… relapse today.
This morning I awoke with a pain in my chest and it’s gradually gone from bad to worse during the course of the day.
When I explained the problem to the nurses when they were doing their rounds, my little student nurse came back with an ECG machine and took a scan of my chest.
However as the day wore on the pain became worse and worse the doctor who came to see me in the evening gave me a good going-over and sent me for an x-ray. As yet I don’t have the results.
Another thing is that I’m also off my food. I ate my soya dessert and drank my coffee this evening but that was that.
Despite going to bed early last night I was wide-awake at 03:06 and even thought I went for the usual stroll down the corridor, I couldn’t go back to sleep again and I lay awake tossing and turning for quite a while.
Eventually I must have gone back to sleep because the alarm awoke me and there was also something on the dictaphone. There I was wide awake at 03:08 this morning and had a meal to cook. I went through a recipe book and found 6 courses of something that would make a really nice Indian meal and began to collect all the ingredients together. There were things like white fish cooked in rice etc. As I looked I thought that some of these things were at first way beyond my capabilities. I needed a large amount of courage in order to start them. It took me ages to try my best to summon up the willpower and I still hadn’t. In the meantime it was back in the 1930s and they were talking outside my door about the rise of Germany, talking about Fascism etc. I hated the idea that they would come in and ask what my political leanings were because if I said that I were left of centre I’d be accused of being a Communist etc which was totally and utterly untrue. Meanwhile, how was I going to start this meal? I wanted a big pyrex dish that I knew existed in this kitchen, where I could put the rice and fish but I couldn’t find it or anything that resembled that dish. I thought “here’s another load of chaos I seem to have descended into”.
The nurses came round on a few occasions to bring me my medication and take my blood pressure etc. At one point my little student nurse took my blood pressure and found that it was 98 over 67.
“That’s really low” she said. “Normally when I take your blood pressure it’s much higher than this.”
“Not ‘arf” I thought to myself. I might be old and bits of me might not be working but none of that affects my blood pressure, especially when a pretty young girl leans all over me to wire me up to all kinds of machines. It’s usually like the “blood pressure” scene from CARRY ON DOCTOR.
For most of the rest of the day I’ve been curled up under the bedclothes. With no-one coming by, no tests or examinations, there hasn’t been anything else going on so I may as well take it extremely easy.
There’s a lot going on tomorrow and I need to be ready for it. That is, if my chest doesn’t get any worse.
