Tag Archives: hospital

Wednesday 13th August 2016 – NOW, ABOUT LAST NIGHT …

… I was in bed by about 21:30 and it didn’t take all that long at all to drop off to sleep. And the next thing that I remember was that it was 05:35. I can’t have been for a wander during the night and I vaguely remember only the basics of some kind of nocturnal ramble going on during the night. It concerns Renown Garage where my taxi business was based during the late 1980s. They had dug up the petrol pumps and were concreting them, with this huge cement mixer. However, instead of water, they had mixed the concrete with petrol which had infiltrated into the foundations from the old petrol tanks. This had the effect (at least, it did last night) of making the concrete set quickly and super-hard, and they had far too much of it that they didn’t know what to do with it. I immediately seized on the opportunity to offer my back garden as a dumping ground for the concrete – with the aim of course of covering it over as a place to park my vehicles.

I felt quite better this morning, and even had an appetite for breakfast. And afterwards, now that I’ve bought some soap, I went for a shower and sorted out all of my clothes for washing. And this was when I realised that I only have one spare pair of undies and trousers – no socks, tee-shirt or jumper. Nevertheless, I put everything ready to wash.

I had to wait hours for the machine to free itself, seeing as the cleaner seemed to have gone berserk with the cleaning cycle, but it didn’t take long to wash. Meantime, I’d gone round to the supermarket for my baguette, tomato and banana, and as well as that, bought myself a bag of sweets and a bun because I was starving. This is definitely an improvement.

And my relentless thirst seems to have calmed down too, which is a good thing. You’ve no idea how much liquid I’ve demolished this last few days.

This afternoon I had a doze again for an hour or so and later on went out for tea. Thanks to all of the vegan cheese that I have, I went for another pizza and I polished that off quite comfortably.

Yes, definitely feeling a little better.

But you missed all of the excitement while I was out. Some young guy thought that he would be clever by cycling on the pavement around a traffic queue in the street. Instead, he cycled right into a grid in the gutter, his front wheel jammed and he went head-over-heels right over the handlebars.

Yes, I did have to laugh.

But tomorrow I’m back at the hospital. I’m having a blood test at the day centre and that will tell us whether I need another transfusion, or whether the chemotherapy is actually working.

It’ll be interesting to see what’s going on, and I hope that it’s working because I don’t want to go through too much of this under any circumstances whatever. It’s horrible.

0

Tuesday 12th APRIL 2016 – I’VE BEEN OFF AGAIN …

… on yet another mega-ramble during the night. I must be sleeping a little better, which must be a sign of something, I suppose.

Last night, I started out with a girl who was supposed to be Amber, my niece’s daughter (but who bore a startling resemblance both in looks and character to my younger sister) and her friend Julianna. And we were in Canada, on our way west towards Centreville to be reunited with Amber’s grandmother. But Amber (or my sister, take your pick) was certain that her grandmother wasn’t there and that when we arrived she and her friend would have to take the ‘plane to fly on to wherever her grandmother was staying. I was surprised at this because it was the usual time for me going to Canada and she was always at home when I arrived (and why we didn’t telephone to check up was something that I don’t understand either). By now, it was late at night and we stopped for the night at a motel. We had our beds in the foyer so everyone had to go past us to enter their rooms and with me and two young girls the place soon became a real dump, with stuff everywhere for I had had to turn the luggage inside-out to find the food to make sandwiches and I’d been finding all sorts of things. But Amber (or my sister) mentioned the name of the town where her grandmother usually stayed so I looked for it on the map but couldn’t find it. But in a moment of inspiration I looked inside the front cover of the map and there was a rubber stamp from a used-car salesman from the town where she might be. I couldn’t read the writing so I asked one of the girls to look. Amber (or my sister) had a look and told me the full address, and the nearest city happened to be about 250 miles in the opposite direction right near where Hannah goes to University at Antigonish. I told Amber (or my sister) to telephone straight away to her father to see if grandmother was at this address, because now that we had it, we could have a good night’s sleep and head down there directly in the morning. And it was here that I noticed that Amber (or my sister) was having a crafty smoke of a cigarette, so did I have words to say to her about that at her age!
From here, the action moved on to Brussels and a group of Russian “nouvels arrivants” living there. Some of these Russians were fairly young but they were all quite street-wise, and everyone seemed to be concerned with some kind of storage of illicit spirits. One of the girls, called Alina (and who bore more than a passing resemblance to girl called Alina whom I once met) was more determined than the rest and was keen to secure her independence. She had once been dared to work out how to break into one of these secret warehouses and much to everyone’s surprise she had managed to do so. Now, she intended to break in for good and clear out all of the stock and, unsurprisingly, in a fit of boredom and lack of excitement in my life, I volunteered to help her. Terry and Liz offered to help as well. So she turned up, worked her way into the warehouse and we loaded up a van with all of these spirits and Terry quickly drove it off while Alina and I sorted out the finances. When I met up with Liz and Terry afterwards, they were both keen to know all about Alina and my involvement with her and how come she felt so confident as to be able to handle all of this at her age, and on reflection I had to admit to them that I knew nothing really concrete or substantial about her and I couldn’t really see how I had come to let myself be involved in all of this, knowing what the Russian Mafia could be quite capable of “arranging”.
After this, it was the turn of my middle sister to make her debut in my nocturnal ramble. There she was with another girl and both had babies in pushchairs. We were all planning to go off somewhere and the bust was at 08:13 but they were taking far too much time to prepare themselves and their charges and I was trying to urge them on. It was a good 10 minutes walk to the bus stop and I looked at my watch – it was 07:56 and I was feeling that if they don’t organise themselves right this minute, we wouldn’t be going anywhere at all.

It wasn’t 07:56 though because I checked. It was 07:23 when I awoke and, much to my surprise, I was feeling a little (but only a little) better. I actually managed to attack my breakfast with much more confidence. I had the usual repose during the morning, being evicted by the cleaner while she did the room and that gave me an opportunity to do some research into the laundry room. There’s a washing machine there that for €2:00 will do all of your clothes so I’ll be sorting that out tomorrow.

I felt a little better going down to the shops for my bread and when I could finally bring myself to eat it, I felt much better after that. So much so that I postponed my afternoon nap until 16:30 and was back up and about at 18:00.

For tea, remembering to go out early so as not to end up locked out like last night, I had pasta and tomato sauce – to take away – for a mere €5:50. Living in an area overrun with students is paying massive dividends with deals like that. And for once, I really enjoyed it and managed to eat it all without any hesitation.

So I’m off to bed in a couple of minutes. I’m glad that I’ve been feeling better today and I hope that I can maintain the improvement tomorrow – especially if I can keep eating like this.

0

Monday 11th April 2016 – IF I’M TOTALLY OUT OF IT TODAY …

… then there is a very good reason for this, because I was well away with the fairies during the night.

“Away” was not the word. I must have crashed out listening to the radio because I awoke at about 01:30, in the middle of the night, to the sound of the Clitheroe Kid.

And I wasn’t alone last night either. I had companions during all of it and I started off with none other than Nerina and my brother. He had a Ford Fiasco which had a luton body on it (don’t ask me how – or why) and he was out and about on his travels when he bumped into me, somewhere on the corner of Edwards Avenue and Edwards Close in Shavington. As we were talking, a police car loomed over the horizon and he beat something of a hasty retreat away from his Fiesta. I asked him why but he didn’t give a convincing reason and in the end I cornered him over the fact that it wasn’t insured. “Don’t you remember that as soon as I got my licence I was planning to go off on that drive across Europe but in the end I had to cancel it. That was because the insurance hadn’t come through”.
So from there we made our way into the company of Nerina who wanted some stuff moving. She didn’t care about how ill I was, and I couldn’t make her understand. We ended up bringing a quad motorcycle down some narrow stairs from an attic, getting it stuck at every turn, and once it was down, off we set. We carried on arguing all the way to where we were going, to Hankelow Hall, to my house in France, and even arguing in some roadside petrol station near Audlem (which was nowhere near Audlem of course) and I’d lost patience long ago.
After a trip down the corridor I was at the seaside. Only a teenager, I was with a group of others and there was a huge storm raging sending spray everywhere and one girl of our party was out running around in it. I went out to bring her inside but I ended up being overwhelmed by the magnificence of it all too and staying out with her. As the storm subsided we went for a walk and ended up taking a short cut through someone else’s garden . I asked her if she knew the people to which she replied that she did. I had no intention of meeting them so I persuaded her to retrace our steps and we were met at the gate by a crowd of people including the fire brigade. Apparently the place had caught fire and so we were asked what we had been doing. I replied with the first thing that came into my head – that we were collecting the pools money – but that was clearly the wrong thing to say because there was some scam going around about the Football Pools and I’d put my foot right in it. Nevertheless, an elderly couple whom I knew saw me with this girl and gave me a “knowing wink”.
And later still, I’d been out with a friend and her husband to a local bar. The husband was quite the worse for wear so she asked me to escort him home. I agreed, provided that she would bring a few bottles back for me to take to my friends. However, outside the bar, husband jumped on a bicycle and despite his wife’s most earnest entreaties, he wouldn’t get off and wobbled off down the street. I grabbed hold of the nearest bike, a kind of Moulton mini-bike with a flat rear tyre and weird handlebars, and shot off after him. But I was so impressed by this bike. Even with a flat rear tyre, the gearing was such that the momentum of going down Vine Tree Avenue took me all the way back up the bank in Chestnut Avenue, and I remember thinking that I shall have to look much more closely at modern bicycles

No wonder that I’m exhausted – but I’m curious to know what Shavington doing featuring in all of this these days.

I slept almost right through to the alarm this morning but it was a slow crawl to the breakfast room. And back here, I crashed out again for an hour straight afterwards. It took me ages to come round sufficiently but the cleaner threw me out of my room at about 11:00. This gave me an opportunity to go to the office to pay for my accommodation. I’ve paid up until Thursday morning because I’ve no idea where I’ll be after then. Will I be detained in hospital or will I be released?

As an aside, the receptionist complimented me on my Flemish. I suppose it must be returning by now but I don’t feel anything like as confident – or as competent – as I think that I ought to be.

I crawled to the supermarket to buy food for lunch and then crawled back here afterwards to eat it and then have another crash-out for a couple of hours. But at 20:00 I staggered out to the fritkot – not feeling very much like it at all but I have to eat and frits are full of fat which, apparently, I must have.

I was in luck at the fritkot – it was the anniversary of the opening of the place and so a medium portion was free. How often does this kind of thing happen to me? I had a struggle to eat them but they all went down and they must have done some good because now it’s 22:00 and I’m still awake.

But not for much longer. I’m off to bed and I’ll see where I end up tomorrow.

0

Sunday 10th April 2016 – AFTER MY REALLY BAD NIGHT …

… last night, the first thing that I did this morning was to dash to the washbasin by the wall (and I bet that you are so glad that I told you that, aren’t you?). And, strangely enough (or maybe not), I felt a little better after that. Mind you, that’s not difficult because I could hardly have felt any worse than I did during the night.

But having put all of that nonsense behind me, I managed to eat a breakfast and then I went off for a little walk. The Delhaize up the road was closed today (which I suspected it might be) and so I decided to head for the nearest bakery for a real stockbrood for once. And here I was in luck.

I’d forgotten all about the Belgian habit of everyone going to the banketbakkerij on a Sunday to buy koekjes – the breakfast ritual here in Belgium is for cakes and coffee and some of the cakes are magnificent. They aren’t for me of course, but they did have some sugar-coated raisin buns. Two of those with another coffee when I returned to my little room cheered me up a little.

At lunchtime, I had some vegan cheese on my butty and I’m a little disturbed because the taste seems to have changed. It hasn’t – it’s that my taste buds have changed since I’ve had chemotherapy and that’s disturbing me. It’s one of the reasons that I’m off my food right now. I don’t really fancy anything to eat and the idea of eating anything greasy makes me queasy.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that I’m cold too, and that’s not like me. I ended up having to turn on the heating in my room to make me feel better.

I crashed out for a couple of hours this afternoon – nothing like as completely as I have done over the last couple of days though – and later on I forced myself out to organise a pizza. I must start to eat some food some time. Luckily, I have plenty of sliced vegan cheese hanging around.

Delicious as the pizza might have been, I had to force myself to eat it. And I managed it too and I felt slightly better too.

But I’ve now noticed another little problem – where I had this drain in my right arm, the area is now swelling up, just like the very first time when I was at Montlucon hospital. That, as we know, turned out to be a wandering blood clot and led to my having all of those injections twice a day for three months. I hope that it isn’t – I don’t want to go through all of that again.

0

Saturday 9th April 2016 – LAST NIGHT WAS THE FIRST …

… night that I’d spent in a single room for a while so I was determined to make the most of it. But having crashed out earlier in the afternoon, I was awake by 02:00 and spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of sleep.

And drifting in and out of nocturnal rambles too. I started out by leading some kind of commando pack and it was the evening of the invasion of Europe. Our HQ, such as it was, was a landing craft anchored offshore and it was from there that all of our missions were taking place. But after a few hours, a green light came on, somewhere in the sky over the land, and that was the signal for us to move our headquarters onto the shore, to a place known as Home One. Once we had established ourselves here, we checked over our radio equipment and picked up a television broadcast which was an advert for a quiz programme and which featured a young girl who was part of our team – a very fair girl with a blond pony-tail (and, incidentally, someone with whom I’d worked for a short while in Stoke on Trent once). She had made an unbelievable gaffe in this programme and when she had realised, she went a glowing shade of red and the television commercial was showing her changing colour, which we all thought was unfair to keep on broadcasting it. And at the same moment, another one of our female commandos had been manhandled by a group of civilians and one of our male crew who was quite keen on her immediately sprung up to go and give these people some retaliation, and we had to hold him down to prevent him, because this would surely blow our cover and we were not ready for this yet.
Later on, because by now I was having endless trips down the corridor, a friend of mine put in an appearance. He’d been doing car repairs and was making something of a reasonable profit but we were warning him that very soon he would start to get out of hand with this and the authorities would pick him up if he wasn’t careful.

Breakfast looked to be something of a disappointment. We had bread and coffee, and that was really about that. I was having a little curse to myself about that, especially as it was only about an hour later, after everything had been cleared away, that I discovered where they kept the jam and the speculoos biscuits.

D’ohhhh!

But I’m far from well – there’s no doubt about that. After breakfast I wasn’t up to too much and stayed in my room. So much for all of my plans to get out and about. It’s a beautiful city, Leuven, and would have been even more beautiful too except that the Germans burnt it down in 1914 and again in 1940. The former was the saddest of the two though because Leuven had been declared an “open city”, but the Germans of World War I had a policy of “frightfulness” in 1914, committing all kinds of atrocities on the civilian populations for no good reason other than to terrorise them into submission. Burning down the University and its magnificent, unique library was just one of many atrocities committed here in 1914 by the German invaders.

I made it as far as the Carrefour, which was a long way short of the Delhaize and much smaller so it didn’t have anything like the same amount of stuff on sale, and I ended up making a mistake and buying soup vegetables instead of salad. It made no difference anyway because I couldn’t eat all of my baguette.

And when you hear that I’m off my food then you really know that I’m not well.

from about 16:00 I crashed out again and I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep ever since. It’s now 23:30 and for once I’m wide awake, but I hope that it doesn’t last. I really need to sort myself out somehow.

0

Friday 8th April 2016 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about last night. Another dreadful night where I couldn’t drop off to sleep and at 04:00 I was still wide awake. How I hate this. And it’s a long time since I made so many trips down the corridor too in one night, but I didn’t really care about that. If I’m suffering, so should everyone else too.

But I did manage to drop off and go on the odd ramble or two. The first part of my little voyage involved producing a rock concert for one of my heroes – the Welsh rock group “Man”. I decided that their long concert of two and a half hours would be played in two sets, each of an hour, and then a third set of whatever remained. The group seemed to be okay with it, although I did have the impression that they would have agreed to anything that I proposed. I went off to do something and on my way back I noticed that one of the group was busy siphoning some diesel out of the fuel tank of my lorry, which was an old ex-army three-ton truck. I was annoyed about this but I had to remember that for important and valuable clients, you need to be prepared for this kind of thing.
From here, I was back at University and it was the first day back. We were all in a huge group sprawled over a great big bed and other groups of people were dressing up in disguise or in some kind of prop, swarming over the University grounds. One or two were heading our way so I had to warn our people that they were coming. No-one was taking any notice however and this was annoying me (my bad mood seemed to spread all through my rambles during the night) so in the end I lashed the head of the bed with a length of chain. Even so, although this did lead to people beginning to talk, it didn’t have the effect of galvanising them into action and I was quite disappointed, if not totally fed up, of all of this.

First off this morning, I had to give a blood sample and the nurse had an enormous amount of difficulty trying to find any. But then, as you know, she’s not the only one who has had difficulty doing it. And then I had to wait.

And wait

And wait.

And then the blood came round at about 11:15 and we started off the transfusion. I’m to have two pochettes apparently (so this is going to be another all-dayer and we’ll see about whether I’ll be able to leave today).

But the Professor and the Doctor came to see me. The plan seems to be that I can leave after the transfusion, and go to this guest room in town. I need to come back in a week for another blood test, and then again in two weeks time for another go at chemotherapy. If this all works, then I’ll need chemo every month and I might maybe no longer need any blood transfusions. And won’t that cheer me up too!

But I’ve been led up the garden path before, so I’ll believe it when I see it.

However, to my surprise, the transfusion was over by 15:00 and by 15:30, armed with a date for a further appointment and a prescription for the gout from which I seem to be suffering (and which was missed by Montlucon, apparently) I was heaved out into the unsuspecting public.

I picked up a few things from Caliburn, moved him around the car park to make sure that it looks as if he’s in regular use, and then caught the bus into town. Four or five stops away, Sint Pieter’s Hospital is, and that’s where I’ll be staying for two weeks. It’s basic and primitive, but quite clean and reasonable comfortable, and €20:00 per night including breakfast, so you’ll hear no complaints from me.

But check-in isn’t until 17:30 so I left my luggage behind in the office and went for a walk because that was quite clearly a big mistake. I came over all queer after about 15 minutes and had to retrace my steps to the hospital where I crashed out in a chair in the waiting room.

Once I had been admitted to my room (which is, as you might expect, room 13) I crashed out and that was that. The strain is clearly telling on me these days.

0

Thursday 7th April 2016 – WHY DO I ALWAYS …

… seem to be given the perishing room-mate who snores? There I was at 05:30 still not able to drop off to sleep.

But I must have gone off at some time or another because I was on my travels again. I started off trying to make some sandwiches with white bread but every time I went to spread anything onto the bread, it tore the bread away from the crust and after a while that started to annoy me greatly. I decided to go out for more bread but I needed someone to do some baby-sitting for me while I was out (don’t ask me why) and just at this moment a young girl – someone who has featured once or twice in our nocturnal rambles – came along. My idea was to grab hold of her to stand in for me but she was rather uncatchable, discreetly drifting away every time I tried to ask her to help out. But in the end off I went, in an old early base-model Mark I Ford Cortina 2-door, dark blue. MY route took me up a track at the back of some houses, through the daffodils, only to find my way blocked by an old car that I hadn’t noticed, so I had to retrace my steps.
A while later, I found myself in France again and I’d been following this trailer with an old car on it – a Peugeot 203. This was taken off the trailer and pushed up an overgrown lane to where there were another two of them. I couldn’t stop there as it was on the side of a hill, quite exposed and with bad bends, so I parked up in the nearby village and set out to walk back. even though it was a Sunday, there were hordes of people about and I wanted things to be much more quiet than this but I just couldn’t escape the people. I lost my way in the village and was surrounded by curious onlookers and I couldn’t find my way to these cars. Most of the people were British and there was clearly something going on of which I didn’t like the look at all – a drugs deal or other criminal activity maybe and this was an uncomfortable place to be. And somewhere along the line, this girl appeared in it again.
And yet another while later, I was in a car with, having made a dramatic reappearance, this same young girl. We were watching these British people and they were making a film – something like one of the 1970s “Cops and Robbers” dramas on British TV. This involved a car chase – the part in which she was interested – and so was I when I saw that the car being chased was a gorgeous Daytona Yellow Ford Taunus – the model from 1973-76. It was the most beautiful car of its type that I had seen for years and I had my heart set on it but I knew in my bones exactly what was going to happen to it – and I was right too. They slammed it right into the external corner of a wall and put a huge V-shaped dent in the front of it. I was furious and leapt out of the car calling them all kinds of names and in the end, after the chase had passed by, I man-handled the Taunus onto my trailer, which just happened to be attached to the back of my car. I asked this girl what her plans were for tomorrow and she told me that she “had to go to check out a scene for the Sweeney” – one of the aforementioned “Cops and Robbers” programmes and I took it to mean that she had to go and look at a location to see if it would be suitable for filming. I thought to myself that she isn’t half having some interesting and important tasks for a girl of her age.

But it’s amazing in a way that the same person can appear in all three parts of my little voyage during the night, and that I was of the opinion that it was all interconnected in some way. It’s not the first time that I’ve stepped out of a little nocturnal ramble only to step right back into it later at more-or-less the same place.

Anyway, after this, I did finally go back off to sleep and I remember being off again, but being awoken at 07:30 so that they can take a blood sample, well before you’re back in the land of the living, means that wherever I went has gone forever.

We had the cleaner coming along quite early and she showed quite clearly that she must have studied under Hattie Jacques. It must have been the turn of our room to have “the works” because she went over it from top to bottom, to such a thorough extent that Hattie Jacques would have been quite impressed. I kept to my bed while she was at it. That seemed to be the safest course.

I had a whole stream of visitors – nurses, doctors, Professors and the like. And each one told me a different story about my stay here. But one thing became clear, and that was that my blood count isn’t so good. The transfusion that I had the other day brought the count up to just 8.1. That’s close to the critical amount of 8.0 and so they are proposing another blood transfusion to bring it up to something more like it.

First off though, was to have more chemotherapy. They’ve decided that I’m fit enough to have a second helping of that before they give me more blood and so they made the necessary arrangements. And remembering how things unfolded last time, they took it slowly. That meant that they didn’t finish it until about 18:30, by which time it was too late to do the blood transfusion and throw me out.

That disappointed me – it means that I’ll have to stay here for yet another night and go without sleep once more. It’s ruined my day completely, the effects of last night without sleep because I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep all day and I’ve not really been able to accomplish anything that I’ve set out to do. How I dream for a good night’s sleep and a proper day of some kind of effort.

Not only that, OH Leuven were at home to White Star Brussels this evening. I’ve never seen Leuven play, but the last time that I saw White Star, they had about 200 supporters and a brass band. I was looking forward to going this evening, but I’ve had to rule that out which has annoyed me greatly.

Alison came by the visit too. Her cousin had some over for a short stay so she had been to pick her up at the railway station. On their way back, they came to visit, bringing a few edible bits and pieces with them and they will go down quite nicely.

So now everyone has finished what they are doing and we are supposed to be settling down for the night. But fat chance of that with my neighbour rattling off like he is. I’m thoroughly fed up of this, I can tell you.

0

Wednesday 6th April 2016 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES …

… of mice and men gang aft agley, as Rabbie Burns once wrote. And how right he was. I reckoned that I lasted maybe for 5 minutes of my film before crashing out.

I was only awoken three times during the night – once by the usual need to take a stroll down the corridor, the second which was by one of the nurses who wanted to take my temperature, and the third time my a nurse asking me if I was okay. And had my reactions been any quicker, she would have had a pillow in the face as well. GRRRR!

But during the night I’d been looking at old cars for sale. I’d come across a garage that sold classic cars and my eye was caught by a maroon Wolseley 1300 (the same as Nerina used to have, except that hers was Black Tulip) that was for sale at €1,883. But I ended up playing in a rock band once more with Hans and also with a female on drums. We were playing at a concert up on the Chester road, slightly north of the Bluestones traffic lights near Acton (and we’ve been here before) and warming up, we played an impromptu blues number that I made up on the spot, called “I’m the accused”. Of course, the word “accused” is one of the easiest words in the English language to rhyme – there are so many other words that go with it, but it was still impressive that I could write a whole song “off the cuff” while actually performing it. And if I could write music, I’d write it down because I can still remember it even now.

And so the morning came round quick enough and I was soon tucking into breakfast. And with a sweet smile, I was even able to negotiate a second pot of coffee. I then had a shower (which made me feel so much better after yesterday) and a blood sample.

The blood sample wasn’t so easy though. They tried to take it out of the drain in my arm but for some reason that had become blocked. In the end, they had to take out the drain, fit another one in the other arm and take the sample from there.

An hour or so later they were back. “Your blood count is only 7.3, so we need to give you a transfusion today”
“So what was if before I had the transfusion on Monday?”
“6.5”
No wonder I was feeling like death in Givet last weekend.

We then had some amusement with the cleaner too. Doing her best to speak English to me (and I will never ever mock anyone’s attempts to speak a foreign language), she said “you must stay on your bed when I’m cleaning. It’s dangerous when I’m around”
“I know the feeling” I replied. “People often say that it’s dangerous when I’m around too”.

I found some time (although not very much) to start to write up the notes of my Canada 2014 voyage – I really need to get cracking with this – but it ground to a halt at about 15:00 when they came to give me more chemotherapy. This time, they took their time and it was soooooooo slowwwwwwwwwww. The blood came next and that needed to be heated to 41°C so they had a bizarre kind of coil heater machine to do it.

Foolish me should have gone to the bathroom at that moment because the blood transfusion was even slower. It crawled along and wasn’t finally over until 23:00, by which time I was bursting.

It meant that there was no chance whatever of me leaving the hospital today so I’m in for another night. And my neighbour is snoring like a pneumatic road-drill. It looks as if it’s going to be on of THOSE nights.

0

Tuesday 5th April 2016 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what they put in one of those pochettes that they gave me, but I’ve never known anything like it.

They had a timer and some kind of feeder set on it. We started off at 20ml/minute (or something like that) and it gradually increased every 30 minutes or so until in the end I was having this stuff at 120ml/minute. And this is where the roof fell in.I went freezing cold, shivering like I have never shivered before, and having attack after attack of nausea. It was so bad that in the end they were obliged to switch if off for an hour while I recovered, and then start up again, with a limit of 50ml/minute.

But for that 10-minute period, I felt really and utterly dreadful.

Despite my bad night, I had a good sleep and didn’t wake up at all, not even for the bathroom. We didn’t have the same early start as we had in Montlucon either – about 07:20 if I remember correctly.

Breakfast was, as you might expect, jam butties with coffee (which was very nice) and then I was introduced to the student nurse who has been assigned to me. She’s from Denmark apparently, and the idea is that we can both learn Flemish together. That’s not quite what I had in mind, although there are some Flemish words that I learnt when I was chauffeuring in Brussels that I’m sure she doesn’t know. And she went and liberated another pot of coffee for me too, which was very nice of her.

The dietician came round too and spent half an hour with me. In quite a contrast to Montlucon, she knew what she was talking about. I have a severe protein deficiency, and need to increase my intake of fats. We spent all of the time talking about my diet for when I return home, and she’ll try to organise a few things here too.

I had a blood pressure test and pulse check too, but how they ever think that they are going to obtain a serious and meaningful reading from me when they send in four young student nurses into my room to make the measurements I’ll never know.

Lunch was a vegan chili (with soya chunks) and tomato sauce, with steamed potatoes and for what it was, it was delicious. And then we got down to business.

I told you about the first part of the treatment. That apparently is for marking the bad cells in my body. And there must have been plenty to affect me like that. And then once I’d recovered (which took a while) the system was cleansed for 20 minutes or so and then I was given the second stage of the treatment, interrupted by tea which was … errr … jam butties.

By 19:00 all of that was finished so I could prepare to receive my visitor. And sure enough, at 19:30 Alison appeared for a chat. She brought me a towel which was good of her, and some soya yoghurts and desserts, and a fruit salad (which was delicious for supper, thank you).

Now I’m going to stay awake until I fall asleep (which isn’t an Irishism at all – usually I go to bed and talk myself into sleeping) and watch a film maybe. There’s no alarm set for the morning either, for I imagine that I’ll be awoken by the hustle and bustle of the nursing staff.

But I need to increase my intake of proteins and fats.

Where’s the nearest fritkot?

0

Monday 4th April 2016 – I WAS UP …

… quite early this morning and on the road almost straight away. I wanted to be at the hospital early and it’s a good job that I was because there were traffic queues and road works all over the place.

Once I’d found a good spec for Caliburn (there’s an outside car park that I needed to locate as the main car park has a 2-metre height limit), I went off on a route march to sign myself in. And that reminded me of the queue for registering a vehicle at Riom – I was ticket 259 and they were dealing with n°208.

But with 10 registration desks open (not like at Riom where there is just one) I was all done and dusted within 10 minutes and even had time to go to the café for breakfast. That worked out to be somewhat expensive for some bread and jam, but it would have been a lot cheaper had I realised that what I took to be orange juice was actually freshly-pressed mango.

I found the day hospital, and it’s nothing like Montlucon in that there were probably 100 people there. But I was pretty quickly whisked into a side ward and had a drain fitted. From there, I was shunted off into another room to wait for my blood.

But it’s not like Montlucon in another respect either. I hadn’t been in there long before someone from the Welfare Department came to see me. And never mind the interminable wrangle that we had at Montlucon (and is still going on) about payment – she was brandishing photocopies of my Insurers’ registration form and we filled it in on the spot. They are of course much more used to my situation here and are fully prepared.

We also discussed the situation about my accommodation for when I’m released. She went off and came back 20 minutes later with the news that I have been booked for two weeks into the “family guest-rooms” at the old hospital in the city centre. That’s pretty quick, I have to say. And it’s pretty good news too. All of which is compounded by the fact that the parking here at the hospital (€4:00 per day for inmates) is capped at €12 per week for long-term visitors, and they expect me to be undergoing treatment for … gulp … six months. And so this two-week “stay of execution” gives me time to think of a “Plan B”.

But treatment here wasn’t as straightforward as it might have been. They needed to do all kinds of tests and so on that hadn’t been carried out at Montlucon apparently, and by the time that they had finished everything and the blood had finally arrived, it was 15:30. For food, it was jam butties because, having caught them à la depourvu, there was nothing arranged for me, but at least there was a free coffee machine just around the corner.

By the time that my transfusions were over, it was 19:30 – far too late for chemotherapy and far too late for me to go anywhere else, and so they have found a bed here for me until Wednesday, and chemotherapy will start tomorrow morning. But I’ve missed the evening meal tonight because of all of this, and so I had … errr … jam butties for tea. However, I went down to Caliburn for my things, and profited by stuffing the suitcase full of goodies.

But damn and blast my neighbour. I’m having to share a room and of course, he snores. It’s been a long time since I’ve been still awake at 01:00. This is going to be a very long night.

0

Thursday 31st March 2016 – TODAY’S THE DAY …

… when I might learn something about my state of health and whether the Hospital at Leuven will do something about it.

But before I can think about that, I have other fish to fry. Hans is coming back from Zeebrugge this morning and we’ve agreed to meet up at the Motorway serviced just down the road from here for breakfast.

I was up early and off out to fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n down the autobahn about 3 miles to the service station where I waited.

And waited.

And then I had a phone call – “just pulling into the Services now – it was Tienen, wasn’t it?” as a matter of fact, it wasn’t. I was at Heverlee and so a quick thrash down the motorway brought me to Tienen and breakfast.

We had a good chat for a few hours and then I had to return to Alison’s, for she was intending to run me into the hospital, which was very nice of her and something that I appreciated a great deal.

First port of call was for a blood test. And sure enough, my blood count has gone quite down. It was 9.1 the last time I was here, but now it’s down to 7.8. That’s set a few alarm bells ringing at the hospital, make no mistake.

The doctor who saw me asked me quite a few questions and gave me a good examination, and then summoned her Professor – the kind of thing that always makes me feel better. But the news that I received deflated me rather rapidly. It seems that the Hospital here at Leuven thinks that I have a different type of lymphoma than that diagnosed by Montlucon. They didn’t understand the need for the removal of the spleen and, in agreement with the opinion of the District Nurses who have been visiting me at Liz and Terry’s, they don’t understand why I need to have these anti-coagulant injections and think that they might be doing more harm than good. The first week or so, yes. But today it’s long-beyond the bounds of necessity and I can stop immediately.

As for treatment, they propose a course of Chemotherapy. There are two types of this – a standard type that is the most common and which is recommended in 99% of cases. There is another type – about 10 times more expensive (and so it’s not reimbursed by the Belgian authorities) and 10 times more effective. And this is what they propose for me – a course of treatment that might last for as long as 6 months and they intend to start it on Monday morning. Furthermore, it has been reimbursed by my Medical Insurance in the past in other cases, and someone from the Social Services department of the hospital will be coming to see me on Monday to “help me” make the application for this treatment. Yes, not backwards at coming forwards, here at Leuven.

They aren’t sure how this is going to pan out though. I’ll be treated as an out-patient but I need to spend a few days recovering from each session. I’ve told them that I’ve nowhere to go to stay (I can’t keep on relying on other people’s generosity) so they told me that there is some guest accommodation at the hospital. The Social Services department will help me here too, to see if I qualify for a place.

And so here we are. I had my operation on 27th January and since then, nothing much has happened at Montlucon with regard to my illness. Here at Leuven, they have a decision within 9 days and propose a course of treatment starting in 4 days time.

It’s very easy to say, with hindsight, that it was the wrong decision to allow Montlucon to go ahead with the removal of the spleen, but there was a good chance that it might have worked and I was worried about any further delay. Had I known that the treatment would begin less than two weeks after my first visit, maybe I might have thought differently. And then again, Leuven has had access to all of the tests and analyses carried out by Montlucon which aided quite considerably the speed of the diagnosis. How long would I have had to have waited for all of this?

We went shopping afterwards to a Charity Shop rather on the style of a Canadian Value Village. Loads of interesting furniture, including a lovely coffee table that, when cleaned and polished, would look lovely in my little house. But all of this is a long way away.

Anyway, I’m off for the weekend. I’ll find a river somewhere and lodge myself in there for a few days to relax. I need it.

0

Wednesday 30th March 2016 – OFF TO BRUSSELS.

And I’d forgotten what a horrible place Brussels was. That I can tell you for nothing.

I fought my way through the traffic and left the Motorway at Woluwe, only to find myself in a huge set of roadworks that seemed to go on for ever – way beyond the Woluwe Shopping Centre. But eventually I found myself on the car park of the Carrefour at Boisfort, right by the Demey metro station.

It goes without saying that the metro station was closed – in fact about half of them were, so I had a weary trudge all the way back in the opposite direction and beyond, to the station at Hermann-Debroux.

I arrived at the bank, which was to be my first port of call, where I needed to transfer some money from my savings to my current account. But I ruled that out when I discovered that I’d left my passport behind in Caliburn. That was no use.

But I made about 30 phone calls to the EU’s Personnel Department (I refuse to use the derogatory term of “human resources”. I’m a human being, not a unit of production, and the whole world went wrong when employers stopped treating their staff as human beings and started to treat them as just another business resource) before someone answered the phone. I explained my problem – and I’m not sure why I had to because the person to whom I was speaking couldn’t see me. So wasn’t that a waste of time? But she did say to call back at 16:00 precisely as her colleague would just be back from a meeting and I might just catch him before he leaves the office.

I bought some bread and tomatoes and had lunch in the Parc Solvay, then went on the bust and tram to Ixelles and the Health-Food shop to buy some more vegan sliced cheese. Four packs, so that’s me OK for a while. And then I went off to see Marianne and have a chat. She was probably surprised to see me, and she’ll be even more surprised shortly if I end up in there with her. But I’ll be heading in the opposite direction, that’s for sure. They are stoking the fires already.

By now, I’d pulled a muscle in my right leg and was in agony. But I pressed on and found my way back to Schuman, having been obliged to take a really circuitous route there, due to “perturbations”. passing through Maelbeek Station, which is all fenced off and covered over, the thought did occur to me that this bomber can’t have been much good, and his infrastructure even worse. Just 400 metres further on is the Arts-Loi metro station, which is the key hub of the underground network, and it doesn’t take much in the way of brains to realise that had his bomb gone off there, he could have crippled the Brussels Metro for good.

I’m on record, and from as far back as 2002 too, as saying that the only reason that there aren’t more of these attacks is that the perpetrators can’t be bothered.

And it’s no use crying about it either. The time for crying was in 2002 when millions of people took to the streets to protest at the actions of Western Europe in becoming involved in a war that had nothing to do with us. But the politicians took no notice, and here we are. And only a politician or a westerner can be so naïve as to believe that if you declare war on someone and start to attack them, those people aren’t going to turn round and fight back.

Ever since 2002, the West should have been preparing for casualties. The first actions of the UK politicians in 1939 was to order 200,000 cardboard coffins “just in case”. The naîveté of the West, its politicians and its citizens, has been unbelievable.

As Douglas Haig once famously said, “fear of heavy casualties is a good enough reason for not going to war, but it’s a pretty poor reason once you are already fighting” or something like that.

I telephoned my Personnel guy bang-on 16:00 and he answered the phone. And I could feel the disappointment in his voice as I spoke to him. But 15 minutes later, there I was and he gave me a few bits and pieces of useful information that I have filed away for future reference, including the fact that I’m entitled to claim travelling expenses for all of my appointments at Montlucon and if I can persuade them at Montlucon to wash their hands of me, which they have done already, for travelling expenses to Leuven too.

But I had the shock of my life in the coffee shop round the corner where I stopped for a rest. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the regular appearances of a young girl known by the name of Zero after an Al Stewart song, the lyrics of which were extremely relevant – a girl whom I haven’t seen for … ohhh … 8 years, I suppose. But breezing into the coffee shop was a girl who would have been the spitting image of this girl, allowing for the passage of time. Even the shade of red hair was correct to the minutest detail. The surprise was so complete that I dropped my coffee. Of course, it probably wasn’t her but nevertheless, it was an astonishing resemblance. I felt like bursting out into the Warren Zevon “there’s a red-haired girl in a red silk dress. I’m asking her to dance with me, she might say yes!”

But I dunno – it quite caught me à la depourvu, as the French say.

At the moment, the Metro is closing at 19:00 so I leapt on a bus and asked the driver to throw me out when we reach a tram route. This was at the Arsenaal and I could board a tram 25 and then the bus 71 which ended up by me being at the fritkot that does lovely falafel.

From there, another bus dropped me off at the Place Weiner from where I could take the tram 94 round to Hermann Debroux and Caliburn again.

And then back to Alison’s.

I’ve had my money’s worth today, although my leg is killing me and I’m thoroughly exhausted.

But seeing this girl has quite disturbed me. Whatever is going on these days?

0

Sunday 27th March 2016 – MY POSTILION HAS BEEN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Well, not quite, but round about 16:30 this afternoon, in the middle of a thunderstorm and hailstone fusillade, there was a dull thud, the building shook a little and all of the power went off.

heavy storm clouds north sea zouteland netherlandsI went for a walk a little later and this was what I saw in the distance. Huge massing storm clouds over there, hanging over the North Sea.

In fact, we had heavy storm clouds all over the place and in the distance to the south (remember that Zoutelande is on the north-west coast of the Schelde estuary were some very clear thunder flashes. It is therefore very tempting to suggest that the hotel had been struck by lightning.

ship sailing up schelde estuary zoutelande netherlandsThat wasn’t all that was going on either. I’d been for a walk earlier while the housemaid made up my room, and was lucky enough to see a ship sailing up towards Antwerp, just offshore.

And excuse the lack of focus on the image – the wind was terrific and blowing me around like nobody’s business. This was the best of the images that I took, and that doesn’t say much for the others.

But talking of the housemaid, we had a little chat this morning. And the only language that we had in common was Italian. Imagine that in the Netherlands!

But those storm clouds that we saw gathering off the coast yesterday early evening finally arrived during the night. They hit my little room with such a force that I was immediately woken up, and when I went back to sleep, then half an hour later I was awoken once more.

This accounts for the dreadful night’s sleep that I had last night, and also for the number and variety of my nocturnal rambles. And believe me, there were dozens, quite a few of which didn’t make it to the dictaphone because either I fell straight back to sleep or else by the time that I found the dictaphone, I’d forgotten where I’d been.

Anyway, from what I do remember, I was in XCL, my red Cortina, and back at school (or, rather, a school in France, not my old one). I was an adult by this time and I only went back to school very occasionally, because I was studying Geography and History in my own time, but I would call in to the lessons if ever I was going past the school because I wanted to take the school exams and I needed to make sure that I was in touch with the course. As a result, I didn’t really know any of the children there. One afternoon, I’d bought something – some new seat covers or something for XCL so they needed wrapping. I had my yellow rucksack with me, which had now transformed itself into a school satchel. I’d turned up at the school and I can’t remember now how I had arrived but as I arrived, I remembered that there was something that I wanted. I had to walk all the way back to the car in order to get what it was that I wanted. As I walked out of the class there were all of these kids hanging around the door like you find at a school. It was the afternoon so there was a triple-period, but it was only the final two lessons, a double-period, that were history lessons but I had plans to do something in the period immediately after lunch. As I walked out of the school towards my car, I was singing “Daydream Believer” or, at least, trying to because I couldn’t hit the notes. I was devastated because I was hoping to sing it really well and show these kids a thing or two, but I just couldn’t get the notes.
A little later, I was back playing cricket and our team had unfortunately been skittled out. I was the last batsman remaining and I had to survive the last over so that our team would win. But it was now pitch-black and you couldn’t see a thing, and the bowler was bowling from around the corner behind the wall. All that I could do was to put my bat in the way and hope that that would block the wicket. For the final over, we started to have some friendly banter and the bowler said that he was going to bowl underarm at me. He took up a position about a foot from my wicket ready to bowl. I had to explain to him that he couldn’t do that – it was a no-ball. He could bowl underarm at me as much as he likes and no-one will say a thing, least of all me, but you have to bowl from back at the other crease, 22 yards away, just as you would do for bowling any other kind of ball in a cricket match. But it took me ages to get this to sink into this flaming bowler’s head.
A little later, I was back at work driving my car about and I’d been summoned into the office – it was a Sunday morning – but there had been some war that had gone on and it had been won by we westerners. However, there had been a few bits and pieces of unpleasantness that had come out of it. I needed to go to use the bathroom but for some unknown reason I had forgotten all of the vocabulary so I said what I could remember. This didn’t, for some reason, go down very well so I thought “sod them! I’m doing the best that I can and no-one can do more than that and it’s their look-out if it doesn’t suit”. But it was a bright sunny day and so I went on my motor-bike from the north-west of the city and there had been a heavy rainstorm earlier that day and now everything was flooded out. Now I couldn’t come my usual way into work because of this and at one stage I was riding through a park and on a pavement and then down the wrong way in a one-way street with water up to the axles on the motorbike, following some kind of lorry that was tearing up the roadway in this park. I’d finally arrived at work, and found that my boss had been searching through my drawers for something. He found some of Roxanne’s clothing that I was keeping there and he was proudly displaying it all around. I asked him “is this all yours?” to which he replied with a ribald joke. I said to him that it was Roxanne’s and I would like to have it back so he eventually gave it back to me and I stuck it back in my drawer.
After the next bout of thunderstorms I was back at another place of former employment with someone who was formerly a very good friend of mine. We were visiting the richest farm in the UK, run by the richest UK farmer and his wife. There were some tunnels that had been discovered on this farm and having inspected them, we noticed that they had been lined and that there was electricity going right down there. I immediately thought of a tourist attraction and so I button-holed the woman when I saw her and asked her about them. She replied that the intention was indeed to make them into a tourist attraction and so I wanted to know more? Was it World War II? Was it the Vietnam War? She replied that from what she had been able to find out, they went back to the 5th Century, which immediately suggested the collapse of Roman Britain to me. I was immediately aroused by this and so I intended to be the first person to go down there. I asked her if she knew to where these tunnels led, but she didn’t. However, it was her intention to explore them one of these days, so I immediately pencilled myself in to go and explore these tunnels with her. We would travel miles and I would invite someone from the University – I’m not sure now if I mentioned the OU – to accompany us. To me, it was absolutely marvellous and exciting.
After a very brief return to the arms of Morpheus, I was awake again thanks to the storm. And I can recount that I had been to see the Queen. I’d taken this puppy, which was really the star of it all, although I’m not sure quite why and so we were going to do a stage show with it when the puppy would be presented to the Queen. We were hoping that this puppy would be house-trained and behave itself in view of all of the excitement and not let itself down. This led on to a debate about cleaning. Tourism was still in its infancy and no-one really seemed to know how to clean up a place properly (as if I’m any expert) except for a dustpan and brush. Everyone was hoping that everyone else would prove to be the expert on cleaning up the building.
But the final part of my night-time voyage was easily the most exciting and astonishing. You remember yesterday that I mentioned the navigator whose body is in the Commonwealth War Graves part of the local cemetery? Well, last night, whilst deep in the arms of Morpheus, I set out to find his pilot. The voyage, which started out to be simple enough, took me, and two Ministerial cars and assorted Government officials to a small urban cemetery in the East End of London (where, incidentally, the pilot was not buried and I knew this, yet my journey still took me there) despite the obstruction of a well-known London solicitor who had instructed the two members of his staff who were assisting me not to give me too much help in my enquiries because, as I was later to discover, he was interested in the case from a personal point of view. In fact, being early for a 13:00 appointment, I suddenly made a decision to divert to this small cemetery one more time as I had suddenly made a dramatic realisation. I ended up inspecting the paperwork of an old woman who had just been laid to rest there, and was just about to make an Executive decision (and executive decision is one where if it’s the wrong decision, the person making it is executed) when the alarm went off. And how frustrated was I?

But none of it was wasted because this morning while waiting for the weather to brighten up, I did manage to track down some further information. Flying Officer Angus Peter MacLeod (for it is he), service number 63376, was flying as navigator in Mosquito Night-Fighter II serial HJ935 for pilot, Flight Lieutenant Basil John Brachi when they were lost over the North Sea on 29th January 1944.

And now that I have found out the serial number of the aeroplane, I can tell you even more. The plane took off at 01:15, one of seven from West Raynham in Norfolk on a “Serrate” mission, which was to pick up the radar emissions of the German night-fighters’ “Lichtenstein” equipment, and then follow the emissions to the source (ie the night-fighter) and shoot it down. However, the starboard engine of the Mosquito failed and so Brachi turned for home. A short while later, the port engine failed and so Brachi and MacLeod bailed out. No trace was ever found of Brachi or of the aeroplane, but the body of MacLeod was washed ashore near here on 5th May 1944. And here he lies.

I’ve not done too much today – not even been for my mid-morning (or mid-afternoon) coffee. I didn’t have the courage to go outside very much. Mind you, this weather didn’t encourage me too much.

but I did go out this evening and one of the little restaurants here directed me to the fritkot which is now open. And I had fritjes for tea, just for a change. And tomorrow, the ice-cream parlour in the town opens up. Of course, I shall have to go to give it an official visit.

apart from that, I’ve had a shower today and washed my clothes. And depressingly, I find that I’ve only bought two polo shirts with me, not three. So I’m going to have to stay in this one while the other one dries. Let’s hope that that will be tomorrow.

And I know know why next-door neighbour’s 06:30 alarm didn’t wake me up this morning. The hour has changed, hasn’t it. I didn’t realise until this evening when I thought that it was quite light for 20:00 when i went out for my fritjes. My telephone is automatic, and so is my laptop, so they got on with the job of changing the hour without me knowing anything about it. No wonder I was rather tired this morning.

But now I’m off for an early night because I can’t keep up the pace. Only a few more days now before my second hospital appointment so I hope that they will have some news for me.

0

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 – TODAY’S THE DAY …

… that I have my defining interview at the Universiteit Ziekenhuis Leuven – the University Hospital of Leuven.

And so this morning I was up fairly early, bumping into Alison on the way downstairs.

I’d been back on my travels during the night too. Back to the UK in fact. There I was, rushing to catch a train at what was supposed to be Stafford railway station and my brother was there with me and he was holding me back by trying to have a discussion with me, talking to me about all kinds of stuff and I was rushing to catch this train and I wished that he would shut up and let me get on with it. Next to get in my way was a plant seller going on about how we all ought to buy plants and how everyone in the USA ought to learn gardening and all of this kind of thing and I wished that he would shut up too. There was then some American with a small wicker basket full of growing plants and a British guy was there with an almost-identical basket of plants that he had bought somewhere for just 3p more. And as I rushed for the train, a train was pulling in so I burst into the station and towards the stairs but then I realised that I didn’t have a ticket so I had to run off to buy one for Crewe. And then I ran down the stairs to the platform where the train was standing – a train of old-stock maroon coaches. The guard was leaning out of the window of a first-class carriage saying that it was full in there and then he stepped down from the train to a group of his colleagues led by a young female platform manager. I asked if this train was going to Crewe to which they replied that it was going to Birmingham which is of course in the opposite direction. But there was another train pulling in behind and the guard suggested that this might be the one. I asked the female manager if this was the London train (even more in the opposite direction to Crewe) and she came out with a sarcastic comment. I told her to stop making these witty remarks designed to do nothing but bring a smile tothe face of her sycophants and answer my question. And there I was, wanting to go on to Crewe and no-one would tell me which train I wanted to go to Crewe.

Alison had taken a day off work to look after me, which was very nice of her, so after breakfast we went into the centre of Leuven for a look around and a coffee. It’s been years since I’d been there and I couldn’t remember the place all that much, but Alison knew of a café where they served decent coffee so that did us fine for the morning, just chatting and watching the world go by.

At lunchtime, seeing as we were in Belgium, there’s only one place to be and sure enough, we soon found a fritkot. That would do us fine and it goes without saying that the chips were beautiful.

As for the hospital, it’s absolutely HUGE, and I do mean that. So much so that you could fit the hospital in Montlucon into the foyer and instead of having a trolley park like they do in a supermarket, they have wheelchair parks where you can borrow a wheelchair.

I had to be registered, which took ages, but at least everything was properly explained to me, not like Montlucon. They even gave me a brochure and I had a choice of language – Flemish, French and English.

“Follow the blue line” said the receptionist once she had finished with me, and about two hours and three miles later we arrived at another reception desk. My documents had arrived by internal intranet quicker than I had arrived on foot so I was told to take a seat in the waiting area. This was the corridor facing a row of doors which were the consulting rooms – 15 in all, which is a massive improvement on Montlucon.

I was summoned into n°13, which I found rather ominous, and I presented my papers. Not all of them, I have to say, because I was selective in what I let them see. Anything that might have prejudged the issue, I selectively held back as I don’t want the results from Montlucon to influence their minds. They can see all of the scans and all of the reports and all of the examinations, but nothing that suggests a diagnosis. I want them at Leuven to make their own diagnosis.

But I did let them see a letter which I personally think is quite infamous and which has annoyed me greatly. It’s a letter from the surgeon to my own doctor saying “the operation is a success and there are no after-effects to consider. Mr Hall can slowly pick up his former life bit by bit, the only constraints being the effects of his severe anaemia”.

That’s right – the only thing that is holding me back is my severe anaemia, and that’s what I went into the hospital for in the first place, and there’s no mention of them now looking for a cure for it. It’s as if they have abandoned hope of dealing with it, and that has upset me enormously. Hence my visit to Leuven.

As expected, the doctor picked up immediately on this, and was also totally confused about my 3.8 blood count. “Do they measure the blood on a different scale in France?”. But when I reassured her, she too was horrified by my problem.

After a good hour there of tests and examinations and questions (and a blood test) she excused herself, saying “I’ll have to go and have a word with my professor”. And that filled me full of optimism. You wouldn’t get this in Montlucon. And when she came back, we had a discussion and a debate, and the result is exactly the result that I wanted. I could have been detained for two or three days there, which I didn’t really want. I could have been told to go home, and come back in three weeks (or maybe not at all) qhich I am, quite frankly, not up to. But instead, they took all my papers away to read and told me to come back on 31st March at 15:30. That’s exactly what I wanted and it means that I can have a nice relaxing week by the seaside.

Alison and I then came home via the scenic route and after another lengthy chat – that took us up to about 22:30, I went off to my attic and to bed.

So why, I hear you ask, have I chosen Leuven for a second opinion?

There are a variety of reasons and I’ll do my best to explain them.

The first of which is that France, like many countries in the world (including the UK and the USA, before anyone says anything) is very chauvinistic. If I were to ask my doctor to recommend someone for a second opinion, he would probably send me to someone whom he knew in a neighbouring hospital. That’s no good, because he would only have had the same training and experience as my doctor.

The hospital at Leuven is huge, as I have said. It’s a teaching hospital – a University Hospital – so it’s constantly at the forefront of the latest news and development in medical treatment. It will(I hope) know everything about new discoveries and techniques long before the news filters down to a small rural hospital in France.

Alison was treated successfully for a very serious illness, as were a couple of other people whom she knows, and I’ve heard good things about it from my time in Brussels.

Furthermore, my experience is that the Belgians are much more cosmopolitan than most people in the world. They have no false chauvinistic national pride as such and so it’s much more likely to be the place that, if they can’t help me with my problem, a doctor would say “well, I heard about this illness being treated successfully in Los Angeles or Vladivostok”, without a hint of misplaced national pride. And with my medical insurance, I can travel the world looking for treatment.

Of course, having said that, I bet that it won’t work out at all like that. But it’s clear that Montlucon isn’t working and I’m going nowhere there. I have this medical insurance that entitles me to treatment anywhere and so I may as well make use of it. I’d be silly not to. And here in Leuven, I can speak the language after a fashion (and after a week here, I’ll speak it better too and I love the Flemish language) so all in all, it’s the ideal place for me to take my first step on the road to what is likely to be a very long and interesting journey.

And, of course, I’m amongst friends too and that’s very important. I may not have many friends but quantity is not important, it’s quality and I have some of the best friends that anyone could wish for, as events since November have proved.

Where would I be without you?

0

Friday 18th March 2016 – DAY FIVE …

… of my hospital marathon began with yet another early start, long before the alarm went off. And what’s more, there is cause to celebrate because today is when I start the “once per day” injections. No more evening visitors! Wha-hey!

I had a nice leisurely breakfast and then set off for Montlucon. My appointment isn’t until 10:30 but I left with plenty of time because I had plenty that I needed to do.

And while I’m on the road to Montlucon, let me tell you about my voyages last night.We started off tonight with some kind of middle-class family. Their house was built over a stream and so they had had to line the stream with rocks especially up the sides of the banks so as to make some kind of solid foundations for the house to be built on. But they couldn’t find any hydrofuge cement – the cement that’s used for making waterproof joints in building materials – so we could join and then point the stones without there being any problem about the joints being affected by the damp and the water in the stream.
I was then off with Pete Dillon from London whom I knew from a few years back. We were chatting in this house somewhere and then Pete had to go off and give a quote for a job. it was one of these jobs like The 39 Steps job – the “fourth at bridge” scene from Carry On Regardless but it was to do with a position as a butler. So off he went for his interview and I stayed behind to watch another Carry On film about a girl who had to catch a train. The train was about to pull out before she could board it but she grabbed hold of some kind of trolley and her suitcase was handcuffed to her other wrist. She had to run along the platform, up in the lift, across the bridge and down the lift on the other side and back down the other platform with this trolley and her suitcase, and then make a valiant leap on board the train, trolley suitcase and all. And then there was another man also late for the train and he helped her board the train. After all of this, Pete came back, waking me up for I’d fallen asleep, and it turned out that despite all that this company had said, it was Terry who was trying to put together a team to do this job. They’d been off to this big white house to have a good look around it. Terry had given a quote that worked out at about 6 hours per person in this team, about £800 in total. I said to Pete that this worked out at quite a decent rate and he agreed with me. So off we walked, down this lane and onto this 1910s type of housing estate nominally at the top end of Crewe off to the east of the top end of Underwood Lane. This was a really nice, pleasant area, especially in the sun, with nice pleasant gardens and fronts of the houses. I remember saying that if I were ever to want to come back to live in Crewe, this would be an area that would be high on my list. I told him that I lived in Gainsborough Road and he told me that he lived in Fallowfield. I said that there were some nice areas of Fallowfield, so he challenged me to name any. Of course, knowing Fallowfield, I couldn’t even think of one and I was really struggling about this.
It was now Day Three (of what, I have no idea) and we were doing something about testing cricket bats and we’d become quite good at this. In the end, our batting techniques were being used by the England cricket team and they got up to quite a quick score in one of the matches. They then realised that they had left part of their equipment behind so someone had to return for it. This person discovered that someone had left his mobile phone behind and the sound recorder was running and you could hear all of the antics of the team. This led to it being called “Whacko” after the Jimmy Edwards radio programme.

First stop in Montlucon was the Laboratory. I have to pay them for their services since I came out of hospital and they need to be up-to-date as I won’t be using them now for a while. And next stop was the surgical equipment shop. I hadn’t realised that I had had to pay for the surgical stockings that I had had to wear while I was in hospital. But they had sent me a bill and all of this was in the vicinity.

coronarography hospital montlucon allier franceRound the corner to the hospital and I couldn’t resist taking this photo of part of the building, even if the camera on the phone didn’t do it justice. This must be where old-timers like Yours Truly bring our fizzy pop so that it can be examined.

And so reflecting upon this, I went off for my scan.

This injection that I had to have for the scan was just like something for a cow. It was huge. But they fitted me with a drain so that they could let it into my bloodstream as required. It took ages to do and it wasn’t until 11:20 that I was turfed out. Chief body-scanner hadn’t had chance to look at my photos but he promised to ring me (not that I would be there) to tell me what he had seen.

On the way out, I was buttonholed by the receptionist of the body-scanners. They had realised that I’m a private patient and so I needed to sign a form so that they could submit it to my insurance company for reimbursement. I thought to myself “at last! An efficient hospital department with its finger on the pulse!”.

I nipped upstairs to pick up my papers but the blasted, perishing doctor hadn’t done them despite me 10:30 au plus tard. I had to wait until – yes – 12:25 before he let me have my papers – a whole hour and more and so I had missed the Tax Office and I needed to pay them too for the consultations. Totally pathetic!

And that’s not all that is totally pathetic either. I’m supposed to be taking things easy and not exerting myself, and here I am, on my FIFTH day back at the hospital for something that is nothing whatever to do with my illness either. This is just completely miserable. I won’t ever recover like this!

Anyway, I went off to LeClerc for some shopping and then back to the Carrefour for some chips and vegetables – and much to my surprise the chips and veg were warm. And then I had to loiter around until 14:00 and the opening of the Tax Office.

They were very friendly in the Tax Office but that didn’t alter the fact that I had to wait half an hour for them to try to make the printer work so that I could have some receipts for my payments, but that didn’t work either. It just wasn’t my day, was it?

I finally made it back to my house at about 16:30 and then, for once, I could take it easy without having to rush home to Liz and Terry’s for the nurse and an injection. And I forgot that, with it being Friday night, it’s chips night there too.

So now, it’s yet another early night because, try as I might, I can’t shake off these morning injections quite yet.

0