… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting on my office chair next to my nice, comfortable bed, downstairs in my new apartment. I am in here at last, and in the words of Maréchal MacMahon, "j’y suis, j’y reste" or “here I am and here I stay”, even if the internet will not be connected until tomorrow.
My friends and neighbours are heroes, absolutely. While I was at dialysis this afternoon, they moved my bed and office chair down into my new bedroom, the dining table and chairs into the dining area, most of the food from the kitchen upstairs into this kitchen, and the second bookcase and all of the books that go with it.
While I’m away in Paris, they propose to bring down the rest of my office and studio and to make a start on the living room.
As well as that, a neighbour in the next building has said that he will come by with a large sacking truck and help move the washing machine. And that’s very helpful too, because the washing machine is what has been worrying me.
No-one can ask for better neighbours than those whom I have. It’s no wonder that I didn’t ever want to leave this building. And my friends are wonderful too. Without them, I would be sunk.
And last night, I thought that I was going to be sunk too. Much as I tried, I couldn’t finish off my work by 23:00. I was a good half-hour late going to bed, and probably more besides.
And although I went to sleep quite quickly, I awoke quite quickly too – round about 01:20. And from then on, I had a very disturbed night, tossing and turning, falling asleep and awakening more-or-less straight away.
At about 05:00 I called it a day and arose from my bed.
The first thing that I did was to check the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. They were talking about the Stranraer game last night. Stranraer had lost 3-1 to East Kilbride and they were discussing the various performances of the team. East Kilbride thought that the central defence of Stranraer wasn’t good enough and neither was the goalkeeper, of whom they said was responsible for two of the goals, and they wer urging Stranraer to make a couple of new signings. Stranraer’s captain, who was forty-one today, was saying that they were quite awful, and he couldn’t think of a reason why that should be that they couldn’t reproduce the form that they showed against Alloa or against Queen of the South several weeks ago. it was all such a mystery. Manager Scott Aitken on the other hand refused to speak to the press. He’s believed to be having several stern words with some of his players prior to the next game next weekend.
There is a lot of truth in the foregoing. Stranraer did indeed lose 3-1 to East Kilbride on Saturday. Their team is largely made up these days of Lowland League players who lack experience at Professional level. They have had some impressive Cup victories against clubs such as Alloa Athletic and Queen of the South; but their league form leaves something to be desired. People are urging the manager to strengthen the team
There were plenty of other things that needed to be done and so I kept quite busy until I heard something stirring on the sofa in the living room. That sounded like my friend and he Hound of the Baskervilles raising themselves from the Dead, so I went off for a good wash and brush up while my friend made coffee.
We had a good chat and put the world to rights, drinking coffee, for quite some time until the nurse arrived. He didn’t stay long – just enough time to sort out my legs – and soon cleared off.
The Hound of the Baskervilles then dragged his master off for walkies and I began slowly to dismantle the office. Not that I managed to make much progress because I can’t work as quickly as I used to do.
When they came back, we had breakfast and then the work began. My friend taking all of the books out of the second bookcase and I dismantled the office.
And that was a task and a half too. With the collection of backup drives, the array, the charging cables, the preamp and speaker connections, its a veritable cat’s cradle of cables. Luckily, it’s all quite self-explanatory so although it will be a complex task to reconnect everything, it won’t be complicated.
My cleaner came along to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then we all went downstairs to see the plumber.
He’s made rapid strides but he won’t be finished until tomorrow. However, I don’t care because he has made a beautiful job of the work and I am really impressed. I reckon that I really struck it lucky with the plumber and the kitchen fitter. I couldn’t have asked for better.
The young, chatty taxi driver picked me up for Avranches, and after picking up and dropping off someone else along the way, we ended up at the dialysis centre rather later than usual.
And here, I found that the whatsit had hit the wherever.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that ten days or so ago, I wrote what has been considered by some to be a rather warm letter. It concerned several things that had happened at dialysis about which I had complained and about which there had been no action. The incident with the collapsed mattress had pushed me over the edge that day and so I put pen to paper … "fingers to keyboard" – ed …
It was to the Director-General at the head office at Rennes to whom I wrote, and he had apparently passed the letter down to the clinic at Avranches, and so the boss of the service came to see me and he was not a very happy bunny at all.
However, instead of trying to deal with the issues that I raised, he did his best to justify what had taken place, and even to blame me "if things are hurting you so much, it’s your fault for refusing painkillers" for things going wrong.
However, painkillers never cured anything – they simply mask the underlying symptoms and make the doctor’s life easier because he doesn’t have to search for a permanent solution to the problem. And in any case, what do painkillers prescribed for AFTER the dialysis session have to do with the pain that you feel when they plug you into the machine?
Be that as it may, he thinks that the problem with the pain is not with the implant but part of my overall neurological problem, which is being treated in Paris. So if that’s not evidence of his “service having given up all hope”, I really don’t know what is.
He also took exception to the points that I had raised about the dietician. But just what is offensive about saying "we are no longer living in the Dark Ages, as your dieticians seem to think"? It strikes me that there are some people around here with some extremely thin skins.
We talked about my complaints to the hospital administration last year about the food. He told me that the hospital dieticians are totally different people from the ones at the dialysis clinic.
That may be so, but when the clinic’s dietician came to see me, she discussed my complaint to the hospital last summer. So if she’s in a different service, how did she know about the complaints?
My letter did include the statement that I had discussed these matters with the service previously. He denied that I had, which also raised my hackles because in my letter, I even referred to several examples.
He finished this part of the discussion by prescribing another painkiller for me. You couldn’t make it up, could you? When I wrote in my letter that it seemed that the dialysis clinic had abandoned all hope, you don’t need clearer evidence than the prescribing of a painkiller to underline exactly what I said.
The upshot of the matter is that he seemed to be more interested in defending his service than dealing with the issues.
After that, he came out with something quite surprising. "You keep a blog, don’t you?"
He told me that someone in the service has read it and that some of the comments have disturbed some of the people who work there. He wanted me to "be very very careful" about what I wrote in future, without going into any specific details as to what I need to be very careful about, and why.
First of all, I’m afraid that I react rather badly to threats. They simply wind me up even more
Secondly, whatever I have written has in the main been quite complimentary about most of the staff. Even in my letter, I said that “the nurses are doing their best”. There have been one or two about whom I may not have been quite so generous, but I can back up my comments with specific examples.
Rather bewildered by his remarks, I asked him if he could give me a few examples of what I had said that had upset people, but he couldn’t – or wouldn’t. And that infuriated me even more.
Occasionally, I do write in a rather … errr … terse manner … "you aren’t kidding!" – ed … but everything that I have written has always had my name on it and I will stand foursquare behind it. The idea that someone should make an anonymous complaint and refuse to justify it by quoting any definite examples, but to stir up a hornet’s nest of innuendo and suspicion without the courage to come forward and approach me directly, that I am just not prepared to accept.
But this leads on to something much more sinister.
Just WHO from the dialysis clinic has been stalking me through cyberspace?
How have they found my blog if it wasn’t through searching the internet for my name?
Why would they want to search the internet for the name of a patient, unless it’s to pry into his private life?
Is it good professional practice to pry informally into a patient’s private life? If I were to do do that during the course of my employment, I would probably find myself facing some serious issues.
How much of my blog have they trawled through in order to find some allegedly disparaging comments?
And why would a blog, that has a circulation of merely a couple of thousand readers if it’s lucky out of the eight billion people on the planet, be of such importance to them?
As I said, all of this is very sinister.
First of all, let me make it clear. I don’t care who stalks me through cyberspace. If I cared at all, I wouldn’t be writing a blog. People can follow me around on the internet as much as they like. But I’ve always worked on the principle that "people who listen at keyholes will never hear any good of themselves.".
Many of my readers actively engage in this blog, in one way or another, and it is with my great regret that others choose not to. Everyone is welcome to read these pages and I appreciate your visits very much, but if I don’t know that you are here, how can I restrain myself? You can’t blame me if i write something inconsiderate that steps on your toes if I don’t know that you are reading it.
What infuriated me by far the most about this affair was the fact that this interview was held in an open ward with several other patients, several nurses and one or two taxi drivers present. That really wound me up. This interview should have been held in a private room where I would have had the opportunity to have stated my case without any of my private details being disclosed to people who had no business to hear them – and I can only imagine that the reason why it was held in an open ward was basically to shut me up so that the doctor could hold the floor without interruption.
That was the saddest part of this whole affair.
Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … dialysis clinic, they took more water out than was necessary, in order to give me a good head start when they start pumping stuff into me at Paris tomorrow. When I weighed myself after the session, I found that I was halfway down from my usual weight to my athletic weight, and it’s been a while since I can say that.
My favourite taxi driver took me home, and she and I had a lovely chat all the way back here.
My usual reception committee was waiting, and they brought me in here to show me what they had done, and it was wonderful I love my new apartment. I cooked my first meal in here tonight, stuffed peppers for my friend and me, and then he cleared off upstairs and left me all alone in my new, beautiful abode.
The plumber is coming tomorrow to finish the shower, and then the place will be all mine completely, and how I am looking forward to it.
But before I go, the ideal way to finish this entry tonight would have been to tell the story that I told recently about the woman complaining about the man in the next room, but she had to peer through the air brick to see him. That would have been so appropriate tonight, given what went on this afternoon.
However, seeing as we have been talking about my friends and neighbours… "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my neighbours told me "the guy on the third floor says that you aren’t fit to live with pigs."
"And what did you say?" I asked
"Oh, I stood up for you" she said. "I told him that you were!"
