… it was 11:30 when I finally left the bed this morning.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I was in bed at 17:30 and was flat out, fast asleep until about 22:30. Ordinarily, I would have been tempted to leave the bed but I was feeling even worse than I had done earlier so for a while, I just lay there vegetating.
At some point, I must have gone back to sleep because the alarm awoke me at 06:29 as usual, and it was a desperate struggle to leave the bed.
Yesterday, I’d gone to sleep fully-clothed and that was how I was found this morning. I didn’t wash, which is not like me at all, but simply fell into the kitchen for the lemon, ginger and honey drink with my medication. And to make the drink required another monumental effort.
Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and I can’t believe that after all that sleep, there was so little on it. I was very ill, like I am now. For some reason, I was sitting on the floor, trying to work the computer when I was sitting on the floor. There was a cup of tea there, but it was freezing cold, and a cup of orange. There was a woman talking to me, and I recognised her as someone who had a lot of frizzy red hair and I know her from somewhere but I can’t think who she is. She’s something to do with the Health Service, and she asked me how I was feeling. I said that I was feeling dreadful. I told her that it had happened since roughly 15:00 which she said was the time that we all stop for a cup of tea. Surprisingly then, she left the room without saying anything else or doing anything else and I was still struggling about, sitting there on the floor.
That girl is someone whom I know from somewhere but I can’t place her at all. The hot drink and orange juice does come round at about 15:00 at dialysis and I do sometimes have the opinion that when I talk to the doctors about how I’m feeling, they walk away afterwards without doing anything about it.
Isabelle the Nurse noticed how ill I was looking. She told me to mention it at dialysis, which was what I had in mind to do. She gave me some advice and then left on her rounds.
After she left, do I make breakfast or go back to bed? Seeing as I wasn’t hungry anyway, I set the alarm for 11:30 and crawled once more under the quilt, fully-clothed again.
When the alarm sounded, I went to haul myself out of bed but it took so long that my cleaner was here by the time I was up and about. She applied my anaesthetic and it’s just as well that she hurried because the taxi came half an hour early.
It was a driver whom I hadn’t seen before, and she chatted non-stop all the way to Avranches. I really wasn’t in the mood.
Early at dialysis made no difference because once I’d told them about my health problems, they refused to connect me without speaking to a doctor.
Eventually, the doctor turned up and examined me, and they gave me an electro-cardiac test. It took them three goes before they were convinced that the results weren’t incorrect. They have diagnosed an irregular heartbeat.
As well as that, my blood pressure, low as it always is, was even lower today.
They asked me if I wanted to be admitted to Casualty but I said “no”, so they are going to speak to a few people and then call me in for a hospital stay while they examine me. I might have to wait a few days for that.
When dialysis was finally finished, it was another “Tour of Normandy” to come home, so I was no earlier than usual. My cleaner helped me in, and I sat on a chair and collapsed.
For tea, I tried a home-made mushroom soup but half of it went in the bin as usual.
So having written up last night’s entry and now tonight’s, I’m off to bed. Heaven alone knows what time I’ll awaken tomorrow.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my electro-cardiac test … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked the nurse if she had succeeded in finding my heart.
"Oh yes" she replied. "It’s still there "
"Thank heavens for that" I replied. "I’m not turning into a Conservative."
