Tag Archives: hospital

Tuesday 25th June 2024 – SO IT’S OFFICIAL.

The anaesthetist “wants to see me” and has set aside 16:45 on Wednesday 3rd July for the purpose.

And then the operation will take place on 16th July. I shall be there overnight because given my opinions of hospital, operations, blood and gore as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have elected for the “General anaesthetic” rather than the local anaesthetic.

There’s no way in this World that I’ll be lying there watching a local anaesthetic slowly wear off and catching sight of what is going on.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my adventures in Castle Anthrax a few years ago where they turned up unannounced in my room, whisked me and my bed off to the cellar clamped a gas mask over my face, said “smell this” and the next thing that I knew, it was four hours later and I’d had a surgical operation.

Even today, I still don’t know what they did, and that suits me fine. If all operations went like that, I’d have more of them. But this modern 21st-Century society where I have to be informed of each step and each procedure in graphic detail and formally agree to them.
"But it’s your right!" they wail.
But what about MY right not to want to know? No-one cares about my rights.

As long as the operation is in the morning. TNS are playing in the Champions’ League that evening. That time in Castle Anthrax I missed Newtown v Caernarfon

Meanwhile, abandoning another good rant for the moment, last night was again horribly late by the time that I went to bed. I just don’t seem to be able to make the time go any slower

Yes, when we were kids, our six weeks of summer holiday used to last for ever. Now six weeks goes in the blinking of an eye.

And once in bed, I didn’t need much rocking yet again. It’s lovely and warm and comfortable in there, just me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE tucked up tight.

Not so comfortable that I didn’t awaken before the alarm went off. When I awoke at about 06:00 I made some kind of comment and I’m certain that I had some kind of reply from someone sleeping in the next bed about life in the RAF. Of course, then then kind of thing evaporated and I realised that it really was 06:30 and I really was awake in my own bed with my own things

And that was weird too. It really did sound as if there was someone else in the room. And it wasn’t His Nibs either. If only he could talk, he would have a few tales that he could tell that would be worth a good few bob to anyone who might be interested.

He could tell me a few tales too of when he’s been let loose on his own in the company of ladies of the opposite sex.

But returning to the dream, I’ve no idea what was happening there.

I also have a vague impression of walking through Shavington en route for somewhere else, just using one crutch and feeling quite confident about it too

If only I could walk with one crutch. I used to be able to do that up until about 9 months ago but how my mobility has reduced over that period of time. There are times when I’m hard-pushed to walk with two these days.

Just to prove that I can do it when I really try, I pushed myself out of bed before the alarm went off. Only by five minutes, it has to be said, but five minutes is five minutes and they all count.

After a good wash and scrub up I loitered around for a while transcribing the dictaphone (such as they were) until the nurse came round.

When he arrived I told him about the prescription to which he readily agreed, and then he cleared off without writing one out. I hope that he does it back at the office and drops it off in the morning.

Once he’d finally gone I made breakfast – porridge and toast with orange juice and strong coffee. And believe me, I needed it.

There wasn’t much time to revise or review my Welsh before the lesson started, and having missed a week, Bane of Britain revised the wrong module. But it makes no difference because I’m rubbish whether I revise or not.

And having given the matter serious thought, as well as studying next year as normal, I’m definitely going to retake this year in an evening class with another provider because I’ve missed so much of it with hospital and all of that, and I don’t want to embarrass Coleg Cambria by doing it with them.

The difficulty is finding a provider who offers “North Welsh”.

For the southern dialect there are more courses than you can shake a stick at. It’s not too much of a problem because my grandmother came from down south even though she lived most of her life up in the north-east so I’m used to hearing both dialects. But I’m definitely a “North-id”. Bangor University is affiliated to the “LearnWelsh” programme so they might have something.

After the end of the lesson, when we all went our separate ways for the summer holidays, I changed the habits of a lifetime and had a sandwich seeing as I won’t be having my mid-afternoon snack.

And then I made myself ready for my trip to Avranches.

The trip down there was the first time that I’d felt tired? but I soon livened up when I couldn’t get out of my chair and everyone in the building had to rally round and help. Fancy a hospital waiting room with no arms on their chairs!

Anyway, the surgeon played ball, which was nice. He understood my fears, mumbled his way through what he was supposed to say, didn’t say anything else and asked if I agreed with what he’d just said.

How could I do anything else?

Next step will be the anaesthetist. He wants to “see me” – I suppose, in the same way that the executioner looks over the condemned man. I’m already feeling rather uncomfortable and we haven’t started yet.

We had a full car going home – it seems as if we went to every medical establishment in Avranches on some sort of Cook’s Tour to pick up everyone heading to this neck of the woods.

Back here I was first out, and my faithful cleaner helped me up the steps, standing behind me lifting up my foot with hers.

This can’t go on much longer. I don’t have the force to keep on dragging myself up the handrail, and neither does she, I suspect. I can only see an unpleasant future of doom and gloom if this carries on. And if I have dialysis, I’ll be doing it three times per week at least.

Once I was home I sat down – and crashed out. I was dead to the World.

Only 20 minutes late starting tea. At least it was taco roll with rice so it didn’t need much preparation.

As for me, neither do I. I’ll be in bed before you know it and there I intend to stay until my name changes to Rip van Epic. I am totally wasted after this afternoon – and I have to do it tomorrow too. That’s when I go to see Emilie the cute consultant’s sidekick.

But as I said, I’m off to bed to reflect on the events of the day and mull over the words of the surgeon – at least, the words that I understood.
"I’ve listened to you for fifteen minutes" I told him "but I’m still none-the-wiser"
"Maybe not" he replied "but you’re certainly better-informed."

0

Tuesday 18th June 2024 – ON OUR WAY …

… home, going home where lovers roam.

Yes, unfortunately I can’t welcome you to the Pleasuredome yet – that’s another year away once the tenant downstairs clears off, but I can certainly welcome you to an apartment that I have never ever seen in all my life before.

Not only is the apartment spotlessly clean, and by that I mean my office and bedroom too, everything in sight has been washed to death including all the bedding and I have a lovely clean bed in which to climb later this evening.

My cleaner has worked miracles to have this place ready for me and I’m beyond speechless at the efforts that she’s made for me.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the solidarity that I have encountered in this building has made coming to live here all worthwhile.

A shame that the hospital couldn’t have joined in the fun. Like most French public functions it’s “duty before everything else” and most of the staff had a tendency to be rather brusque but nevertheless, in unguarded moments they could all (well, mostly) be good fun and apart from the dreadful stuff that passed for food, I enjoyed my stay.

Well, most of it, anyway.

And for a change, I actually enjoyed last night. I had a good sleep for once. Although I wasn’t in bed until long after midnight, I slept right the way through until 06:00 without awakening when I had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse.

And would you believe, well, I’m sure you would because you’ve been following these pages long enough, someone chose that moment to come in to tell me that they wanted to take a blood sample.

"Come back in five minutes" I grunted.

Ten minutes later we had the 06:15 whirlwind through the ward. I gave blood and just about everything else. Surprisingly they didn’t ask for a diabetes sample – I suppose that they’ll “get that from the blood test” – but they gave me a totally unsolicited glass of orange juice all the same.

Having gulped that down, I settled down under the covers again and was totally dead to the World until the next round of awakening at 08:15. That two hours or however long it was was the deepest sleep that I have ever had, I’m sure of that.

With that procedure out of the way, breakfast came round. And once I’d polished that off I nipped into the bathroom where, sitting astride the you-know-what, I had my last hospital shower.

And remembering what happened the other week in Paris, I didn’t wash my clothes. I don’t want to be lugging soaking wet clothes halfway around Normandy.

After the shower I had a visit from the medical staff. All of my medication has changed and I noticed with a wry smile that in some cases we’re back to where we were a couple of years ago.

And a real surprise was that the chief of the dieticians came to see me today to excuse herself and her team. Nothing I can say or do will change the Byzantine nature of things in the French Public Service so I listened politely and thanked them for coming, but I must admit that it was through gritted teeth.

As well as all of that, there are several appointments in the immediate future and a couple of tasks for the nursing staff who come to the apartment every morning. I’m definitely going to be having my money’s worth.

What was sad that it wasn’t Emilie the cute consultant who came to say “goodbye”. She sent a sidekick to blast me off into Eternity today and I was really disappointed at that.

And so it went on for several hours, people preparing me and then unpreparing me for departure so in the end I gave up and went to sleep in my chair.

Eventually an ambulance arrived and the ambulanciers strapped me to a stretcher and loaded me into the back of their vehicle. And there I was, hoping for a rather discreet and unobtrusive return.

My cleaner bless her was waiting downstairs to help me up here but the guys put me in a chair and carried me up. It’s a good job that I’d lost all that weight.

Once inside the place, while I was being overwhelmed by the kindness, my cleaner was going through my prescription, restoring to the shelves medicaments that had been discarded in the past, withdrawing medicaments that had only just been prescribed and then she sallied forth into town to have the new prescription made up, and presumably to arrange a lorry to bring it all back.

While she was away I had some hummus and biscottes along with a mug of hot chocolate. New stuff fresh from the bottle – you should have seen how bloated the stuff was in the fridge that I’d left when I went in.

When my cleaner came back, she had half the stuff. The rest will be here over the next few days. But we both came to the conclusion that the amount of stuff here now is overwhelming and I am going to need help to sort myself out with this medication otherwise we’ll be having a tragedy.

What I shall probably have to do is to involve the visiting nurse in all of this.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. That was when we just realised that there would be quite a lot more than just rape back at our base so we decided to hurry back from the end of this mission and take up some kind of armed guard although we expected that if our armies were defeated we’d all be disarmed anyway in which case if would be very pot luck as to what happened and what people had to suffer before the end of the war was announced.

Quite a gruesome subject, I know, and ordinarily I wouldn’t post something like this but it actually has some kind of basis in fact. A prison camp containing prisoners of all nations was overrun by the Russians in Eastern Europe and the prisoners were released. Many of the prisoners remained in some kind of orderly cohesion but the Russian prisoners went berserk and began to commit all kinds of atrocities. A delegation from a local village came to the camp and pleaded with the British officer in charge to send a platoon of British prisoners to protect the inhabitants of the village from the depredations of the Russians. The irony of the situation was not lost on the British prisoners – defending their enemies from their allies – and it was definitely a premonition of the times five years hence.

Tea tonight was my long-anticipated pasta with vegetables and melted cheese, along with a burger from the European Burger Mountain in my fridge. And you’ve no idea just how delicious it was. It made the waiting all worthwhile.

Well, perhaps not.

So now I’m going to curl up in my luxurious clean bed and if it wasn’t for the nurse in the morning, I wouldn’t be leaving it for a week.

At least there will be no bed-baths. There was a strange, foreign nurse on the ward this morning giving bed-baths. With one guy she folded down his nightgown to his waist and said "first I wash as far as possible"
Then she rolled up his nightgown, began to wash his legs and said "next I wash as far as possible"
And finally, with a flourish, she ripped off his gown and said "and now I wash possible"

0

Monday 17th June 2024 – I’M BACK …

… from Paris, and in one piece too which makes a major change.

And I’ve learned a lot too, which also makes a change, but very little of it about what is going on, for the simple reason that I’m not convinced that the hospital knows all that much about things.

Not that that’s any surprise. It’s pretty difficult when you are dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure and everything has to be done by trial and error, crossing of fingers, and hoping that something somewhere will work a miracle.

Instead though, I’ve been shown a whole new way through Paris – a way that’s almost totally devoid of traffic – and Ill remember this for if, by any luck, a miracle happens and I can come here again under my own steam. However, I am not optimistic.

Just as last night I wasn’t optimistic about having a good night’s sleep. I never seem to manage one in normal circumstances and there’s even less chance when I have a journey the next day. It’s always the case and I’ve never worked out why.

Going to bed long after midnight doesn’t help matters much, but I’m at the stage where I’m past caring. As I said yesterday, whenever that was, I’ve long-since lost all track of time here.

Whatever the contretemps was last night when I was thinking of going to bed, it was still continuing so I thought that it was probably a better idea to keep well clear rather than sticking my oar into a controversial situation … "perish the thought" – ed … and I left them to it.

For a change I was asleep quite quickly but as usual kept on awakening which put me off my stroke.

There was the 06:15 blitz through the ward and even though I had my alarm set for 07:00 I was awakened unceremoniously at 06:25. Diabetes check below the limit but I was refused my supplementary orange juice. "Your breakfast will be here in a moment".

When I protested I was told to sod off. What a way to start the day!

However, she was right. Breakfast WAS served soon. Too soon in fact because the bread hadn’t arrived and I had to have biscottes.

The taxi driver came early and I wasn’t finished in the bathroom so he had to wait. But when I emerged I was shoved into a wheelchair and pushed off, clutching my crutches and the packed lunch that the nurse handed me.

There was “some issue” about my packed lunch. When it turned up it was ham and cheese sandwiches, absolutely ideal for a vegan I don’t think. And so for the first time ever in my life I have had bread sandwiches – two slices of bread with … a slice of bread in between.

The driver has run me around before. He’s a nice enough guy and a good driver but doesn’t have much to say for himself. Nether did I today so it was a fairly quiet drive and I slept for some of the way.

Astonishingly, we weren’t held up at all anywhere and sailed all the way through. A four-hour trip took just over three hours today.

Even more surprisingly, I was seen straight away by the specialist.

The lumbar puncture and the electric shock examinations from the other week when I was here as an in-patient don’t show any significant deterioration. But they don’t show any significant improvement either, which he found disappointing.

Consequently he’s going to change my chemotherapy tablet, the one that costs a King’s ransom for some other tablet.

There’s also the suspicion – only a suspicion, mind you – that there’s something else causing this creeping paralysis. He reckons that the amount of drugs pumped into me ought to have had a reaction. Consequently he wants to carry out a Biopsy of my nervous system. This will involve the stay of a few days in September.

Well, why not? What do I have to lose? Only my appetite with the food that’s on offer there.

But seriously, if I’m going to be poked and prodded around and used as a guinea-pig, I may as well make it worth my while and go the whole hog.

There was a blood sample that needed to be taken so I staggered off there where they had several goes at finding a vein and, on staggering out, staggered right into my driver who was passing down the corridor.

"Do you want time to eat your lunch?" he asked.
"No thanks" I replied, having seen what was in my food parcel "Let’s go straight back"

So having taken a different way home, at least as far as the suburbs of Paris, we were back here at 16:15 where the nursing staff, sincerely and unprompted, expressed their dismay at my lunch. "The hospital needs to make more of an effort". Someone fetched me an apple, for which I was grateful.

It’s been confirmed that I am going home tomorrow. "You could have gone home tonight but we didn’t want you to go home to a cold apartment and have the effort of cooking for yourself after the exertion of your trip to Paris" said Emilie the cute consultant who came to see me.

And you ought to be proud of me. I actually did refrain from offering her my front-door key and telling her warm up the place and put the supper on the stove.

But she did come to see me to find out how things went and she photographed the relevant info from Paris. She wished me luck on the next stage of my adventure with my health issues and by the time our conversation finished, I wasn’t really sure who was chatting up whom.

Yes, I’d quite happily massage her clavicles any time of the day or night, whether she asks or not.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night. I’d been out entertaining our parents in the RAF station.. When they came back there were three bats entangled in the barbed wire. We tried to laugh it off but in reality what had happened was that a couple of Lancaster trainers had one into the barbed wire too. Two of our students were killed. We tried to laugh it off as some kind of nothing much or not very important but from where we were we gradually prepared ourselves for flying operations and gradually tried to keep in shape etc ready to leave and set off. But we had the funeral and then we had to check the barbed wire in the camp and the guards. The guard was shaken up but I dunno I suppose that was what happened.

That’s rather a garbled account of something that I can’t really understand. The barbed wire from last night seems to be there but I’ve no idea about the rest of it Funerals on Air Force bases were commonplace following crashes and the like when trainees were overwhelmed by the equipment and machines that they ere operating and people who witnesses these accidents went to extraordinary lengths and took extraordinary measures to put the images of what they had seen behind them..

While I was on a field exercise I came across a guy living in a hut in the mountains. He was living in deplorable circumstances but I’ve no idea why. I had him arrested and taken back to base. It turned out that he was in fact someone who had been conscripted years ago but had fled. His whole life had been living in this cabin and he had learned so much in his two years of isolation. He taught it all to us, even down to eating possum Without him, our Air Force careers would have been so much tougher because he taught us to survive, and to survive on next-to-nothing. When we were prisoners that was just how it was – survive on what you had and don’t think about anything else

That reminds me of when I lived down on the farm and at a meeting once I was chatting to two British guys who were discussing “this strange British guy who lives like a hermit up in the mountains and no-one ever sees” and it took me a full fifteen minutes to work out that they were talking about me. I’d fit the description in this dream quite happily except that I’d draw the line at eating possum of course. The “deplorable conditions” would fit nicely though.

So anyway, home tomorrow it is. At least, if I can climb the steps up to my apartment. I’m not optimistic because I’ve been practising and it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

And that bit about “dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure” brought a wry smile to my face. It reminded me of the Summer School for one of my University modules back 20-odd years ago where a group of us on a Science awareness course managed to club our heads together in the laboratory and discovered a cure for which there was no known disease.

0

Sunday 16th June 2024 – I’VE NOT DONE …

… all that much more today than I did yesterday.

Quite possibly because I was catching up on my sleep from last night. It was another late night, probably the latest of all just recently. As I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … time has gone out of the window in this place.

Hours, days, weeks – I haven’t a clue where I am really and as we know judging by recent events, neither has the hospital. One of these days our two eccentric circles will correspond, only for them to fall apart again.

Tomorrow anyway, we seem to agree on one thing, and that is that I’m going to Paris. However it now seems, judging by a text message that I’ve had that my appointment has been advanced to 11:05 from 12:30.

Clearly, Paris should be joining in this group of eccentric circular timespans because there is no way in this World that I’m going to be there for then. My taxi isn’t picking me up until 08:30 and it’s about a 4-hour drive. I keep on telling them in Paris that with all the best will in the World I can’t respond to last-minute additions or changes, with all of the logistical difficulties that are involved, especially when I only receive the notification on a Sunday when the taxi office is closed.

So it’s going to be 12:30 whether they like it or not, and if it’s too late so they have to cancel, then that’s too bad. With this latest round of hospital treatment here, I obviously have other fish to fry at the moment and we’ll worry about my cancer treatment at another moment.

Anyway, I was having a good read of all of these notes and things last night, completely lost track of time and ended up crawling shamefully into bed long after everyone else and hoping that no-one noticed.

It was pretty much useless though; I don’t know what time it was but it sounds as if they are dismantling a factory outside my bedroom door. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard so much racket inside a hospital as what’s going on at the moment and going to sleep was pretty impossible for quite a while.

But go to sleep I did eventually, hoping for a night like last night but no such luck. We had the 06:15 whirlwind and blitz though our rooms, and the 08:00 diabetes test. 0.79 mine was today, just on the limit for orange juice. The nurse didn’t think it worth it but I wasn’t going to miss out on extra orange juice. Ohh no!

Breakfast was late today which was a shame because I was starving. And the coffee was cold so they must have been held up somewhere which is not a surprise because firstly there’s a new guy on the ward who seems to need a lot of people buzzing around him judging by his tone of voice and secondly, there was much more movement than usual of people in beds coming and going, pushed by the orderlies but having to be positioned and so on by the auxiliaries

After breakfast I had a good scrub and then watched a film – INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH ON HOLIDAY, the second film of the trilogy. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I’ve downloaded a good few of these films onto my laptop for when I’m on my travels and bored in a hotel. I’ll never tire of Gordon Harker

And watch for the young girl at the piano right at the start of the film. She appears in tiny cameo roles in quite a few films of this nature during this period, and I still haven’t worked out why.

The doctor from yesterday came round to see how I was, so I had to pause the film. She seems now to agree that it is in fact Tuesday that I do go home, which is good news, but there’s still plenty of time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in this respect.

More good news is that she weighed me. There are two target weights that I try to reach. The first is my “inactive” weight when I’m not running or keeping fit, and the second is my “active” weight when I am. And the weighing machine tells me that, fully clothed, I’m now below my inactive weight heading for my active weight target.

She of course thinks that it’s this water retention issue sorting itself out but I put it down to the starvation rations in this place.

The Creatine level is stable – at … err … 440. She told me that that was good news but I told her that it would be better news if it were stable at 270 where it was before all of this performance began or even stable at below 100 where it’s supposed to be. What’s this “300 is a critical level” thing all about?

Her reply was that I seem to be coping really well with the limitations and it would have been a different matter entirely had my body not responded to the shock treatment that they gave me when I came in.

After she left I carried on watching my film. Lunch was late too, but for a change I received everything that I was supposed to. Things are definitely looking up in that respect

This afternoon I watched another film, BEHIND GREEN LIGHTS, a cheesy detective thriller from 1946 with William Gargan and Carole Landis who are both actors far too good for this sort of script. Nevertheless, for passing an idle 90 minutes, there have been worse ideas than watching this.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too which was a surprise. Amongst the people taken by surprise by our sudden movement was a certain Frenchman who was standing in the middle of where we pitched our tents shaking his head found by the military police wondering where we’d all gone. Apparently he used to come here every evening for reasons like … and was able to skip past the guards on the perimeter until he made it to the centre of the camp and whoever was billeted here

And then, it seems, I had a very similar dream later on. Similar, but in more detail and our mysterious man’s nationality had changed. Apparently the departure of 131 Squadron for the UK was so rapid that amongst the items left behind on the abandoned airfield in North Africa and recovered by a Recovery Unit was a young, immaculately dressed Italian man. Apparently he had been in the habit every might of climbing the barbed wire perimeter defences totally unobserved so that he could visit his “friend”, for whatever purpose one can only imagine. The departure had been so sudden that the airman hadn’t had the time to communicate the fact, and there was the Italian man, having climbed the barbed wire defences once more, face to face with an Irate Recovery Squad Officer.

For the record, 131 Squadron was a bomber squadron in World War I and a fighter squadron in World War II, yet I was convinced that I was discussing a bomber squadron which makes sense, with all this stuff that I’ve been reading. The squadron never served in North Africa anyway. In World War II it served in England, Wales and India, flying Spitfires and, later, Thunderbolts.

The rest of the day has been spent either working on more radio stuff or else reading more notes. Anything to keep out of mischief.

Tomorrow then, I’m off to Paris. What happens next, we’ll find out when we arrive. Apparently I’ll be given a picnic for midday by the hospital but that will remain to be seen. If the journey goes OK they’ll throw me out of here on Tuesday and I’ll resume the battle with just the Visiting Nurses keeping an eye on me, not that they did that too well just now.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I contracted this cancer back in 2015, the advice that every medical professional in Castle Anthrax gave me was to “save your strength for the struggle that lies ahead” and left me in no doubt that it would be a struggle. So despite all of the setbacks that we have had, the battle will go on.

First, though, I’ll go to see what the fight down the corridor is all about. But not before I mention that the story about Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris and the Australian airman yesterday reminded me of something else. I think that it was Percy Penguin, bless her, who told me about the time that the Queen Mother visited the Home where she worked.
There was one old lady who clearly no longer had both paddles in the water who objected to the fuss being made, and expressed herself in “forthright” terms.
"Don’t you know who I am?" said the Queen Mother indignantly
"No dear" said the old woman "but ask the matron. She’ll tell you"

0

Tuesday 28th May 2024 – “YOU ARE REQUESTED …

… to come for an appointment at the hospital at Avranches on Friday morning at 09:00. Ohhh – and bring your overnight things”.

Things are moving faster than I even expected and it’s rather important because this weekend I have friends coming over from Germany to visit me. I bet that they didn’t expect to come to visit me in a hospital bed.

But yet more visits? More visits this year than I’ve had in all the other years combined since I’ve been living here. Anyone would think that I’m dying or something.

Last night I actually felt like dying. I’d done all that I could to have an early night and then the fates conspired against me, one thing led to another, and once you begin you’ve no idea how many other things there are. As a result I was late into bed once more.

However I actually found it a little easier to crawl into bed last night and turning over through the pain barrier into the only position in which it’s possible at the moment to be comfortable was nothing like as painful as it has been

My legs were well inside the bed too which meant that I didn’t fall out once which was an improvement on the previous night. Nevertheless I was awake a long time before the alarm went off and wandering around the bathroom when it finally did ring.

No blood test today for some reason. He’s going to do it tomorrow, which probably means that I won’t have my injection of the Last Resort until Thursday, if it’s not too late by then

But I do wish that he’d stop moaning. Things may well not be pleasant for him around here right now, but imagine how they are for me. Don’t you think that I’d change things if I could?

After he left I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There wasn’t actually anything on it but that’s not to say that I didn’t go anywhere.

In fact I had the greatest memory of another one of those really long dreams that I’m sifting through my head before I dictate them, just like the other night. This was a lengthy newspaper article that I was writing about how unjust it is to blame goalkeepers for their errors on the field. A keeper who lets a shot roll in under his body has no more lost the game for his club than the centre-forward who misses a sitter. Yet you see plenty of “goalkeeper error” videos but very rarely a “centre forward error” one.

What started this. I suppose, was a game that I saw the other day between Annan Athletic Under 17s and Threave Rovers Under 17s when the Annan keeper was yellow-carded for “deliberate handball” giving away a freekick that led to a goal by Threave Rovers. The game was being played on a sports centre pitch where there were five different sets of markings and he simply carried the ball out to the wrong set of lines. So what I was doing in my sleep was going through lists of games where a keeper had made a mistake and conceded a bad goal and a striker had missed a sitter in front of goal, and comparing who was blamed for the defeat.

Of course, each time that I thought that I’d had my list ready to dictate I remembered something else and had to start my list again. But I was awake before I could do that.

Coffee and delicious flapjack were next, then back in here I didn’t do all that much for a while.

A ring on the doorbell, a real one this times, jogged me into action. It was the doctor. He took one look at me and almost collapsed with shock.

He gave me a good going-over and reckoned that I ought to have a spell in hospital – “and not just a couple of days either”. He’d “have a word with the nephrology professor” at Avranches about me

So after he left I began to bring my medical file up-to-date, weeding out all of the time-expired stuff and adding in the new stuff. You’ve no idea how much has changed over the past few weeks.

My prescription – I’d given than to the nurse this morning. I had to print off another one along with yet more paperwork.

In the middle of all of this the hospital at Avranches rang up with the convoquation. So here we go.

Firstly, I had to book the taxi to take me. Secondly, I had to tell Paris where I was going just in case I can’t make their appointment on the 10th of June.

The doctor’s office rang me back later too “there’s another medicament …” so I had to contact my poor cleaner. And having one hospital take me off the Burinex for something else, Avranches has now put me back on the Burinex. And that’s just as well because I never had these problems when I was taking that.

In the middle of all of this I’d been doing some radio stuff. I’d started by choosing some music for another programme but with the news that I had, I verified three more programmes and sent them off. I told you that it’s a good idea to have a few prepared in advance.

At long last I could go for tea – a taco roll with rice and veg. Totally delicious as usual. I really do like my boring meals. They are totally different from what I’ll be eating in a few days time. I hope that some of you will be sending me food parcels.

But that’s for another time. I’m living from day to day here – in fact, from minute to minute. Getting into bed is the next challenge

The hospital should be fun – in the sense of interaction with others. I don’t see enough people, stranded as I am in my apartment. I know that regular readers of this rubbish will recall having told me that I need to get out more.

But it’s going to be a struggle for them at Avranches. Last time I was there I heard more than one nurse say, as I was climbing into the taxi to take me home "if he comes back, I’m leaving!"

0

Monday 27th May 2024 – IT’S BEEN LIKE …

… Euston Station in here with all of the various comings and goings. And not just physically either. The telephone has been burning a hole in my hand too judging by the number of calls that it’s had to handle.

From dawn until dusk things have never been quiet, always with something happening and I really am at the stage of wondering “why?”

Last night though was rather quiet. After I’d finished my notes, late as it might have been, I didn’t hang around but fell onto the bed quite quickly. Actually making myself comfortable under the quilt was something else completely but never mind. “Agonising” or “painful” are quite appropriate words to use here.

And things went fairly well during the night until about 05:30 when my right leg fell out of bed.

“Why didn’t you put it back in bed?” I hear you say. But I did, even if it did take me half an hour to do it. And if you think that I am joking I promise you that I’m not. You’ve no idea what kind of state I’m in.

And once it was back in bed it didn’t last long and at 06:30 it fell out again. This time, no matter how I tried I couldn’t get it back into bed. At 06:50 I gave up the struggle and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was … errr … riding the porcelain horse

The nurse came round later and took my blood sample. It was the most clean, painless blood sample that I have ever had taken too and it’s a shame that she’s now finished until next week.

After she left I came back in here and transcribed the dictaphone notes.. I was in Berlin last night. The old West German government was trying to persuade some woman, the wife of some West German minister to murder some political rival by poisoning him. They had some information on her and would use it if she failed to carry out their demand. Instead, she killed him in a different fashion which puzzled everyone. No-one could understand who had done it and why. There was a big investigation and she ended up in Court to answer questions. She told the Court everything about her involvement with the attempted poisoning but nothing whatever about the shooting to make it appear that she had a perfect alibi for whenever the killing had taken place with regard to this other person.

It’s years since I was in West Berlin. It was the case where this kind of thing happened only too frequently. The people, were living under the shadow of the East so time was short, and fun, deceit and intrigue was the name of the game. I encountered just as much “surveillance” there as I did in Minsk and Moscow in the days of the Iron Curtain There were all kinds of murky goings-on in West Berlin.

Having almost fell out of bed, I finally managed it at about 05:30 when my right leg hit the floor dramatically and awoke me. I was thinking at the time of a song, a new wave song that was going round in my head and which I’ve subsequently forgotten. A Jeep, like a Japanese four-wheel drive pickup thing in Canada being involved in a bit of road rage and doing a U-turn through a parking lot to go back onto the road and chase after the people who had upset him which was when I fell out of bed

And as if there’s ever any road rage in Canada. The only time I ever encountered people blowing their horns was near me when I was driving. Canada – even parts of rural Québec – is one of the most laid-back places on earth.

While I was sitting on the edge of the bed I fell asleep. Leicester City lost one of their young midfield players who went to play for Plymouth Argyle. The fee was £60,000 and Leicester were upset because they thought that it was more. The guy who replaced him in Leicester’s team had a really bad injury and was carried off the field. There wasn’t really anyone on their bench to replace him so they were even more incensed.

Having typed out my dictaphone notes I went for my morning coffee and new flapjack, which is quite delicious but a little dry. I shall have to increase the amount of honey that I use, I reckon. But I am very impressed with it – almost as much as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

The phone rang immediately afterwards. It was the hospital wondering how I was.

When I’d finished telling them of my grief they told me to contact my GP and tell him everything, which I promised to do. However back in here I must have fallen asleep because the next thing that I knew, it was 14:06.

Once I’d come round into the Land of the Living I wrote out my letter as promised and sent a message to my faithful cleaner to see if she would deliver it.

Then I received an e-mail from the hospital – “here’s a new prescription changing a few things …” so I printed it out and send another note to my cleaner.

The doctor’s surgery was next to call. The hospital had contacted them. The blood test must be done again – I don’t think that they can believe some of the figures (and neither could I when I saw it) so she’ll see the nurse, but there’s a new medication that I have to take – she’ll send the prescription direct to the pharmacie

So I sent another message to my cleaner.

The blood test results turned up next.

The red blood cells have now dropped to 8.4 – just 0.4 above the critical limit. No wonder I’m feeling wretched right now. We’re back on the injections as of Wednesday then.

If that’s not enough, remember when the Creatinite had risen to 310 and caused them to summon me urgently to the hospital for emergency treatment? It’s now at 336, a figure which apparently won’t support life.

My cleaner turned up and I gave her everything. And bless her! She seemed to think that it was so important that she sailed off like a galleon down into town without even stopping for breath.

And guess what? Remember the anti-potassium stuff that was giving me all of these hallucinations? Here it is again

The cleaner and I spent a good while going through all of my medication. Even the nurse thinks that it’s too much and I can’t say that I disagree. But there’s piles of it – two new ones as of now and I wonder how many more after this next blood test tomorrow.

Finally, a cruise company rang me to see if I wanted to go on a little voyage around the World, one of my plans from a few years ago put on hold during the lockdown.

And I still managed to find time to finish off all of the radio notes too, would you believe?

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper – the last one unless I can get in another stock before next Monday. Delicious as usual and plenty of stuffing remaining.

So now I’m off to bed if I can manage to make it into bed without falling out again.

What delights will tomorrow bring? I shudder to think. As if the news of today isn’t enough to be going on with.

But I can’t help thinking that has inspired this cruise company to contact me? I suppose it’s the local community all getting together to tell me to go away and clear off..

0

Wednesday 24th April 2024 – THAT WAS AN …

… adventure!

Right now I’m back home sitting in my favourite chair and you’ve no idea just how grateful I am. It was the last thing that I expected today but as Paul Peña wrote and Steve Miller sang, YOU KNOW YOU GOTTA GO THROUGH HELL BEFORE YOU GET TO HEAVEN

Last night though, after I’d finished my notes etc I went straight to bed and spent a very pleasant hour or so listening to “Alquin” on the computer. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN is one of my favourite albums of all time, especially since I met the group, a band from Delft in the Netherlands, in a dingy damp cellar underneath an old hotel in Crewe in 1975.

It was something of a disturbed, turbulent night. I can’t recall too many interruptions from the staff but there’s a huge pile of stuff on the dictaphone that you will discover as you read on.

By 08:00 I was wide awake and as no-one had come past by 08:30 to awaken me, bring me breakfast, take a blood sample etc, I left the bed, did what I had to do and then washed my clothes.

Just as I was hanging up the sodden rags to dry out, the doctor came in and handed me my leaving pouch.
"Am I leaving then?" I asked
"Ohh" she replied. "Hasn’t anyone told you? Anyway, your taxi will be here at 13:00"
What a shame she hadn’t come 5 minutes earlier when my clothes were still dry

She went through the documents with me and made sure that I understood everything.

And then I went through my requirements, including the fact that she needs to apply to the Securité Sociale. for another series of authorisations, but I don’t think that she understood. That’s important of course, so I’ll ring up the taxi company and have them involved in the proceedings.

"By the way" she added "You have a consultation at ‘Imagerie’ at 10:30" so bang goes my idea of a shower. It’s a good job though that I had a good wash and changed my clothes.

At 10:00 the driver turned up to take me to “Imagerie” and off we set.

When we arrived I was told that they wanted to take a few scans of my heart so I had to strip off, clad myself in some paper overalls and then lie flat out on a bed while they clamped all kinds of strange devices to me and pumped me full of some kind of fluid.

Once I was ready they passed me through one of these Stargate time-tunnel things, back and forth for half an hour or more, taking all kinds of strange photos while the machine made all kinds of strange noises and I had to do all kinds of breathing exercises

Eventually they dragged me out and with my head spinning and body shaking (and it still is, even now) I went and dressed ready for the ride back.

And whose stupid idea was it to take my blood pressure as soon as I’d come back from all of that?

Batman and Robin weren’t on duty today – I must have scared them off – so another young nurse came in to ask me "we need to have your room ready for another arrival at 13:00. Would you mind waiting in the waiting room?"

So that’s why they want me gone. "Well, if it’s a nice young lady, I don’t mind sharing the room" I replied but she told me to clear off.

They brought me my lunch to the waiting room – bulghour with chicken followed by pork and courgettes. The peaches with almonds for dessert were nice though.

The taxi was booked for 13:00 so of course he turned up at 14:40. With the A13 being closed it’s total chaos in the outskirts of Paris right now.

Once in the car we had to go on a TRAVERSÉE DE PARIS, with no Bourvil to carry my suitcase, to another hospital to pick up another passenger. The trip across the city was a nightmare and finding the correct entrance was something else too.

And then there were “parking issues” while the driver went in search of his passenger.

Eventually we set off for home, going a very tortuous way via Rungis and Versailles to avoid the queues on a journey that seemed to take for ever and after a pitstop near Caen, we had first to go to Bréhal to drop off passenger number 2. We eventually arrived back here at 19:45.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me which was lovely. She helped me up the stairs (and I needed it too) and into my room, where she went through the papers and took what she needed for the chemist. I had an energy drink – and I needed that too.

There was one jar of vegan pesto remaining and I’d saved it for some special occasion or other. “Now” seemed like a special occasion so I made a big dish of pasta with assorted vegetables and smothered it all with half the jar.

And it was delicious too.

So this is all that I’m doing. I’m totally wasted and I’m going to bed. With luck I’ll have a really good sleep ready to face Isabelle the nurse tomorrow morning

As for the dictaphone notes, there are quite a few of these. I was with my brother (so I was right) and we were having to go to Shavington. We set out to walk but it was really late at night. Our parents had gone to Sandbach but we wondered why. They were supposed to be doing something but we reckoned that it was really an excuse for a party and a drink. As we walked it was the biggest moon that we had ever seen. There was only probably about a tenth of it that was bright but we could make out the shape of the rest of it above the horizon. It was absolutely enormous. As we walked we looked at the houses and the Christmas lights. We wondered whether one of them was actually on fire because of the way the lights were working. Then we cut off to Shavington down that track that I take frequently in my dreams, a long, narrow track, but I’ve not been down it for a while but at one time I’d go down it once per week. As we started to go down there – we’d gone maybe a quarter of a mile – we noticed someone leading some horses. My brother made some offensive remark about me being unwilling to spend any money. It seemed that his idea would be to hire a couple of these horses and go to Shavington on horseback to save having to walk. I thought that there’s nowhere to leave the horses, you can’t just tie them up in the street like in a Western. You’re going to need someone to hold them while we were at the doctor’s. It’s all going to be just far too complicated to even think about hiring a couple of horses to go there and come back.

That’s a track down which I’ve walked, or skied, or climbed on many occasions during the night and I’ve no idea why it keeps on cropping up like this. I’ve no idea if it exists in real life and I’ve certainly never encountered it for real as far as I’m aware.

Later on I was with a girl and her sister. There was some kind of event going on in the village but it was really poorly attended. There were very few people there. There were two beer tents and most of the people with me, because we were a large group, preferred one tent but I thought that the beer in the second was much better. I tended to patronise that one. In the end I managed to persuade people that that one was best and they came over. They were wondering how everything worked so I explained that I bet that he was really disappointed with the attendance. I explained that when I used to put on rock concerts I’d hire a complete bar and just buy the beer etc but I needed about 80 or 90 people to make a profit at the bar and that rarely happened. They were surprised by that. In the end we set out to walk home. I’d sold everything that I had in rural France except for one plot of land where I had four Cortinas parked. My friend’s sister was planning on moving too. I had my old J4 so she told me that when we reached her house, to back it into the drive and do something useful but I’d no idea what she meant by that and what her plans were. There was a big house for sale with lovely gardens that had been empty for years. We were admiring that on the way back. My friend said that she’d enquired about buying it but it needed more money than she had. We carried on walking and talking back to my friend’s sister’s house but I’d still no idea about what was going on and there were only a few more hours left before the end of the day. if she was planning on moving today she was leaving it extremely late because we’re never going to fit everything of hers into my J4 van.

Cortinas as usual, and my old J4 van has started to make regular appearances just recently too which is bizarre. But it’s true about the bar. We could rent the bar and staff for free if the turnover was over a certain amount but the owner needed a guaranteed minimum to cover his expenses and that had to be made up by the hirer if there was a shortfall

And then I was watching two girls, one of them a ward of mine, fighting over a boyfriend using broadswords. It was an extremely tame affair with the two of them jabbing at each other. Most of the wounds with broadswords according to modern autopsy were like overarm slashes down onto the head yet these were just poking at each other. The ward of mine asked permission to go out with this boy. I gave it because I didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t but the other girl was extremely upset. This led to the fight.

And overarm slashes being the common cause of death in medieval fights with broadswords. I was impressed that I could remember anatomical details like that during a dream.

There had been some dispute between two men over something too. One had gone into a second-hand shop, changed his clothes and hid in the shop in the hope of escape of his pursuer but that didn’t work. They had a fight too. Somewhere in the middle of all of this I was walking through Crewe planning on going for an ice cream with my brother’s wife (as if that would ever be likely to happen) when I bumped into a guy who told me that he was going to Birmingham for the best ice cream in the UK. I knew this guy from somewhere but I couldn’t think where so I decided to go with him. We dashed to pick up my brother’s wife but she wasn’t in so we headed for the railway station. I boarded the train with this guy and went to see the conductor about buying a seat but my friend told me that there were no seats available on this train. It was completely full. I had to reluctantly disembark and go back to my original plans.

There was something else but I only remember a small part of this. I was with a guy who was going across the Channel on a ferry so I thought that I’d go with him. We went in his car, drove to the ferry terminal and joined the queue but we couldn’t understand why all these people were standing around so strangely. We suddenly realised that each person was about twelve feet apart from the one in front and behind. That was how their cars were going to be parked on the ferry. There were no cars there though, just the people standing in position. We had to go to the back of the queue then walk twelve paces behind the person who was there and then stand and wait around. God knows what was happening to the vehicles because there were none about at all. Everyone else kept on turning up, people having fun in the ferns and bracken that were all around this car park. It really was the strangest thing that I’ve ever encountered, all of us just standing there twelve feet apart in our own little family groups etc and not a car in sight.

So after transcribing all of that I’ll probably go back to sleep again.

While I’m doing that, I can reflect on my conversation with the photographer as I left the Stargate
"Did you manage to find my heart?" I asked
"Yes I did" she replied
"Thank heavens for that" I replied. "I’m not turning into a Conservative after all"

0

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

And if you read on, you’ll find out what and why. I’ve not had a very good day.

Anyway, last night after everything had finished I sat down and READ A BOOK about an American sailor and his family, including his 6 year old daughter, captured in the South Pacific in 1917 by a German sea-going raider and who spent 10 months as prisoner on board before being shipwrecked off the coast of Denmark.

After that I settled down, fully dressed because I was freezing, under the covers and that was that.

A few times during the night I was awoken by a few comings and goings but for some reason or other I was so tired that I was back asleep almost immediately and ended up not awakening until they came to take my blood sample at about 09:15.

Actually it was the little student nurse who came on her own so I told her that if I leave here alive she’ll have earned her diploma. Anyway, she managed to find some blood. I still have some left, apparently.

Once she’d gone I went for a wash and brush up as best as I could and then a driver came to collect me. It was the rock music fan who has taken me before so we had a good chat before he dropped me off at Neurology.

While I was waiting for my appointment I had a good chat with the receptionist and another patient and saw several photos of cats and dogs before being ushered into the room where the examination was due to take place.

It was the doctor who had seen me before on two occasions. He and his sidekick gave me the electric shock tests to my arms and legs and I was right – there is a further deterioration. So no surprise there. We had a good chat and now he’s gone away to think about a Plan B.

The same driver came to pick me up for my next appointment but that’s not until tomorrow so he brought me back here.

While I was eating lunch a doctor came to slap a freezing patch on my lower back and we all know what that means. She took an age to find the correct position so I asked her "can’t you see the scars from the previous attempts?"

When she told me that she could, I told her that they ought to paint an “X marks the spot” or even a target in the correct place.

A short while later, Batman and Robin, the young ward nurse and her little student who follows her around like a shadow, came to prepare me.

It was the little student who drew the short straw and had to hold me down and I bet she wished that she hadn’t when the doctor missed her aim with the lumbar puncture and found the central nerve.

Eventually, but not soon enough by any means, the torment was over and I could go to lie down. “You’ll just need to be flat out for an hour” but she was joking. After an hour or so a nurse came round to make sure that I was still alive and to take my blood pressure, with predictable results. But in fact it was several hours before I crawled out of bed, and then only for a particular reason too.

Once I’d settled down in my chair I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Yesterday’s are now on line and then I started on today’s. I was going to start at a new school but the morning that I was due to go I had a ‘phone call that began speaking in Welsh. It was a young girl saying that she was glad to go back to live in Easingwold. I couldn’t understand who it was but the conversation became more and more intimate until in the end, I had to go, I said plenty of encouraging words and finished with “I love you” but I had no idea who this person was at all. Absolutely none. I arrived at the new school but couldn’t find out how anything worked, the system of how lessons were organised etc. In the end I stumbled across a lesson from one of my class so I asked the teacher where all the other lessons for our year were being held. He gave some kind of nebulous speech abut how I should have looked at the newspaper. Of course I knew nothing about this. I found a copy of the newspaper but didn’t understand it. In the end I found some kind of paper print-out with the details on it. It was headed with the most extraordinary offensive message that had nothing whatever to do with the subject matter. I thought it totally astonishing that they’d pin this on the wall. I couldn’t find any paper then. Every piece of paper on which I tried to write, I was making no impression with a ball-point pen. The writing was just not sticking as if it had one of these shiny surfaces. I kept on coming across paper that had already been used, carbon copies of the ‘phone call that I’d had earlier in the day from that girl etc, but nothing that I could do would be able to reproduce anything on any kind of piece of paper. It was just so frustrating because I wanted to crack on and organise myself as this was just not working at all.

Then this conversation that I’d had in the morning had completely shaken me. I didn’t have a clue who on earth it was to whom I was speaking and I really wish that I knew because it had all the air of being something really interesting. The only Welsh-speaking girl I knew at school was only in passing and it certainly wasn’t her so who on earth was it?

Then we had a boisterous kind of office party where everything was going out of control. The sad part about it was that these were all middle-aged people. The boss there had picked on someone else’s wife and was making life really uncomfortable for them. They were trying to work out a moment in which to disappear such as when the boss went to the toilet but they’d brought the PA with them so putting that into the car in the space of a couple of minutes was going to be complicated. There were all kinds of things like this. Some woman was making some very plain and clear hints that she wanted to dance etc with me but of course I was having absolutely none of this and sat stoically at my seat in the dining room watching the events unfold, taking absolutely no notice of any of the extremely broad hints that she was dropping. All in all it was an extremely sad evening watching these people behaving like this

There have been more than a few parties like this where everyone makes a fool of themselves and I note that I even made a remark about it while I was asleep, which shows you just what I think about it all.

Then I was going through the videotapes looking for a blank one but came across a football match that took place years ago that I hadn’t seen. It involved one of these obscure South American republics playing in similar colours to Portugal and who had qualified unexpectedly for the World Cup after beating a selection of prize teams from other parts of the World to make it to the finals. I’d obviously taped their opening match but I couldn’t remember how it went or what the score was so instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing I put on this videotape and settled down to watch them. I got as far as watching them come out onto the pitch before I awoke. I’d no idea who their opponents were in this particular game.

And despite what I said the other night, Castor put in a very brief appearance last night. And wasn’t it nice to see her? We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR rearranging the dining arrangements. I was passing the cutlery and crockery and glassware from one table to the next. There was the final piece that I picked up to take round to the other table and who should be sitting there but Castor? She was talking to someone else about their life, I suppose. She was saying that she was born into a policeman’s family. I’ll tell you that that didn’t ‘arf ring a few alarm bells with me finding out that she was the progeny of a policeman’s couple.

But even if it were true and I had known, nothing of what happened back then would have changed for a minute. As I said at the time, I would have accepted any consequence. And as Joni Mitchell sang, YOU KNOW I’D GO BACK THERE TOMORROW BUT FOR THE WORK THAT I’VE TAKEN ON

And fancy the dream stopping there! I suppose that it was the shock that awoke me.

While I was asleep in the afternoon I was going for a walk. I had all of the four cats coming with me, following in my footsteps, climbing and jumping over each other as they used to do etc. There were a few members of my family with me. I had to take some money out to pay for something or other, housekeeping or whatever. I needed €60:00. I walked as far as the cash machine but when I went to look through my wallet I couldn’t find the bank card that I usually used. In the end, looking through everything I found a selection of other bank cards but I wasn’t sure which ones would work and which ones wouldn’t. There was one from the bank in Belgium so I put that in the cash machine. It seemed to read the card because it asked for the PIN. I typed in the usual number and that seemed to accept it but that was as far as I reached in the dream.

Tea tonight was salmon lasagne with creamed spinach so some horse trading was undertaken but I’m not doing too well for food which is a shame, but not unexpected.

So right now I’m off to bed to try to recapture Castor and to hope that they try to check my blood pressure at calmer moments.

But while the little student was preparing me for my lumbar puncture I asked her why doctors always wear masks
"Is it to do with infection?" she asked.
"Not at all" I replied. "It’s in case the procedure goes all wrong. Then they can’t identify the guilty party"

0

Monday 22nd April 2024 – MEANWHILE, HERE IN …

… The Land Of Grey And Pink, or Ice-Station Zebra as it ought to be called, I’m tucked up in bed in the cold awaiting my doom.

And also awaiting my evening meal, but that’s another story.

Last night after everything finished I hauled myself off to bed quite early and tried my best to settle down to sleep but as usual these days it didn’t quite work out like that. However later on I must have managed to drop off because there’s some stuff on the dictaphone. I was with a girl. She had a big box of something or other. It was a case of having to pass it through a hatch. Going up and down this hatch with this box was extremely complicated. One day I happened to find it in the way so I asked how come I found it in the way. It suddenly occurred to me afterwards that I must have pushed it in behind me then moved it round, then somehow managed to work my way round past it as I passed through the hatchway. Once I’d worked out exactly how I’d done it, it became a lot easier to go up and down past. It was less of an inconvenience. What actually happened was by leaving it at the bottom of this hatch I couldn’t actually close off the draught-proofing. I had to sit and think to try to work out exactly how I was going to do that. Then she told me that it was a packet that the Post needed to collect and send away, in which case it’ll be out of the way. I couldn’t thus understand the problem but she explained that if she left it outside it was raining and the package would be wet. I hoped that the Post Office would come quickly because this is proving to be so complicated. It doesn’t need to be this complicated at all. The quicker we can resolve this issue the better it would be for everyone.

I was at one of these Alternative Technology meetings last night too. It was a big meeting discussing the manufacture of some kind of alcohol for fuel. I had to go along to add the oats to it but of course I had no idea how to do it. There was a huge retort stand with everything being heated by a bunsen burner. It all looked quite complicated. They said “add the oats” so I had to ask the meeting how to do it. The answer was quite simply “just stuff it down one of the holes into the test tube”, no preparation, no cleaning, no nothing. I thought “if that’s how they want it doing, that’s how I’m going to do it. If they want it doing before the full meeting I’d simply do it the best that I could”.

As seems to be usual when I’m keyed up for something important like this I was awake and out of bed before the alarm went off and I took the opportunity to wash my puttees and my nightclothes so that everything will be nice and clean and ready for me when I come back home, if I ever do.

And that’s not like me either, is it?

What else isn’t like me is that I had MY BAGS ARE PACKED AND READY TO GO, as Peter, Paul and Mary would have sung, so I just had to wait around for the driver to come to collect me.

Bang on 07:00 she turned up as well, my favourite taxi driver, so we were going to be in for an exciting trip. Anything to relieve the boredom.

She had a couple of errands to perform around the town on the way and then we hit the highway.

The journey was quiet to start with but being stuck behind a dithering driver at the péage seemed to switch her on and the running commentary began for the rest of the trip.

That was just as well – I couldn’t stand the quiet.

The autoroute that we usually take into Paris is closed at the moment so we had to go another way.

That led to all kinds of confusion but luckily she was rather more restrained than last time and when we ended up in the wrong lane we simply went with the flow this time instead of performing some kind of dramatic U-turn as you might see on American “cops and robbers” TV.

We were ages late in arriving which is no surprise given the conditions, and once I was registered in I was shown up to my deep-freeze on the second floor where I dived fully-clothed under the bedclothes. And where I still am.

The nurse threw a bottle of water at me which was just as well after my marathon fast, and then we had the pantomime about fitting a catheter in my arm.

They offered to let the little student nurse do it, poor thing. I did admire their optimism. And we gradually went up and up the respective grades. At one time there were no fewer than 6 nurses of different ranks in the hierarchy standing around my bed until in the end someone let out a cry of joy.

My lunch (an omelette) that had been growing cold on a side table was then brought over to me and no sooner did I have my fork stuck into the accompanying salad when the doctor appeared. It’s all just one more distraction.

While I was trying to doze off after lunch the whole world and his wife came in to interrupt me just as I was starting on some kind of dream of something to do with wartime. No sooner had it started under way when everyone came in and it immediately disappeared which was a shame.

The nurses did a few more things before clearing off and I crashed out yet again.

The funny thing about all of this was that no sooner had I set foot in my room that they went to check my blood pressure.
"Blimey! That’s high!" said the nurse.
Well, of course it is. I’ve just come 360 kms with my favourite taxi driver
"I’ll come back in an hour to check it again"
So she came back to do it again immediately after 6 nurses had just finished poking and prodding me – with predictable results.

So now that I’ve had my meal I’m going to try to go to sleep again, this time until morning. And hope that I have some better results than of late.

They’ve offered me a sleeping pill but I’ve turned it down. It’s like the young girl who, on her wedding night, propped herself on a chair by the window
"Aren’t you … errr … coming to bed?" asked her husband
"Ohh no" she replied. "My mummy told me that this would be the most exciting night of my life and I’m not going to miss a minute of it"

0

Friday 19th April 2024 – YOU HAVE NO IDEA …

… – or maybe you do, I dunno. I know very little of your personal habits – just how absolutely wonderful it is to be standing underneath a constant stream of hot water out of a shower outlet after all these months of being without.

Now that my emergency backpack has arrived, complete with wash kit, spare pair of undies and the like, I closed the door to my room, put something to stop the bathroom door being opened, and away I went underneath the little shower tucked away in the corner of the bathroom.

Of course, it stopped my little student nurse from coming in to scrub my back and massage my clavicles, but it also stopped the retired Bulgarian female weightlifter from doing the same, and also stopped the nurse from coming in to remind me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom

And I’ll tell you now that it was heaven.

While we’re on the subject of the massaging of clavicles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a visitor during the night.

Actually, I had several because it was quite a mobile night but the most important of them all was Zero. It’s been a while since she’s put in an appearance, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but there she was last night and wasn’t it nice to see her?

All I need now is for TOTGA and Castor to come back to see me but I have a rather depressing feeling, at least about Castor. As for TOTGA, it’s not quite two years ago that … well, never mind.

So last night after I’d finished the notes and put them on line I had a pause and then attacked the notes for Monday, which are NOW ON LINE in a basic form. I’ll add the dictaphone notes in due course, whenever that might be.

It was after midnight when I went to bed and what with 05:00 diabetes checks and the like I was expecting a turbulent night.

And I was right too, but for totally unexpected reasons. As I mentioned, Zero came to see me. We’d been going to the local pub, a group of us of all ages of people. I’d made a few enquiries along the way and I’d worked out which was everyone’s favourite biscuit. There was a young girl, probably about 9 or 10 or so who loved chocolate, there was Zero who loved a certain type of biscuit etc so what I’d done ready for when we’d be going that Saturday was that I’d been to the pub on the way home from the shops and dropped off the biscuits. We rounded up everyone and prepared to go down to the pub at lunchtime. The first thing about which we talked was “a drink for the little one” – of course, she wasn’t that little. She wanted something or other. I asked her what she wanted to eat so she mentioned “biscuits”. I pulled out a pile from under the counter and had a chocolate in my other hand. I said “right, which biscuit do you want to swap for this chocolate?”. I wasn’t given any choice because the chocolate disappeared immediately. It was the same with Zero. She chose her favourite biscuit and had that as well as the other ones that were there and wolfed it down. I began to talk to her then after everyone else had had their biscuits. Zero and I began to have a really good chat. There was some paperwork involving her that needed doing so I thought that I may as well sit down there and do that while everyone is busy and maybe persuade Zero to come over and help me fill it all in.

Then another girl who has appeared once or twice in this rubbish previously puts in an appearance. It’s as we thought, with all this turmoil going on during a school dance or something we’d all been separated because we can’t behave ourselves. I’ve been put over one side and ended up dancing with this girl but I’m busy fighting her for a little more than she’s prepared to give me, like most teenage boys back in those days. There was something else going on with one of the other girls etc so in the end the teacher called a halt to the proceedings and dragged the lot of us, the entire group, down to see the headmaster and began to recount all of the problems that she was having with us and who’s been doing what wrong. Of course he picks on me and begins to give me a really good lecture as if it’s all my fault but it’s probably only some of it and everyone else was probably to blame for a lot.

And there’s nothing new in any of that either. Whatever was going on wherever it was always seemed to be my fault, even though it was nothing to do with me.

It reminded me of a tale of woe that a friend’s daughter in the USA once told me. She was 11 and had a 7 year old brother.
"Whenever I do anything wrong, my brother tells my mom on me and she yells at me" she said once. "But if he does anything wrong and I tell my mom on him, then she says it’s my fault for not watching him properly and yells at me"
That story has a very, very familiar ring as far as I’m concerned.

But there’s a funny story about a similar situation with the children of my friend Erika in Georgia. Her two kids were about 6 and 2 and the time.
"Mom!" shouted the 6 year old. "… (the two year old) … has a choking hazard in her mouth!"
So mom dashes to the rescue and removes the offending article
"Mom!" said the 6 year old in a tone of admonishment "I think you really MUST watch us better!"

Anyway we we were back in that dream again. The teacher was giving her report. One of the younger girls was up to some kind of mischief. That girl from just now was still there. It was obvious to the teacher that there was some kind of … errr … inappropriate behaviour (especially as she was a couple of years younger than me) between the girl and me that was beginning to get out of hand in the middle of one of the songs. There was a third thing happening so in the end she decided to call it all to a halt and drag us all before the headmaster who hopefully would lay down the law and even more hopefully we might all listen to what is being said and take note.

I have to admit that I admired the optimism of some of these new teachers who came to our school straight from University

It was as I said. I was messing around with this girl. There was someone else there messing around and Zero put in another appearance doing something – I think that it was she who was singing falsely at the end. Anyway we were all passing through a group of china and the Headmistress was annoyed in case we fell over and broke it all so she read The Riot Act to us all. Generally, it was the kind of place where we wished that we’d all gone home because we’d really all been getting out of hand just then and making the teacher’s life difficult.
(…And if I’ve been fooling around with another girl – no matter who it is – when Zero is there I ought to be ashamed of myself and go home in disgrace…)

But there was no sense of shame or guilt about any kind of interaction that took place between the teachers and the pupils. It was the Law of the Jungle, them or us even when it came to a group of a dozen boys bodily picking up a teacher’s car and wedging it between two brick walls. “That’ll teach her! Get out of that one!”

My own preference was a War of Nerves, but the less said about that the better in an open forum.

They awoke me for the blood test at 05:00 and also for the diabetes test, which I passed, and so I could go back to sleep.

But not for long because I soon had the morning chorus of people around doing all kinds of things and stopping me doing anything else for a while.

Breakfast then came, complete with jam, so I was left alone to transcribe the dictaphone notes for a while.

My faithful cleaner asked me if they had told me whether I could go so I told her “no news” and 30 seconds after I sent it, they came to tell me that they’d ordered my taxi for 15:00. That was when I hit the bathroom.

Doctor n°1 came to see me when I was packing and told me that I could go, seeing as my results had improved. So I told her goodbye and thanks, that I was sorry to leave and that I hoped that I’d see her again. She blushed again and I kid you not, she skipped – really skipped – out of the door as if she was about 7.

As usual, the taxi was late coming but the driver was someone who had taken me to Paris once so I knew him. We were back quite quickly and my faithful cleaner was waiting to help me up the stairs. I really don’t know what I’d do without her.

Once inside I had a hot chocolate and apart from the banana-flavoured soya drink that I’m currently drinking, that’s it. I’ve not moved from my chair, not even to make any food. I just can’t.

Liz was on line so we had a good chat and now I’m off to bed in my nice clean bedroom – my cleaner has been busy while I’ve been away. It’s probably taken her all week to do what she’s done.

So after Zero’s dramatic reappearance last night, who’ll be coming to see me tonight? My money is of course where it usually is – on one of my family coming along uninvited.

It’s hard to believe though that Zero turned up a second time and I was …. errr …. busy elsewhere. I’m clearly losing my grip. But at least I noticed her. Just imagine if I hadn’t.

Still, I’m not alone there. A friend in the Army was once selected for camouflage training. He simply didn’t go and was later commended for his disguise and attention to detail. It fooled everyone apparently

0

Thursday 18th April 2024 – APPARENTLY I MIGHT …

… be able to go home tomorrow, so they say.

But simply to pack my bags ready to go to my next hospital.

Apparently I’m being passed from hospital to hospital quicker than in a game of “pass the parcel” in a bar in West Belfast

Mind you, I can’t say that I’m sorry, for I might be able to have a little peace.

Not that I’m complaining about the service. Not at all. In fact, quite the reverse. There’s far too much of it. So much so that it’s overwhelming the other services that follow on.

This morning I was awoken at, would you believe, 05:00 because they wanted to check my blood sugar. At 05:00!!
So "help! Your blood sugar is too low. Drink this orange juice! Eat this jam!"
"Eat this jam? Eat it neat? What do I eat it with?"
A couple of minutes later "Here’s a ‘madeleine’ to eat with your jam"
"You’re quick enough to spot that I’m at risk of diabetes. And at 05:00 too! But not quick enough to spot that on the same page just 2 lines down it says that I’m a vegan."
Eventually we agree on some biscottes

And then at breakfast "Where’s the jam for my bread?"
"It says here on your notes that you’re diabetic. You aren’t allowed it"

While I’m actually eating (with my jam that I have now negotiated) –
Person n°1 comes with my medication
Person n°2 comes to change the plaster on my foot
Person n°3 comes to inject me in the hip
Person n°4 comes to remind me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom
Person n°5 comes to take my blood pressure and temperature

Eventually everyone clears off for a couple of hours and leaves me at peace with just the usual interruptions

And then round about 11:00 the doctor comes to see me. And while she’s soothing my fevered brow (and believe me, she can soothe my fevered brow any time she likes) –
Person n°1 comes to make the bed
Person n°2 comes to give me a clean nightshirt
Person n°3 comes to talk to the doctor
Person n°4 comes to tell me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom
Person n°5 comes to take my blood pressure and temperature

"Blood pressure’s rather high today" said the doctor, looking at the figures
"Surely not" I said. "Perish the thought!"

Eventually everyone drift away and leaves me in relative peace

But then I do need the bathroom and so I set off. And it’s odds-on, and you would have bet your money on it, that as soon as I’m in the bathroom the blasted phone rings

So I make it back to the phone just in time (which surely must be a ‘first’) and while I’m listening to radio business with the phone at one ear there’s the nurse in the other ear reminding me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom.

And so it’s gone on (and on, and on) all day. But at least I saw two friendly faces today. A couple of my neighbours, my devoted cleaner and the President of the Residents’ Committee, came to say “hello” and to bring me my emergency backpack, including the travelling laptop, and so I’m saved. The solidarity in my building is impressive.

After they leave, Doctor n°2 comes to see me. She’s from the Nephrology Department. Apparently she’s spoken to Paris and they’ve decided that as Nephrology is where my current problems lie and as there is no-one special at Paris handling my case from that point of view they can do it here so she’ll be taking over.

What I reckon is that she just wants to get her teeth into my kidneys – preferably wrapped up with mushrooms in a puff pastry.

Then Doctor n°1 came to tell me what Doctor n°2 had said so I told her that I was sorry.

She asked why so I told her that it was because I wouldn’t see her again – and she blushed!

And so it’ s gone on. It’s now 21:00 and I’m still being injected and I really ought to be running a sweep about how many more times tonight a nurse going to come round to tell me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom.

But as I said, I’m not in the least complaining. Had I been in the UK I’d have had to wait 18 months for an appointment to go to the bathroom. I’d have been pushing up the daisies a long time before this

As for my part, I’m like Mona Lott on ITMA and "it’s being so cheerful as keeps me going"

There’s some stuff on the dictaphone that needs transcribing too. I was doing something with a group of people, one of whom was a young girl whom I quite happened to like. It involved changing my clothes and I had to carry them across the room to the sink. I just about dropped them but managed to catch them just at the point where I awoke. It was, I think, the shock of dropping the clothes that made me awaken. I thought that I had a really good reflex action of catching them while I was half-asleep and there weren’t any real clothes there anyway.

It’s not bad, is it? Being able to catch non-existent clothing with a lightning reflex action when I’m asleep. Not for nothing did I keep wicket for one of the local cricket teams when I was younger.

And then I had to think of some good adverts for a bus company so we took it in turns to sing a rhyme of doggerel. One girl who was very much like Whats’ername who used to appear quite a lot on “Just A Minute” … "Sheila Hancock" – ed … sang a rhyme basically to say that she knew nothing at all. The boss who drifted onto the scene in the middle of a snowstorm in an old double-decker bus came along and told me as I was watching “that’s the way, Eric. Baffle them with nonsense”. Of course he couldn’t see where he was going because of the snow and ended up driving over the pavement and falling over the pavement head-first with his bus and ended up on the grass sticking upright. He was delighted because there was a part that had been damaged previously and they’d fitted a replacement panel. You could see a perfect reproduction of the panel in the snow even down to the makers’ name and date. He thought that if we could cast on that we could make some brilliant replacement panels ourselves of the one that he’d damaged ages ago and just had replaced. I thought that it was a strange idea but most good ideas like this always start off being strange.

It seems that I have several hidden talents, so well-hidden that I can’t find them anywhere during the day. Planning battles and military campaigns, catching non-existent clothing and running advertising campaigns during my sleep.

This isn’t the first advertising campaign that I’ve run in my sleep either. It’s a shame that no-one is actually paying me for the services that I’m providing during the night. I could afford to retire on the proceeds if this kind of thing carries on.

While I was asleep in the afternoon a new girl had started work in the office. There wasn’t really very much that we could do except to send out the new instructions for the new year. As nothing had been printed yet etc it was a case of having to do everything manually so I was running around looking for a 500-roll of stickers. She told me that they were in someone’s second drawer down. The girl herself was saying that “well no-one has recalculated anything so we’re going to have to do all that by hand too” which I thought was amazing considering that she’d only just started. We were trying very quickly to collect everything together so that at least we could have something that needed to be done and could set things under way so that at least she would feel that she was doing something on her start at the office.

That’s not everything that there was but you don’t really want to know the rest.

So this is all that I’m going to do for now. There are tons of arrears still to do but I need to be in the mood for it

But talking of blushing just now … "well, one of us is" – ed … this morning the little student nurse came to help me change my nightshirt and as she lifted the old one over my head she said, jokingly "ohh la la! Striptease!"
So I whispered in her ear "to tell a little secret, you aren’t the first female to undress me" – and she blushed too!

All of the foregoing is probably why I’m leaving tomorrow. I think that I’m actually being expelled, not discharged.

0

Wednesday 17th April 2024 – AT LEAST I THINK…

… that it’s Wednesday 17th April. I’ve lost track of time and I couldn’t care less.

I’m still here and for the foreseeable future too for all I know.

It’s actually been “all go” today. And not just during the day either because it was a very disturbed night as well. At about 23:45 I definitely heard someone shout an enquiring “hello” as if from the front door of my apartment being open while I was in bed. I replied with a “hello” but I didn’t hear anything and I didn’t leave the bed at all – I just lay there. Somehow I knew that it was imaginary but it really WAS real and I could quite easily have been mistaken into thinking that it might have been a real person who had opened my door and stuck his head in to shout “hello”.

Thinking on about the matter though, what I reckon that it must have been was a nurse putting his or her head around the door of my room and thinking that I was still awake. I can’t think of what else it might have been, but it was certainly something that sounded real to me.

But while we’re on the subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s plenty of other stuff on the dictaphone too. I was having a long, complicated dream about how a friend’s daughter was a big star of Mexican football, a very controversial star but how in the end she admitted to being involved in all kinds of bribery scandals. This only seemed to enhance her reputation and became one of the most popular female footballers of all time. It was a long, complicated dream that seemed to go on for ever about the matches in which she’d played, some of the goals that she’d scored, how she’d scored them and how aggressive she was.

But leaving aside the fact that the friend in question doesn’t actually have a daughter, I’ll have to stop watching all of these Mexican women’s football matches on the internet.

And then in the Regional Accents programme on BBC Radio there was a story about a girl who had started to play her football with Chelsea and then moved to live in some remote rural region of the area. She was afraid at first when she mentioned that she’d played at Chelsea that everyone would think that she was a superstar whereas in fact she’d really just played for amusement and wasn’t of any particular quality etc. She was just doing it for fun. When they were interviewing the people with the regional accents I didn’t understand a single word that these people were replying. It was such a remote and rural-type of setting that they had an accent all of their own that meant that no-one could understand the English that they were speaking.

Finally, whenever I’d been away on my business, which was very top-secret, I’d always come home by parachute. I’d plan my landing so that I’d bale out of the aeroplane and land in through one of the windows of the barn. Then I’d lower myself down to the ground, roll up my parachute, stash it away and sort out the stuff that I’d brought back. This proved to be useful on a few occasions when hanging from the parachute inside the barn waiting for things to quieten down, I’d hear the plans about what was going on with my family, what they were talking about, why the kids were unhappy etc. My brothers and sisters weren’t a very happy unit. It all proved to be very useful. The problem was stashing away all of the goods that I’d brought back. I kept on bringing back small-sized seat covers for the cars which although fitted, were quite a stretch. It would have been much easier had I brought back medium-sized seat covers that would have gone on and off a lot easier and could have been washed better. But whatever it was, I kept on bringing back small ones. That was a mistake.

So after all of that I decided to go to the bathroom.

On my way someone stopped me to give me a message, then once I was safely installed, a whole stream of different doctors and nurses came to see me, including a nursing assistant who asked me if I needed a toothbrush.

All of which went on while I was … errr … riding the porcelain horse and I began to think "I ought to be selling tickets for this performance. I’d make a fortune". It really was quite embarrassing.

However I’ve had more blood tests, been whizzed through a Stargate time tunnel, seen a couple of doctors and even had a dietician come to see me.

That latter visit wasn’t all that much use either as she told me that there’s not much they can do about my diet with their hospital food. It won’t be the first time that I’ve been told to “bring a picnic” but of course, with this being an emergency admission there was no time to prepare anything.

So having eaten what I can and done what I can, I’m going to go to sleep and dream of happier times.

All of this makes me wish that I’d brought my emergency bag and my travelling laptop. Thank God I have some decent music on my phone and good friends sending me lots of nice messages.

But the question of hospital food reminds me of my time at Riom when I exclaimed quite loudly "I haven’t eaten anything for three days".
And a rather obese gentleman in the next bed responded "Blimey! You’ll have to tell me your secret!"

0

Tuesday 16th April = I’M IN THE …

… cardiac unit of the regional hospital at Avranches while they try to work out why my blood results have gone so berserk just now.

To say that things are not unfolding as well as I would like is proving to be something of an understatement.

It goes without saying that last night I didn’t have much sleep. These hospital beds such as the one on which I was trying to sleep aren’t actually made for comfort and then of course the surroundings weren’t actually comfortable.

To my great surprise though there was something on the dictaphone so at some point I must have dropped off into the Land of Nod. At one point I was dreaming that I was thirsty so I opened my mouth and grabbed hold of a hose but it was the green house of the car and I think that that was where air came out. I felt so stupid not knowing that the green hose was not water at all but it was something else and I didn’t know it.

When the alarm went off (yes, an alarm. Bane of Britain strikes again!) I was a dispatcher for the US Air Force arranging their planes to go off on bombing missions against the Germans in their big Superfortresses … "actually B-17 Flying Fortresses" – ed … etc. It involved finding crews, preparing the crews for departure, putting them in their aeroplane, making sure that when they took off they knew where their meeting point was, over which beacon etc, generally keeping up with the thousands of changes that would take place during the course of the preparation of the mission

Of course they would actually be Flying Fortresses. It would be extremely rare to say the least to find a Superfortress flying on combat in the European theatre of operations. An expensive aeroplane such as that would have been a luxury when its advantages (super-long range and extremely high altitude) wouldn’t be reached anywhere where it would be required to deliver a bomb-load in Europe. Dollar for dollar, a Flying Fortress could drop many more bombs on Germany.

Of course, dispatching would be nothing new as far as I would be concerned. By air though would be a totally new medium but the principle would be pretty-much the same as by road.

However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, and things developed as I expected. I’ve been here before, once in Verdun and once in Winnipeg and the results were the same.

Luckily, with having expected it, the necessary precautions had been taken and it wasn’t as embarrassing as it might otherwise have been.

Naturally, I refused any food for breakfast while things tried to settle (a forlorn hope) but at least they moved me to a more convenient location, a little side room off the emergency treatment area, where things could evolve in comparative peace.

Nevertheless a few people came to see me, including the duty doctor. She told me at first that they were planning to keep me under observation for 24 hours and then send me home, but when she saw what was going on, she went away for another think.

In the meantime my blood tests came back. Something in my blood that should be less than 100 and I’ve been living with figures in the 260-270 range for the last few years has suddenly shot up to 316 in the period since my last blood test.

Apparently those kinds of figures won’t usually support life and they are quite concerned. Consequently an ambulance pulled up and I was bundled on a stretcher and stuck in the back.

So here I am at Avranches, 30 kilometres down the road where there’s a regional hospital.

Strangely enough, this was where it all started in March last year when the neurologist sent me here for tests and they couldn’t find the problem – hence my visits to Paris.

The hospital is an old monastery by the looks of things at the front, but there’s a whole huge new extension built on the back and it’s really quite nice and modern. The rooms are small but it’s not as if I need much

So here I am, being cared for and cossetted by a group of nurses. Actually, for the most part they are quite brusque and business-like which differs from most of the nurses in Paris who are much more patient-orientated, but I suppose that they have much more work to do and can’t find the time to be as sociable

While I was asleep at some point during the afternoon there was a dream about a lorry driver who was saying something about how easy it was to set himself up in business. He had a tanker lorry but I remember him having an old “D”-registered ex-RAF tanker before that one. He had several trailers that ere quite substantial trailers and I was saying that he didn’t pick these up for peanuts, and by the looks of things were specially-made. It was quite obvious to me that yes, you can set yourself up in business but you need to have the kind of capital to ba able to do that kind of thing. That’s not just available to everyone at all

And that reminds me of someone I know who lives in the countryside a few miles south of Nantwich, who made a fortune simply by being willing to go crawling and climbing where other people dared not go

The food here is the usual hospital rubbish, I have to say, so it’s a good job that I’m not feeling in the mood to eat anything right no, which is just as well.

And so I’m going to try to sleep – a forlorn hope, I reckon. I’m feeling a little better, but not that much.

I’ve set the bed fairly high so it’s easier for me to get out and in without any help (something that will be quite important as the night develops) but they aren’t happy about it and keep on trying to lower it. I’m winning the fight at the moment but things will almost inevitably change as the night goes on.

It’s “visions of Bernard Bresslaw” in CARRY ON DOCTOR hobbling around with his leg in plaster
"What’s the matter with you?" asked Frankie Howerd
"Appendicitis" said Bresslaw
"So why the plaster on the leg?"
"I fell off the operating table"

0

Monday 15th April 2024 = I’M IN HOSPITAL

The emergency department of our local hospital in Granville. I made a brave face of it just long enough for the nurse to take one look at me as she came into the apartment.

After she’d dealt with my puttees and the plaster on my foot she sent me to bed and sent for the doctor.

The rest is, as they say, history.

What’s disappointing about all of this, from my point of view is that I’d made a special effort to be in bed really early and so at 22:00I was tucked up in bed with STRAWBERRY MOOSE to keep me warm hoping for a really good sleep.

As it happens, I can’t remember very much at all about last night. I was totally out of everything. There is some stuff on the dictaphone too and it’s certainly one of the strangest things that I’ve ever dictated. One of my failures was a failure of politeness and whoever was in charge of issuing the politeness had failed to endorse me so I’d fallen down on that, which meant that the Controle Technique on the van had failed as well and I didn’t know what I was going to do about it. I pretended to ignore it and went out anyway one day. I was in the van looking for this Minister of Politeness and went past the Police Station. A police car pulled out from the side of the road to perform a U-turn but stopped to let me go past. I stopped to let him pull out because I thought that I’d rather have him where I could see him in front of me and know what he’s up to. He drifted off with his superior and they went off to look for something else. A few other people had gone to look for this Minister of Politeness which left me there without my certificate and I was going to be in quite a few problems

When the alarm went off I staggered off for the medication and then for a wash and brush up to look pretty for when she arrives. Not to mention setting out the room as she likes
… "setting out the room as she likes?" – ed …
Didn’t I just tell you not to mention that?

So she came, she saw and she complained. Off I went to bed like a rather naughty child and tucked myself in.

One thing that I did do was to tell my cleaner that I was tucked up in bed. I sent her a message. She pops in every now and again to drop off something and I didn’t want to frighten her.

Actually, she stuck her head into the bedroom later on to see how I was doing and if I needed anything, which was nice of her. She told me later that the sight of me frightened her to death – by which of course she means about how ill I looked. I usually frighten people to death every day for other reasons.

The nurse rang me and told me that she’d seen the doctor’s secretary and he’d be here after his morning surgery closed, which was fair enough.

Sure enough, at about 13:00 he turned up, and he was horrified by my sight too. He gave me a good going-over and then recommended the hospital.

Once I’d agreed (there’s no point having his advice and not taking it) he called the taxi company that handles my affairs and they said that they’d be here in an hour.

Just enough time to sort out my papers and pack a bag (which I didn’t take because I didn’t know if I’d be staying) and then Antoine from the taxi company took me to the Hospital’s Emergency Department.

Having been categorised by an Emergency doctor as “non-urgent” by which they mean “not about to die” judging by the state of some of the others, and having been given a blood test I was put on a bed in the corridor to wait my turn.

There was soup and coffee being passed down the line (not like at Riom where Liz had to run out and purchase supplies) but it didn’t reach me and I was in no mood to ask. And when I’m off my food, you know that here’s something wrong.

There was plenty of time to observe the goings-on and I was glad that I’ve not been arrested. The French Gendarmes don’t mess about asking people to “come quietly”. There were at least two detenus brought into Emergency in handcuffs for a check-over after helping the Gendarmes with their enquiries.

They didn’t actually get round to me that night and I was pushed, bed and all, into an empty office where I was left alone in the dark with the occasional visitor to check on me.

As for me, I felt like death and I could feel that I was going to be worse.

But my faithful cleaner sent me a lovely message – "Courage! The whole building chez nous is with you!"
To which I thought "Blimey! It must be a pretty big bed"

0

Friday 19th January 2024 – GUESS WHO …

… has been in the Urgences at the hospital in Granville again this afternoon?

This morning at about 10:45 I had a ‘phone call. "Mr Hall, you need to come back to the hospital. We’ve picked up something on the X-Rays that might be important. Can you come this afternoon?"

So having arranged transport (which was a story in itself, which you’ll find out in early course) I arrived at the hospital.

They shoved me through one of these Stargate time-tunnel machines, one made by my former employer, General Electric, and then waited around for the results.

When someone finally turned up, it was "sorry, it must have been a false alarm. You can dress and go home". So off I went home, driven by a mad taxi driver (which was a story in itself, which you’ll find out in early course).

But it reminded me of the time after my bad car accident in 1986 when I was taxiing in Sandbach, and they gave me a brain scan.
"How did it go?" I asked
"No need to worry" the doctor replied. "We found nothing"
Well, quite …

But I digress … "again" – ed …

So there’s nothing wrong with my leg, they told me. They would have had a different opinion if they had been in bed with me during the night because I was awake for hours in agony. It’s not getting any better – in fact it seems to be getting worse.

And with a late night and all of these sleeping issues I felt like death when the alarm went off. And I forgot to take the ‘phone with me when I went to walk the parapet so the whole building was probably awoken by the second and third alarm.

Dressing was a struggle yet again and then, having taken the blood pressure, went for my mountain of medication.

Back in here I eventually managed to summon up the energy to transcribe the dictaphone notes, such as they were in the short time during which I was asleep. I’d somehow found myself at a dance and had ended up in the company of an Inuit girl to whom someone had introduced me. What I didn’t realise was that there was another girl whom I liked much better and who was actively trying to find me to begin to talk to me but of course when she found me with this Inuit girl she backed away. I didn’t find this out until later so I was rather annoyed with the person who presented me to this girl. Of course it was all my fault for getting together with her but anyway I was still annoyed. Eventually the girl began to chat to me so I explained to her about the confusion. She asked what had happened later on. I explained that the person responsible for the mix-up getting me together with this Inuit girl had ended up dancing on the floor with a group of people or someone or other and was quite happy where he was but they announced that they were going to divide the room into two – there would be a dance for the people from the reseau urban – the urban area and another one for the people from the pays lointan – the distant rural areas. He ended up being in a different area than where he actually wanted to be, or, at least, away from the people with whom he wanted to be. He was not happy at all so I thought that there was some kind of justice being served somewhere and that made me feel a little better

But why would I be upset about finding myself a nice Inuit girl?

Vaino Tanner, the Finnish anthropologist, went between 1937 and 1939 to Northern Labrador to live among the Inuit in order to study their lifestyle, customs and habits, and to report on the area in which they live.

In his report, “Outlines of the Geography, Life and Customs of Newfoundland-Labrador” published in 1944 he tells us that the Inuit girls –

  • are very hard-working around the house (and then goes on to list the tasks that they enjoy performing)
  • are keen to marry men of European descent
  • have an extremely sensual nature

It intrigued me how he discovered the third part of that trilogy so, believe me, having read his report, I was off on the next trip of the THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR to the frozen North to conduct my own in-depth field research.

It was shortly after this that the ‘phone went berserk.

Throughout the morning I was negotiating my shopping list with my cleaner who was wandering around town carrying out her various errands.

The hospital at Paris rang up to find out how I was doing so I told them of all of my complaints here and there. After an extremely long and complicated telephone call, made harder by the fact that she dragged me back from being away with the fairies so I didn’t have both paddles in the water at that particular moment, she said that she’d speak to the specialist.

Next was the local hospital as I mentioned. I had to negotiate a taxi voucher from them but they could only do it for the return so they rang up my doctor to issue it. And I forget how many ‘phone calls I must have made to his secretary to confirm it

It still wasn’t ready when my cleaner, poor lass, went by to see and she broke the bad news to me when she came to bring me my shopping.

Nevertheless I phoned for a car and told them that we’d have to stop at the Medical Centre to pick it up. But when he came he said "I’ll pick it up later when I have more time". He’s not come back to me so I imagine that it must be OK.

The poor guy. Being quite busy he was in a hurry but he had to spend an age hunting down where I was supposed to go. Everywhere seemed to be closed. In the end, after what seemed to be a geological age and several phone calls, he found out that it was the Urgences, which is what I’d told his controller and I’m sure that I told him too.

One there I had to undress and wait a while before being put through the Stargate, and then wait a while for the results.

And now I know where the Grinch goes when it’s not Christmas. He works for the rival taxi company to the one that I use.

Bad-tempered and miserable, he told me that he didn’t have time to help me up the stairs so I had to telephone my long-suffering cleaner.

We hurtled through the 30kph limit of the harbour area at 75 kph and eventually screeched to a halt outside my building.

And his car – it was a “EA” plate, meaning that it was registered in March or April of 2016 and it had, would you believe, 320,000 kilometres on the clock. My next car (if there is one) will be a Peugeot 508 diesel.

My long-suffering cleaner helped me up the stairs to my apartment where I crashed into a chair and couldn’t move for 20 minutes. Then I made a hot chocolate and that was that for the day.

Tea tonight was wonderful. I had a raging fancy for a potato salad with my salad and vegan burger so

  • I diced some potatoes quite small and put them to boil
  • Half-way through I drained them to dispose of the starch, and then carried on with the boiling with fresh water and some dried chives
  • Meanwhile I took some vegan mayonnaise, added some garlic paste, lemon juice, vinegar and olive oil with some herbs (and there would have been some finely chopped raw onion in there too if I had remembered)
  • I whipped all of that up into a nice liquidy mix
  • Then I drained the potatoes, rinsed them to cool them down, put them back in the pan and added the sauce and mixed everything up together
  • When it was done I tipped it out onto the plate with the salad and burger – and ate it

And do you know what? It was absolutely out of this world delicious and I’ll make this again.

So now, much later than usual, having had a short (only 48 minutes) conversation with Rosemary, I’m off to bed hoping for a better night.

But hospital again? It’s really going beyond a joke. I’ll be moving permanently into a hospital at this rate.

And I know which one it will be. It won’t be one that we’ve encountered so far. They don’t have wards like that in general hospitals.

0