… with crashing out so thoroughly like I did yesterday early evening is that you can’t go back to sleep again later. Especially when you have a room-mate who not only snores like a bull but who goes to the bathroom more often than I do.

In fact at one stage I do remember dropping off round about 04:00 only to be awoken by him going to the bathroom 10 minutes later. I’m going to definitely change my mind about leaving as soon as I see the doctor, and go and have a really good sleep somewhere else. It’ll mean a change of room too for when I come back (at least, I hope so anyway).

But I did drop off sometime later (but when, I’m not sure) only to be awoken by a nurse who wanted to take my temperature and blood pressure. I was stark out at that moment so I’ll be like a bear with a sore head (or in my case, a hare with a sore bed) for the rest of the day.

But somewhere in all of this, I’d found time to go on my travels again. I was driving somewhere (on the right-hand side of the road) and at a roundabout I had to turn right. On the corner was a school playing field (younger readers of this rubbish might not know what one of these is) with the kids playing all kinds of weird games. I made a few enquiries to find out the name of the school and then I obtained a brochure. The kids who were playing were the “Green” house of the school and this was nicknamed “the Dead”. The reason for this was that the kids in this house were selected for their “fun and spirit of enjoyment” but generally took twice as long to carry out academic tasks than their fellows in other houses.

I was allowed breakfast this morning, and then I had to wait around. And around. And around for my visit for the bone marrow. It wasn’t until 14:30 that they came to collect me and even then I had to wait half an hour before I was seen to.

The monotony was broken by the doctor who came to see me. I asked her if I really could go away for the weekend and she said that she would see the Professor who is handling my case. It seems that whatever happens next, the results of my kidney and of my bone marrow analyses won’t be through for a week so nothing will be decided before then anyway, and the discussion could easily take place at the Day Centre.

So what I need to do now is to speak to the girl at Social Services and see if she can find me a place in the family accommodation at Pellenberg starting on Monday and for a few days. That will give me a weekend away to go and pick up my telephone and then when I come back, a few days to find some accommodation such as a room in a house somewhere with shared facilities. I’ve seen them advertised via the University for as little as €200 per month (and as much as €750 per month too) and that will help me out during the summer while I organise myself.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say on the southern side of the linguistic frontier, we were discussing bone marrow a few minutes ago. And those regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they took a sample in Montlucon back ages ago and I can still feel the pain even now.

But they must have been butchers, not doctors, because the most painful thing about the bone marrow extraction today was the injection for the local anaesthetic. That’s not to say that it wasn’t uncomfortable of course, or that it was totally painless (or without stress because I’m useless in hospital) but it wasn’t anything near as bad as I was imagining.

First thing that I did when I returned here was to change out of my surgical gown and put my own clothes on. That’s much more like it. And now I have to wait for night to fall, and to hope that my room-mate doesn’t sleep on his back tonight. I’ll be glad to get away from here for a few days.

But I can’t go without mentioning a little incident here this evening. I was chatting to one of the nurses (one of the more … errr … mature ones) about what’s been going on, and she expressed a great deal of sympathy for me, ending up by stroking my arm.

Things are looking up!

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