… alone!

And when they send me the bill for the €20:00 for the subsistence, I shall only pay half and the mouse that I saw at 05:25 eating the crumbs on the floor when I awoke can pay the rest.

What surprised me particularly was not so much the mouse but the nonchalant attitude of the staff when I told them, as if “we’ve heard it all and seen it all before”. One member of staff (the male nurse with whom I’d had that huge argument last night) even tried to chase it away into someone else’s room rather than try to eradicate it.

So now my mind is made up. When I move downstairs I am definitely going to have a cat – a female cat – and the problem with what to do with it when I’m in hospital is resolved because I shall bring it with me. It can have free board and lodging.

And if anyone tells me that animals aren’t allowed into hospitals …

So, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, the intravenous drip went on until about 03:00, with me trying to sleep and every half an hour or so a nurse coming to check and awakening me

When they finally disconnected me, I could at last have some proper sleep, which I did until all of 05:20, which was when I saw the mouse.

As I said earlier, it was the nonchalant attitude of the staff that surprised me the most. They seemed to think that it was quite a normal thing to have a mouse in their hospital. I wasn’t impressed, though.

After they left, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. While I was having a brief doze I saw a couple of heavy lorries go past with huge, heavy trailers on the back. From one of them, the trailer broke away and 100 yards further on the heavy metal container body on the lorry full of scrap metal or something also fell off. The trailer careered off down a side street and I remember thinking to myself “so that was the end of Mike’s Music Shop in Edleston Road”.

There used to be a music shop in Edleston Road – it moved there from Nantwich Road several years ago. I bought a lot of stuff, including my famous Gibson EB3 bass, from there. However, one of the owners died a couple of years ago so I don’t know if the shop is still there.

Later on; I ended up having a row with a nurse during a dream last night. He wanted to couple me up to a drip-feed thing in a very complicated way that I was sure wasn’t right. When he came to work on it, he found that he had to make the cables longer so he pulled on the cables and that nearly pulled the catheter out of my arm. When I shouted at him to stop he made something of a face and we had something of an argument … fell asleep here …

And fell asleep for two hours and eight minutes, so the dictaphone’s timestamp told me. And I’ve seen enough of these couplings-up to a Portable Patient these last ten or so years to know how it’s done and to know if it’s not done correctly. But clearly, that row last night must have been on my mind.

They had coupled the machine incorrectly, and ended up with pipes looking like a plate of spaghetti, all tangled up in each other rather than a nice flowing series of pipes; And the fact that they were all tangled together was the root of this argument, when he pulled on one and it pulled all the others

Breakfast (for me, anyway) came at 09:10 this morning and when I finished, and I wasn’t in the mood to eat all of it they coupled up the chemotherapy stuff.

And round about 10:00 the side effects began. I began to shiver and shake, I went deathly cold and a huge wave of fatigue swept over me. There’s only one cure for this – I went to bed, under the bedclothes to keep warm.

The nurses and the doctor were frantic with worry but I know about this kind of thing and I know the best cure is to sleep it off. They were having none of it though, and insisted on taking tests and measurements

There was also, as you might be expecting, the "would you like a doliprane?"

Round about 11:30 they finally got the message and cleared off, except for the cleaner and the nursing assistant who brought me my lunch, which I refused.

With the taxi coming at 14:30, I left the bed at 14:00, still feeling shaky, and packed my bags. And then went back to sleep.

The taxi arrived at 15:30 and as I was feeling a little better, I walked to the car, refusing the wheelchair, and settled myself down in a comfortable position.

The driver has taken me before, and he’s a nice, friendly guy so we had a little chat as we drove out of Paris. For once, the traffic circulation was fairly fluid so we would make good time

Once we were on the motorway I fell asleep and slept all the way to Caen, except for dealing with messages from my friend ond my faithful cleaner about my kitchen, which has arrived at last. I mentioned to the kitchen fitter that it had arrived, so he’s going to start work on his next free day, which might be some time at the end of next week.

He’s also been to another store and found what he needs from there and has negotiated a good price so he’ll be bringing all of that after I’ve paid for it.

When I awoke we were going round the north side of Caen. My driver reckons that it’s quicker at this time of afternoon and he was probably right too because we arrived back at home after just four hours of travel And we were greeted by a rainstorm of tropical proportions.

The boxes of kitchen stuff look impressive in the new apartment. I can’t wait for them to be opened and assembled. And then I climbed up here, feeling a little better than just recently, despite the pain in my foot that has now gone off to the back of the base of my little toe and in my heel since the Retuximab.

My friend had made some food to eat which was nice of him, and now I’ve come to write my notes before I go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about this pain in my foot… "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the nurses asked me "have you ever thought about acupuncture to solve the pain?"
"Yes I have as it happens" I replied "but I just didn’t get the point of it."