… of mice and men gang aft agley, as Rabbie Burns once wrote. And how right he was. I reckoned that I lasted maybe for 5 minutes of my film before crashing out.
I was only awoken three times during the night – once by the usual need to take a stroll down the corridor, the second which was by one of the nurses who wanted to take my temperature, and the third time my a nurse asking me if I was okay. And had my reactions been any quicker, she would have had a pillow in the face as well. GRRRR!
But during the night I’d been looking at old cars for sale. I’d come across a garage that sold classic cars and my eye was caught by a maroon Wolseley 1300 (the same as Nerina used to have, except that hers was Black Tulip) that was for sale at €1,883. But I ended up playing in a rock band once more with Hans and also with a female on drums. We were playing at a concert up on the Chester road, slightly north of the Bluestones traffic lights near Acton (and we’ve been here before) and warming up, we played an impromptu blues number that I made up on the spot, called “I’m the accused”. Of course, the word “accused” is one of the easiest words in the English language to rhyme – there are so many other words that go with it, but it was still impressive that I could write a whole song “off the cuff” while actually performing it. And if I could write music, I’d write it down because I can still remember it even now.
And so the morning came round quick enough and I was soon tucking into breakfast. And with a sweet smile, I was even able to negotiate a second pot of coffee. I then had a shower (which made me feel so much better after yesterday) and a blood sample.
The blood sample wasn’t so easy though. They tried to take it out of the drain in my arm but for some reason that had become blocked. In the end, they had to take out the drain, fit another one in the other arm and take the sample from there.
An hour or so later they were back. “Your blood count is only 7.3, so we need to give you a transfusion today”
“So what was if before I had the transfusion on Monday?”
“6.5”
No wonder I was feeling like death in Givet last weekend.
We then had some amusement with the cleaner too. Doing her best to speak English to me (and I will never ever mock anyone’s attempts to speak a foreign language), she said “you must stay on your bed when I’m cleaning. It’s dangerous when I’m around”
“I know the feeling” I replied. “People often say that it’s dangerous when I’m around too”.
I found some time (although not very much) to start to write up the notes of my Canada 2014 voyage – I really need to get cracking with this – but it ground to a halt at about 15:00 when they came to give me more chemotherapy. This time, they took their time and it was soooooooo slowwwwwwwwwww. The blood came next and that needed to be heated to 41°C so they had a bizarre kind of coil heater machine to do it.
Foolish me should have gone to the bathroom at that moment because the blood transfusion was even slower. It crawled along and wasn’t finally over until 23:00, by which time I was bursting.
It meant that there was no chance whatever of me leaving the hospital today so I’m in for another night. And my neighbour is snoring like a pneumatic road-drill. It looks as if it’s going to be on of THOSE nights.
