… a very eventful day today.
Mind you, I was awoken at 04:00 by the night nurse kneeling at my feet. I wondered what she was doing at first but it turned out that she was simply making my glucose drip work. Apparently it had stalled.
At 06:30 someone else came in to take my details – blood pressure, temperature and the like, and to take a sample of blood. Then I was left alone until 08:30. I could get on and check to see where I’d been during the night. I was with my family again. I didn’t know what I was doing or what we were doing but we had some kind of car there and we were examining it for something or other. There was some baking involved too. I offered to bake someone a special cake but for some reason found that it was actually one of the very few for whom I’d already cooked, so that wouldn’t work and I didn’t have another suggestion.
One of the guys was an old guy with flowing white hair who made all kinds of inventions, most of which were rejected out of hand. One particular night ne went downstairs to go home and he had some kind of weird jet-powered low-slung tricycle on the lawn. He got in it and it started up with a whizz and a bang. I thought that this doesn’t sound in the least bit healthy to me and wandered away.
Breakfast was served and then my dressings were changed, and you should have seen the size of the needle that was taken out of my hand. They weighed me too and I’ve lost 1.7 kilos. And judging by the liquid that’s come out of me since my operation (which seems to have done the trick) it was all due to water retention.
First we had the doctor who has been treating me. I didn’t ask him about the blood count but he didn’t propose another transfusion so I suppose that that’s good news.
As the urologist hadn’t been by 10:00 I wasn’t allowed to have a shower but I could have a good wash and a shave. At least I look more human now. Well, slightly anyway.
There was hardly enough time to go back to bed before the urologist came to see me trailing behind him a gaggle of students, like something out of DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE with James Robertson Justice. And if I had heard the WHAT’S THE BLEEDING TIME I wouldn’t have been surprised.
And I had my discussion with him in Flemish which is a good sign. I’m definitely improving.
He was replaced – in fact, crossed at the door – by the doctor from haematology with her gaggle of students. They had a discussion and compared notes. Basically, they intend to unplug my pipes and cables tomorrow and then monitor my weight for a few days.
They are certain that I shall still be here on Friday at the very least and I’m in no hurry to go. Being waited on hand and foot by a gaggle of young student nurses? Who would want to leave here. Not for nothing is this place known (by me at least) as CASTLE ANTHRAX.
Lunch of soup, pasta with tofu in a tomato sauce and followed by a pear came early, and then I followed up by dealing with a pile of correspondence that had built up over the last while. I also had to write to the Welsh Senedd and the Welsh First Minister
And to my tutor. It’s my Welsh lesson and of course I don’t have the course book with me. It’s available to download to paid-up course members which I am, so she sent me the link which was nice of her. It’ll be interesting to see how this course goes with me in an operating gown on a flaky internet connection with people coming and going like the waiting room on Euston Station.
There were Internet chats with Rosemary and Alison – and my chat with Alison was a video chat too, and several other exchanges of messages with other people. And a grateful thanks to all of your support too which is much-appreciated.
In between all of that I started to write the text for a radio programme but I didn’t get very far as everyone was coming and going this afternoon too. It’s not as peaceful and undisturbed as you might think in a hospital.
But now that this is done, I ought to go off to sleep but even though I’ve had my sleeping pill thing, I’m not in the least bit tired. I suppose that I could watch a film on the laptop but that doesn’t seem to have the same soporific effect either as it used to.
