… a rather large shark into the swimming pool here at the hospital.

This afternoon and evening I’ve been chatting to Rosemary and to Liz and of course as you might expect, the subject of food came up.

As regular readers of this rubbish might recall, I would give all that I own and much more besides if someone were to send me a pizza but that’s obviously out of the question.

Instead, I’ve been browsing the hospital’s website and I found the following remarks on the “Admissions” page –
"LES REPAS
Un choix de menus vous sera proposé chaque jour.
Les diététiciennes prendront en compte les indications et prescriptions médicales et vous proposeront un repas adapté à votre état de santé."
It goes without saying that I have never been offered a choice of menu in all the time that I have been here, and I’ve never even seen a dietician, never mind discussed my dietary requirements with one.

Browsing deeper into the hospital’s webpage I found a contact e-mail so I have launched my offensive. And believe me – “offensive” is the correct word to use in these situations.

My mail finished with "I would probably have dealt with this issue by going on a hunger strike, but by the looks of things, I seem already to have been on one since I came here"

Of course, it goes without saying what will happen about this. 99% of me knows that my mail will be discarded, lost, unanswered or ignored. But 1% of me tells me that someone might actually do something about it. And after the news that I’ve had today, I’m living on the 1%s

Firstly though, apart from the odd nurse sticking her head in the door once or twice, I was left pretty much alone for the evening and hauled myself off to bed at 23:30. Going to bed is much easier since I’ve lost all that weight over the last week, that’s for sure. It’s just as it used to be.

Lying semi-awake for a while I was listening to “Simple Minds” again. I seem to be stuck on them for the moment. But I eventually turned everything off and went to sleep.

At about 04:15 I was obliged to go to walk the parapet. I was surprised that that was the first time that I’d awoken during the night. No heated discussions outside my door last night and, it seems, far less clattering and banging.

At 06:30 the night-nurse came to take a blood test
"No diabetes test?"
"No"
"So make sure that I have my jam at breakfast."

Later on, at breakfast, "where’s my jam?" Here we go again.

Actually, breakfast was quite late this morning. I’ve no idea why. But once again, they came to take a diabetes check just as I was stuffing a jam butty down my throat. I’ve no idea what they hope to achieve with results from a test like that.

They came to interrupt my breakfast to weigh me too. What strange idea is that? They should have weighed me before I started eating. I made them wait until I’d finished. Mind you, I should have made them wait for another 10 minutes after I’d finished and they would have had a completely different result indeed. That laxative the other day was made of powerful stuff.

And the ex-Chinese Tong hitwoman is back. She came to ask me if I wanted a bed-bath. I told her that these days I can manage myself in the bathroom so she asked me if I wanted my back scrubbed. I shall really have to do something about this before it gets out of hand.

There was the endless stream of visitors to the bathroom door while I was doing what I was doing. Apart from my ex-Chinese Tong hitwoman who stuck her head in and several other people too, a nurse came to see me about an echograph for my heart.
"Are you nearly ready?" she asked
"I’ve only just begun" I said, and added a few things under my breath that I hoped she didn’t hear
"OK. I’ll come back later".

But now the bad news.

When I finally made it back in my room the doctor came to see me. The Creatine, which reached crisis level at 300 and saw me hospitalised at 330, is now at over 400.

Add to that one or two other complications, and this means that dialysis will start quicker than planned. He was trying to persuade me to have it done at home but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that’s out of the question and I wish that they’d stop trying to insist.

The Potassium, which they are now treating with that ghastly powder, has risen out of control too. So three a day from now on for that. That should be fun and no mistake.

He said “see you on Wednesday”, which means that I’m going to be here for a few more days yet. Can I survive the awful food?

After he left, everything quietened down for a while and I was able to listen to the dictaphone. There was a Japanese World War II bomber pilot who actually made it to Germany. He was based in Germany and flew with the Luftwaffe with his particular aeroplane. At least, that was what people suspected. He lived on the edge of a camp somewhere by where there was a stream. They suspected that he was catching the live trout and eating them along with the rations that he was given but they didn’t say anything for fear of upsetting Germano-Japanese relations. One day he didn’t turn up for a mission which was most unlike him because he was the keenest pilot of them all. They wondered if there had been some kind of incident at his camp that had stopped him from appearing but they wondered how they could go along and broach the issue with the camp and actually manage to see the guy because even though there was just half a dozen people down there, the pilot and his staff, it was very closely watched by his people. They didn’t really like the idea of intruders going there but they began to be really worried when he didn’t start turning up for missions or missed this one mission. What exactly was going on with him?

Any Japanese person who came to Germany during the war would have come and gone by one of the German freight submarines running between the East Indies and the mainland of continental Europe. However, as far as I’m aware, there’s certainly no record of any Japanese airman going on active service in Europe, and certainly not in a Japanese ‘plane. There were several incidents of ‘planes going in the other direction – from Germany to Japan and back.

We finally had the echograph this afternoon and it was one of the most uncomfortable examinations that I’ve had, lying there on my side like that while he ran his detector covered with grease all over my body.

They are concerned about my heart apparently. It’s not doing what it’s supposed to do and moving the water around my body quickly enough. However when the examination was finally over, the doctor told me "there are a few problems that we’ve identified but overall it’s functioning well enough."

So what happens now? I suppose that we wait and see

While I was on my way to the echography unit I noticed a patient being helped along by a physiotherapist. That looked like a good plan to me if I’m going to be stuck here. At the very least it’ll break the monotony. "So what are my chances of having some physiotherapy?" I asked. And she put things in motion which was good news.

But that nurse has a lot to learn about the disabled and the elderly. Autonomy is everything. While it’s very kind of her to try to help by manoeuvring the patients around, helping them dress, trying to lift them up, for many people in my condition we need to struggle for ourselves. Once you surrender to convenience and expediency you are on the slippery downhill slope and there’s no way back. It’s a question of keeping going as long as possible, keeping your pride and keeping your self-esteem.

"I bet that I’ve missed the afternoon coffee" I said, noticing the time
"I’ll go and find one for you" she said, and sailed off.

But then she sailed back. "There is no coffee this afternoon". No coffee? What kind of place is this? This really is the end.

Later on, both Liz and Rosemary wanted a chat, as I mentioned earlier. And also as I mentioned earlier, food was an important part of the discussion. And when I saw my evening meal tonight, this spartan affair that wouldn’t keep the lupus from the porte as they would say in Ancient Rome after we had been discussing pizze, so I began my attack on the hospital administration.

Not that it will work of days, but these days, with not having a spleen to vent, I have to find other channels to let out my anger and frustration. As Gotthold Lessing once said, "A man who does not lose his reason over certain things has none to lose" and where food is involved I can certainly become unreasonable quite easily without any provocation.

While I was eating my frugal fare a group of nurses came along with an electrograph machine and stuck these electronic stickers all over me. I can’t even have a meal in peace now. It’s all getting completely out-of-hand, the whole lot of it and I’m sick to the back teeth of all of this.

But whichever way you look at it, the outlook is grim. I really don’t know what I’m going to do about all of this and how I’m going to do it.
"THere’s no need to feel like that" said the doctor. "Look on the bright side"
"Is there a bright side?"
"There certainly is" said the doctor. "The man in the next room wants to buy your slippers. You won’t be needing them much longer"