay in the neighbourhood. That’s the ideal solution – she seemed to know what she was doing while all of this was going on.

So beaten, battered and bewildered, I left the hospital and went to move Caliburn around the car park and to rescue the clean clothes that I forgot the other day. And then, I took the bus back here.

I did have a pleasant surprise tonight though. I’m limited with what I can eat right now as my taste buds are out of order and I still have some nausea. I seem to be limited to pizza and to the cheapo pasta shop up the road and round the corner. But tonight, looking for a change of diet, I found an Asian take-away. They did a huge portion of vegetable stir-fry and rice for just €5:00.

I’m not a big fan of food from the Chinese end of Asia, but I did cheer up when he started chopping up half a broccoli. And I do have to say that this was one of the nicest commercial stir-fry meals that I have ever eaten (I stress the “commercial” because nothing whatever can match Liz’s stir-fry). I shall add this place to my list.

So tomorrow I need to start work. I need to sort out this accommodation question because I reckon that I’m going to be here for the duration, so I may as well come to terms with it.

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Wednesday 13th August 2016 – NOW, ABOUT LAST NIGHT …

… I was in bed by about 21:30 and it didn’t take all that long at all to drop off to sleep. And the next thing that I remember was that it was 05:35. I can’t have been for a wander during the night and I vaguely remember only the basics of some kind of nocturnal ramble going on during the night. It concerns Renown Garage where my taxi business was based during the late 1980s. They had dug up the petrol pumps and were concreting them, with this huge cement mixer. However, instead of water, they had mixed the concrete with petrol which had infiltrated into the foundations from the old petrol tanks. This had the effect (at least, it did last night) of making the concrete set quickly and super-hard, and they had far too much of it that they didn’t know what to do with it. I immediately seized on the opportunity to offer my back garden as a dumping ground for the concrete – with the aim of course of covering it over as a place to park my vehicles.

I felt quite better this morning, and even had an appetite for breakfast. And afterwards, now that I’ve bought some soap, I went for a shower and sorted out all of my clothes for washing. And this was when I realised that I only have one spare pair of undies and trousers – no socks, tee-shirt or jumper. Nevertheless, I put everything ready to wash.

I had to wait hours for the machine to free itself, seeing as the cleaner seemed to have gone berserk with the cleaning cycle, but it didn’t take long to wash. Meantime, I’d gone round to the supermarket for my baguette, tomato and banana, and as well as that, bought myself a bag of sweets and a bun because I was starving. This is definitely an improvement.

And my relentless thirst seems to have calmed down too, which is a good thing. You’ve no idea how much liquid I’ve demolished this last few days.

This afternoon I had a doze again for an hour or so and later on went out for tea. Thanks to all of the vegan cheese that I have, I went for another pizza and I polished that off quite comfortably.

Yes, definitely feeling a little better.

But you missed all of the excitement while I was out. Some young guy thought that he would be clever by cycling on the pavement around a traffic queue in the street. Instead, he cycled right into a grid in the gutter, his front wheel jammed and he went head-over-heels right over the handlebars.

Yes, I did have to laugh.

But tomorrow I’m back at the hospital. I’m having a blood test at the day centre and that will tell us whether I need another transfusion, or whether the chemotherapy is actually working.

It’ll be interesting to see what’s going on, and I hope that it’s working because I don’t want to go through too much of this under any circumstances whatever. It’s horrible.

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Tuesday 12th APRIL 2016 – I’VE BEEN OFF AGAIN …

… on yet another mega-ramble during the night. I must be sleeping a little better, which must be a sign of something, I suppose.

Last night, I started out with a girl who was supposed to be Amber, my niece’s daughter (but who bore a startling resemblance both in looks and character to my younger sister) and her friend Julianna. And we were in Canada, on our way west towards Centreville to be reunited with Amber’s grandmother. But Amber (or my sister, take your pick) was certain that her grandmother wasn’t there and that when we arrived she and her friend would have to take the ‘plane to fly on to wherever her grandmother was staying. I was surprised at this because it was the usual time for me going to Canada and she was always at home when I arrived (and why we didn’t telephone to check up was something that I don’t understand either). By now, it was late at night and we stopped for the night at a motel. We had our beds in the foyer so everyone had to go past us to enter their rooms and with me and two young girls the place soon became a real dump, with stuff everywhere for I had had to turn the luggage inside-out to find the food to make sandwiches and I’d been finding all sorts of things. But Amber (or my sister) mentioned the name of the town where her grandmother usually stayed so I looked for it on the map but couldn’t find it. But in a moment of inspiration I looked inside the front cover of the map and there was a rubber stamp from a used-car salesman from the town where she might be. I couldn’t read the writing so I asked one of the girls to look. Amber (or my sister) had a look and told me the full address, and the nearest city happened to be about 250 miles in the opposite direction right near where Hannah goes to University at Antigonish. I told Amber (or my sister) to telephone straight away to her father to see if grandmother was at this address, because now that we had it, we could have a good night’s sleep and head down there directly in the morning. And it was here that I noticed that Amber (or my sister) was having a crafty smoke of a cigarette, so did I have words to say to her about that at her age!
From here, the action moved on to Brussels and a group of Russian “nouvels arrivants” living there. Some of these Russians were fairly young but they were all quite street-wise, and everyone seemed to be concerned with some kind of storage of illicit spirits. One of the girls, called Alina (and who bore more than a passing resemblance to girl called Alina whom I once met) was more determined than the rest and was keen to secure her independence. She had once been dared to work out how to break into one of these secret warehouses and much to everyone’s surprise she had managed to do so. Now, she intended to break in for good and clear out all of the stock and, unsurprisingly, in a fit of boredom and lack of excitement in my life, I volunteered to help her. Terry and Liz offered to help as well. So she turned up, worked her way into the warehouse and we loaded up a van with all of these spirits and Terry quickly drove it off while Alina and I sorted out the finances. When I met up with Liz and Terry afterwards, they were both keen to know all about Alina and my involvement with her and how come she felt so confident as to be able to handle all of this at her age, and on reflection I had to admit to them that I knew nothing really concrete or substantial about her and I couldn’t really see how I had come to let myself be involved in all of this, knowing what the Russian Mafia could be quite capable of “arranging”.
After this, it was the turn of my middle sister to make her debut in my nocturnal ramble. There she was with another girl and both had babies in pushchairs. We were all planning to go off somewhere and the bust was at 08:13 but they were taking far too much time to prepare themselves and their charges and I was trying to urge them on. It was a good 10 minutes walk to the bus stop and I looked at my watch – it was 07:56 and I was feeling that if they don’t organise themselves right this minute, we wouldn’t be going anywhere at all.

It wasn’t 07:56 though because I checked. It was 07:23 when I awoke and, much to my surprise, I was feeling a little (but only a little) better. I actually managed to attack my breakfast with much more confidence. I had the usual repose during the morning, being evicted by the cleaner while she did the room and that gave me an opportunity to do some research into the laundry room. There’s a washing machine there that for €2:00 will do all of your clothes so I’ll be sorting that out tomorrow.

I felt a little better going down to the shops for my bread and when I could finally bring myself to eat it, I felt much better after that. So much so that I postponed my afternoon nap until 16:30 and was back up and about at 18:00.

For tea, remembering to go out early so as not to end up locked out like last night, I had pasta and tomato sauce – to take away – for a mere €5:50. Living in an area overrun with students is paying massive dividends with deals like that. And for once, I really enjoyed it and managed to eat it all without any hesitation.

So I’m off to bed in a couple of minutes. I’m glad that I’ve been feeling better today and I hope that I can maintain the improvement tomorrow – especially if I can keep eating like this.

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Monday 11th April 2016 – IF I’M TOTALLY OUT OF IT TODAY …

… then there is a very good reason for this, because I was well away with the fairies during the night.

“Away” was not the word. I must have crashed out listening to the radio because I awoke at about 01:30, in the middle of the night, to the sound of the Clitheroe Kid.

And I wasn’t alone last night either. I had companions during all of it and I started off with none other than Nerina and my brother. He had a Ford Fiasco which had a luton body on it (don’t ask me how – or why) and he was out and about on his travels when he bumped into me, somewhere on the corner of Edwards Avenue and Edwards Close in Shavington. As we were talking, a police car loomed over the horizon and he beat something of a hasty retreat away from his Fiesta. I asked him why but he didn’t give a convincing reason and in the end I cornered him over the fact that it wasn’t insured. “Don’t you remember that as soon as I got my licence I was planning to go off on that drive across Europe but in the end I had to cancel it. That was because the insurance hadn’t come through”.
So from there we made our way into the company of Nerina who wanted some stuff moving. She didn’t care about how ill I was, and I couldn’t make her understand. We ended up bringing a quad motorcycle down some narrow stairs from an attic, getting it stuck at every turn, and once it was down, off we set. We carried on arguing all the way to where we were going, to Hankelow Hall, to my house in France, and even arguing in some roadside petrol station near Audlem (which was nowhere near Audlem of course) and I’d lost patience long ago.
After a trip down the corridor I was at the seaside. Only a teenager, I was with a group of others and there was a huge storm raging sending spray everywhere and one girl of our party was out running around in it. I went out to bring her inside but I ended up being overwhelmed by the magnificence of it all too and staying out with her. As the storm subsided we went for a walk and ended up taking a short cut through someone else’s garden . I asked her if she knew the people to which she replied that she did. I had no intention of meeting them so I persuaded her to retrace our steps and we were met at the gate by a crowd of people including the fire brigade. Apparently the place had caught fire and so we were asked what we had been doing. I replied with the first thing that came into my head – that we were collecting the pools money – but that was clearly the wrong thing to say because there was some scam going around about the Football Pools and I’d put my foot right in it. Nevertheless, an elderly couple whom I knew saw me with this girl and gave me a “knowing wink”.
And later still, I’d been out with a friend and her husband to a local bar. The husband was quite the worse for wear so she asked me to escort him home. I agreed, provided that she would bring a few bottles back for me to take to my friends. However, outside the bar, husband jumped on a bicycle and despite his wife’s most earnest entreaties, he wouldn’t get off and wobbled off down the street. I grabbed hold of the nearest bike, a kind of Moulton mini-bike with a flat rear tyre and weird handlebars, and shot off after him. But I was so impressed by this bike. Even with a flat rear tyre, the gearing was such that the momentum of going down Vine Tree Avenue took me all the way back up the bank in Chestnut Avenue, and I remember thinking that I shall have to look much more closely at modern bicycles

No wonder that I’m exhausted – but I’m curious to know what Shavington doing featuring in all of this these days.

I slept almost right through to the alarm this morning but it was a slow crawl to the breakfast room. And back here, I crashed out again for an hour straight afterwards. It took me ages to come round sufficiently but the cleaner threw me out of my room at about 11:00. This gave me an opportunity to go to the office to pay for my accommodation. I’ve paid up until Thursday morning because I’ve no idea where I’ll be after then. Will I be detained in hospital or will I be released?

As an aside, the receptionist complimented me on my Flemish. I suppose it must be returning by now but I don’t feel anything like as confident – or as competent – as I think that I ought to be.

I crawled to the supermarket to buy food for lunch and then crawled back here afterwards to eat it and then have another crash-out for a couple of hours. But at 20:00 I staggered out to the fritkot – not feeling very much like it at all but I have to eat and frits are full of fat which, apparently, I must have.

I was in luck at the fritkot – it was the anniversary of the opening of the place and so a medium portion was free. How often does this kind of thing happen to me? I had a struggle to eat them but they all went down and they must have done some good because now it’s 22:00 and I’m still awake.

But not for much longer. I’m off to bed and I’ll see where I end up tomorrow.

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Sunday 10th April 2016 – AFTER MY REALLY BAD NIGHT …

… last night, the first thing that I did this morning was to dash to the washbasin by the wall (and I bet that you are so glad that I told you that, aren’t you?). And, strangely enough (or maybe not), I felt a little better after that. Mind you, that’s not difficult because I could hardly have felt any worse than I did during the night.

But having put all of that nonsense behind me, I managed to eat a breakfast and then I went off for a little walk. The Delhaize up the road was closed today (which I suspected it might be) and so I decided to head for the nearest bakery for a real stockbrood for once. And here I was in luck.

I’d forgotten all about the Belgian habit of everyone going to the banketbakkerij on a Sunday to buy koekjes – the breakfast ritual here in Belgium is for cakes and coffee and some of the cakes are magnificent. They aren’t for me of course, but they did have some sugar-coated raisin buns. Two of those with another coffee when I returned to my little room cheered me up a little.

At lunchtime, I had some vegan cheese on my butty and I’m a little disturbed because the taste seems to have changed. It hasn’t – it’s that my taste buds have changed since I’ve had chemotherapy and that’s disturbing me. It’s one of the reasons that I’m off my food right now. I don’t really fancy anything to eat and the idea of eating anything greasy makes me queasy.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that I’m cold too, and that’s not like me. I ended up having to turn on the heating in my room to make me feel better.

I crashed out for a couple of hours this afternoon – nothing like as completely as I have done over the last couple of days though – and later on I forced myself out to organise a pizza. I must start to eat some food some time. Luckily, I have plenty of sliced vegan cheese hanging around.

Delicious as the pizza might have been, I had to force myself to eat it. And I managed it too and I felt slightly better too.

But I’ve now noticed another little problem – where I had this drain in my right arm, the area is now swelling up, just like the very first time when I was at Montlucon hospital. That, as we know, turned out to be a wandering blood clot and led to my having all of those injections twice a day for three months. I hope that it isn’t – I don’t want to go through all of that again.

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Saturday 9th April 2016 – LAST NIGHT WAS THE FIRST …

… night that I’d spent in a single room for a while so I was determined to make the most of it. But having crashed out earlier in the afternoon, I was awake by 02:00 and spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of sleep.

And drifting in and out of nocturnal rambles too. I started out by leading some kind of commando pack and it was the evening of the invasion of Europe. Our HQ, such as it was, was a landing craft anchored offshore and it was from there that all of our missions were taking place. But after a few hours, a green light came on, somewhere in the sky over the land, and that was the signal for us to move our headquarters onto the shore, to a place known as Home One. Once we had established ourselves here, we checked over our radio equipment and picked up a television broadcast which was an advert for a quiz programme and which featured a young girl who was part of our team – a very fair girl with a blond pony-tail (and, incidentally, someone with whom I’d worked for a short while in Stoke on Trent once). She had made an unbelievable gaffe in this programme and when she had realised, she went a glowing shade of red and the television commercial was showing her changing colour, which we all thought was unfair to keep on broadcasting it. And at the same moment, another one of our female commandos had been manhandled by a group of civilians and one of our male crew who was quite keen on her immediately sprung up to go and give these people some retaliation, and we had to hold him down to prevent him, because this would surely blow our cover and we were not ready for this yet.
Later on, because by now I was having endless trips down the corridor, a friend of mine put in an appearance. He’d been doing car repairs and was making something of a reasonable profit but we were warning him that very soon he would start to get out of hand with this and the authorities would pick him up if he wasn’t careful.

Breakfast looked to be something of a disappointment. We had bread and coffee, and that was really about that. I was having a little curse to myself about that, especially as it was only about an hour later, after everything had been cleared away, that I discovered where they kept the jam and the speculoos biscuits.

D’ohhhh!

But I’m far from well – there’s no doubt about that. After breakfast I wasn’t up to too much and stayed in my room. So much for all of my plans to get out and about. It’s a beautiful city, Leuven, and would have been even more beautiful too except that the Germans burnt it down in 1914 and again in 1940. The former was the saddest of the two though because Leuven had been declared an “open city”, but the Germans of World War I had a policy of “frightfulness” in 1914, committing all kinds of atrocities on the civilian populations for no good reason other than to terrorise them into submission. Burning down the University and its magnificent, unique library was just one of many atrocities committed here in 1914 by the German invaders.

I made it as far as the Carrefour, which was a long way short of the Delhaize and much smaller so it didn’t have anything like the same amount of stuff on sale, and I ended up making a mistake and buying soup vegetables instead of salad. It made no difference anyway because I couldn’t eat all of my baguette.

And when you hear that I’m off my food then you really know that I’m not well.

from about 16:00 I crashed out again and I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep ever since. It’s now 23:30 and for once I’m wide awake, but I hope that it doesn’t last. I really need to sort myself out somehow.

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Friday 8th April 2016 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about last night. Another dreadful night where I couldn’t drop off to sleep and at 04:00 I was still wide awake. How I hate this. And it’s a long time since I made so many trips down the corridor too in one night, but I didn’t really care about that. If I’m suffering, so should everyone else too.

But I did manage to drop off and go on the odd ramble or two. The first part of my little voyage involved producing a rock concert for one of my heroes – the Welsh rock group “Man”. I decided that their long concert of two and a half hours would be played in two sets, each of an hour, and then a third set of whatever remained. The group seemed to be okay with it, although I did have the impression that they would have agreed to anything that I proposed. I went off to do something and on my way back I noticed that one of the group was busy siphoning some diesel out of the fuel tank of my lorry, which was an old ex-army three-ton truck. I was annoyed about this but I had to remember that for important and valuable clients, you need to be prepared for this kind of thing.
From here, I was back at University and it was the first day back. We were all in a huge group sprawled over a great big bed and other groups of people were dressing up in disguise or in some kind of prop, swarming over the University grounds. One or two were heading our way so I had to warn our people that they were coming. No-one was taking any notice however and this was annoying me (my bad mood seemed to spread all through my rambles during the night) so in the end I lashed the head of the bed with a length of chain. Even so, although this did lead to people beginning to talk, it didn’t have the effect of galvanising them into action and I was quite disappointed, if not totally fed up, of all of this.

First off this morning, I had to give a blood sample and the nurse had an enormous amount of difficulty trying to find any. But then, as you know, she’s not the only one who has had difficulty doing it. And then I had to wait.

And wait

And wait.

And then the blood came round at about 11:15 and we started off the transfusion. I’m to have two pochettes apparently (so this is going to be another all-dayer and we’ll see about whether I’ll be able to leave today).

But the Professor and the Doctor came to see me. The plan seems to be that I can leave after the transfusion, and go to this guest room in town. I need to come back in a week for another blood test, and then again in two weeks time for another go at chemotherapy. If this all works, then I’ll need chemo every month and I might maybe no longer need any blood transfusions. And won’t that cheer me up too!

But I’ve been led up the garden path before, so I’ll believe it when I see it.

However, to my surprise, the transfusion was over by 15:00 and by 15:30, armed with a date for a further appointment and a prescription for the gout from which I seem to be suffering (and which was missed by Montlucon, apparently) I was heaved out into the unsuspecting public.

I picked up a few things from Caliburn, moved him around the car park to make sure that it looks as if he’s in regular use, and then caught the bus into town. Four or five stops away, Sint Pieter’s Hospital is, and that’s where I’ll be staying for two weeks. It’s basic and primitive, but quite clean and reasonable comfortable, and €20:00 per night including breakfast, so you’ll hear no complaints from me.

But check-in isn’t until 17:30 so I left my luggage behind in the office and went for a walk because that was quite clearly a big mistake. I came over all queer after about 15 minutes and had to retrace my steps to the hospital where I crashed out in a chair in the waiting room.

Once I had been admitted to my room (which is, as you might expect, room 13) I crashed out and that was that. The strain is clearly telling on me these days.

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Thursday 7th April 2016 – WHY DO I ALWAYS …

… seem to be given the perishing room-mate who snores? There I was at 05:30 still not able to drop off to sleep.

But I must have gone off at some time or another because I was on my travels again. I started off trying to make some sandwiches with white bread but every time I went to spread anything onto the bread, it tore the bread away from the crust and after a while that started to annoy me greatly. I decided to go out for more bread but I needed someone to do some baby-sitting for me while I was out (don’t ask me why) and just at this moment a young girl – someone who has featured once or twice in our nocturnal rambles – came along. My idea was to grab hold of her to stand in for me but she was rather uncatchable, discreetly drifting away every time I tried to ask her to help out. But in the end off I went, in an old early base-model Mark I Ford Cortina 2-door, dark blue. MY route took me up a track at the back of some houses, through the daffodils, only to find my way blocked by an old car that I hadn’t noticed, so I had to retrace my steps.
A while later, I found myself in France again and I’d been following this trailer with an old car on it – a Peugeot 203. This was taken off the trailer and pushed up an overgrown lane to where there were another two of them. I couldn’t stop there as it was on the side of a hill, quite exposed and with bad bends, so I parked up in the nearby village and set out to walk back. even though it was a Sunday, there were hordes of people about and I wanted things to be much more quiet than this but I just couldn’t escape the people. I lost my way in the village and was surrounded by curious onlookers and I couldn’t find my way to these cars. Most of the people were British and there was clearly something going on of which I didn’t like the look at all – a drugs deal or other criminal activity maybe and this was an uncomfortable place to be. And somewhere along the line, this girl appeared in it again.
And yet another while later, I was in a car with, having made a dramatic reappearance, this same young girl. We were watching these British people and they were making a film – something like one of the 1970s “Cops and Robbers” dramas on British TV. This involved a car chase – the part in which she was interested – and so was I when I saw that the car being chased was a gorgeous Daytona Yellow Ford Taunus – the model from 1973-76. It was the most beautiful car of its type that I had seen for years and I had my heart set on it but I knew in my bones exactly what was going to happen to it – and I was right too. They slammed it right into the external corner of a wall and put a huge V-shaped dent in the front of it. I was furious and leapt out of the car calling them all kinds of names and in the end, after the chase had passed by, I man-handled the Taunus onto my trailer, which just happened to be attached to the back of my car. I asked this girl what her plans were for tomorrow and she told me that she “had to go to check out a scene for the Sweeney” – one of the aforementioned “Cops and Robbers” programmes and I took it to mean that she had to go and look at a location to see if it would be suitable for filming. I thought to myself that she isn’t half having some interesting and important tasks for a girl of her age.

But it’s amazing in a way that the same person can appear in all three parts of my little voyage during the night, and that I was of the opinion that it was all interconnected in some way. It’s not the first time that I’ve stepped out of a little nocturnal ramble only to step right back into it later at more-or-less the same place.

Anyway, after this, I did finally go back off to sleep and I remember being off again, but being awoken at 07:30 so that they can take a blood sample, well before you’re back in the land of the living, means that wherever I went has gone forever.

We had the cleaner coming along quite early and she showed quite clearly that she must have studied under Hattie Jacques. It must have been the turn of our room to have “the works” because she went over it from top to bottom, to such a thorough extent that Hattie Jacques would have been quite impressed. I kept to my bed while she was at it. That seemed to be the safest course.

I had a whole stream of visitors – nurses, doctors, Professors and the like. And each one told me a different story about my stay here. But one thing became clear, and that was that my blood count isn’t so good. The transfusion that I had the other day brought the count up to just 8.1. That’s close to the critical amount of 8.0 and so they are proposing another blood transfusion to bring it up to something more like it.

First off though, was to have more chemotherapy. They’ve decided that I’m fit enough to have a second helping of that before they give me more blood and so they made the necessary arrangements. And remembering how things unfolded last time, they took it slowly. That meant that they didn’t finish it until about 18:30, by which time it was too late to do the blood transfusion and throw me out.

That disappointed me – it means that I’ll have to stay here for yet another night and go without sleep once more. It’s ruined my day completely, the effects of last night without sleep because I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep all day and I’ve not really been able to accomplish anything that I’ve set out to do. How I dream for a good night’s sleep and a proper day of some kind of effort.

Not only that, OH Leuven were at home to White Star Brussels this evening. I’ve never seen Leuven play, but the last time that I saw White Star, they had about 200 supporters and a brass band. I was looking forward to going this evening, but I’ve had to rule that out which has annoyed me greatly.

Alison came by the visit too. Her cousin had some over for a short stay so she had been to pick her up at the railway station. On their way back, they came to visit, bringing a few edible bits and pieces with them and they will go down quite nicely.

So now everyone has finished what they are doing and we are supposed to be settling down for the night. But fat chance of that with my neighbour rattling off like he is. I’m thoroughly fed up of this, I can tell you.

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Wednesday 6th April 2016 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES …

… of mice and men gang aft agley, as Rabbie Burns once wrote. And how right he was. I reckoned that I lasted maybe for 5 minutes of my film before crashing out.

I was only awoken three times during the night – once by the usual need to take a stroll down the corridor, the second which was by one of the nurses who wanted to take my temperature, and the third time my a nurse asking me if I was okay. And had my reactions been any quicker, she would have had a pillow in the face as well. GRRRR!

But during the night I’d been looking at old cars for sale. I’d come across a garage that sold classic cars and my eye was caught by a maroon Wolseley 1300 (the same as Nerina used to have, except that hers was Black Tulip) that was for sale at €1,883. But I ended up playing in a rock band once more with Hans and also with a female on drums. We were playing at a concert up on the Chester road, slightly north of the Bluestones traffic lights near Acton (and we’ve been here before) and warming up, we played an impromptu blues number that I made up on the spot, called “I’m the accused”. Of course, the word “accused” is one of the easiest words in the English language to rhyme – there are so many other words that go with it, but it was still impressive that I could write a whole song “off the cuff” while actually performing it. And if I could write music, I’d write it down because I can still remember it even now.

And so the morning came round quick enough and I was soon tucking into breakfast. And with a sweet smile, I was even able to negotiate a second pot of coffee. I then had a shower (which made me feel so much better after yesterday) and a blood sample.

The blood sample wasn’t so easy though. They tried to take it out of the drain in my arm but for some reason that had become blocked. In the end, they had to take out the drain, fit another one in the other arm and take the sample from there.

An hour or so later they were back. “Your blood count is only 7.3, so we need to give you a transfusion today”
“So what was if before I had the transfusion on Monday?”
“6.5”
No wonder I was feeling like death in Givet last weekend.

We then had some amusement with the cleaner too. Doing her best to speak English to me (and I will never ever mock anyone’s attempts to speak a foreign language), she said “you must stay on your bed when I’m cleaning. It’s dangerous when I’m around”
“I know the feeling” I replied. “People often say that it’s dangerous when I’m around too”.

I found some time (although not very much) to start to write up the notes of my Canada 2014 voyage – I really need to get cracking with this – but it ground to a halt at about 15:00 when they came to give me more chemotherapy. This time, they took their time and it was soooooooo slowwwwwwwwwww. The blood came next and that needed to be heated to 41°C so they had a bizarre kind of coil heater machine to do it.

Foolish me should have gone to the bathroom at that moment because the blood transfusion was even slower. It crawled along and wasn’t finally over until 23:00, by which time I was bursting.

It meant that there was no chance whatever of me leaving the hospital today so I’m in for another night. And my neighbour is snoring like a pneumatic road-drill. It looks as if it’s going to be on of THOSE nights.

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Tuesday 5th April 2016 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what they put in one of those pochettes that they gave me, but I’ve never known anything like it.

They had a timer and some kind of feeder set on it. We started off at 20ml/minute (or something like that) and it gradually increased every 30 minutes or so until in the end I was having this stuff at 120ml/minute. And this is where the roof fell in.I went freezing cold, shivering like I have never shivered before, and having attack after attack of nausea. It was so bad that in the end they were obliged to switch if off for an hour while I recovered, and then start up again, with a limit of 50ml/minute.

But for that 10-minute period, I felt really and utterly dreadful.

Despite my bad night, I had a good sleep and didn’t wake up at all, not even for the bathroom. We didn’t have the same early start as we had in Montlucon either – about 07:20 if I remember correctly.

Breakfast was, as you might expect, jam butties with coffee (which was very nice) and then I was introduced to the student nurse who has been assigned to me. She’s from Denmark apparently, and the idea is that we can both learn Flemish together. That’s not quite what I had in mind, although there are some Flemish words that I learnt when I was chauffeuring in Brussels that I’m sure she doesn’t know. And she went and liberated another pot of coffee for me too, which was very nice of her.

The dietician came round too and spent half an hour with me. In quite a contrast to Montlucon, she knew what she was talking about. I have a severe protein deficiency, and need to increase my intake of fats. We spent all of the time talking about my diet for when I return home, and she’ll try to organise a few things here too.

I had a blood pressure test and pulse check too, but how they ever think that they are going to obtain a serious and meaningful reading from me when they send in four young student nurses into my room to make the measurements I’ll never know.

Lunch was a vegan chili (with soya chunks) and tomato sauce, with steamed potatoes and for what it was, it was delicious. And then we got down to business.

I told you about the first part of the treatment. That apparently is for marking the bad cells in my body. And there must have been plenty to affect me like that. And then once I’d recovered (which took a while) the system was cleansed for 20 minutes or so and then I was given the second stage of the treatment, interrupted by tea which was … errr … jam butties.

By 19:00 all of that was finished so I could prepare to receive my visitor. And sure enough, at 19:30 Alison appeared for a chat. She brought me a towel which was good of her, and some soya yoghurts and desserts, and a fruit salad (which was delicious for supper, thank you).

Now I’m going to stay awake until I fall asleep (which isn’t an Irishism at all – usually I go to bed and talk myself into sleeping) and watch a film maybe. There’s no alarm set for the morning either, for I imagine that I’ll be awoken by the hustle and bustle of the nursing staff.

But I need to increase my intake of proteins and fats.

Where’s the nearest fritkot?

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Monday 4th April 2016 – I WAS UP …

… quite early this morning and on the road almost straight away. I wanted to be at the hospital early and it’s a good job that I was because there were traffic queues and road works all over the place.

Once I’d found a good spec for Caliburn (there’s an outside car park that I needed to locate as the main car park has a 2-metre height limit), I went off on a route march to sign myself in. And that reminded me of the queue for registering a vehicle at Riom – I was ticket 259 and they were dealing with n°208.

But with 10 registration desks open (not like at Riom where there is just one) I was all done and dusted within 10 minutes and even had time to go to the café for breakfast. That worked out to be somewhat expensive for some bread and jam, but it would have been a lot cheaper had I realised that what I took to be orange juice was actually freshly-pressed mango.

I found the day hospital, and it’s nothing like Montlucon in that there were probably 100 people there. But I was pretty quickly whisked into a side ward and had a drain fitted. From there, I was shunted off into another room to wait for my blood.

But it’s not like Montlucon in another respect either. I hadn’t been in there long before someone from the Welfare Department came to see me. And never mind the interminable wrangle that we had at Montlucon (and is still going on) about payment – she was brandishing photocopies of my Insurers’ registration form and we filled it in on the spot. They are of course much more used to my situation here and are fully prepared.

We also discussed the situation about my accommodation for when I’m released. She went off and came back 20 minutes later with the news that I have been booked for two weeks into the “family guest-rooms” at the old hospital in the city centre. That’s pretty quick, I have to say. And it’s pretty good news too. All of which is compounded by the fact that the parking here at the hospital (€4:00 per day for inmates) is capped at €12 per week for long-term visitors, and they expect me to be undergoing treatment for … gulp … six months. And so this two-week “stay of execution” gives me time to think of a “Plan B”.

But treatment here wasn’t as straightforward as it might have been. They needed to do all kinds of tests and so on that hadn’t been carried out at Montlucon apparently, and by the time that they had finished everything and the blood had finally arrived, it was 15:30. For food, it was jam butties because, having caught them à la depourvu, there was nothing arranged for me, but at least there was a free coffee machine just around the corner.

By the time that my transfusions were over, it was 19:30 – far too late for chemotherapy and far too late for me to go anywhere else, and so they have found a bed here for me until Wednesday, and chemotherapy will start tomorrow morning. But I’ve missed the evening meal tonight because of all of this, and so I had … errr … jam butties for tea. However, I went down to Caliburn for my things, and profited by stuffing the suitcase full of goodies.

But damn and blast my neighbour. I’m having to share a room and of course, he snores. It’s been a long time since I’ve been still awake at 01:00. This is going to be a very long night.

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