Tag Archives: hospital

Wednesday 16th December 2015 – I WENT BACK …

… to my house this morning. And what’s more, Terry came with me.

Terry has no work on at the moment and I’m not in much of a state to do much right now, and so I made an executive decision (an executive decision being one in which if it all goes wrong, the person making the decision is executed) that perhaps we should go and do the tiling in my shower room. It’ll give Terry something to do, it’ll help me catch up with work at the house, and so on and so forth.

So that was what we did.

But it didn’t work out quite like that – for the simple reason that my shower room is very small. There wasn’t room in there for both of us and so after five minutes in which we had done nothing but get in each other’s way, I left Terry to it.

And we’ll go back tomorrow and do some more too because by about 16:00 it was far too dark do do anything.

But while Terry was tiling, I was tidying up on the ground floor. And you can now actually see the floor in there, a huge pile of stuff has gone out into the lean-to, I’ve sorted out most of the tools that are in there and so on, and now there’s actually a pile of room to move about. If I can do as well tomorrow as I did today, it will be quite impressive.

Of course, we’d parked the van in the little lane at the back of my house to unload it as there was so much to do, and so of course, not having seen the farmer for months and months, it’s today that he decides to bring his cows to the field, so we have to move the van. You could have bet your mortgage on that, couldn’t you?

On our way to my house this morning, we went into Pionsat. I have a huge pile of used needles from my twice-daily anti-coagulant injections and I need to dispose of them. The pharmacy seemed to be the best place to start, and he gave me a couple of boxes to put them in and take them … to the dechetterie.

And so we did. And there at the Council tip at Pionsat, a woman worker took the box off me and put it in a much bigger box of the same shape and colour, to join many other smaller boxes in there. Apparently, it’s what you do around here. We also went to the Intermarché for some bread for lunch, and I met Nada there. I haven’t seen her for ages.

But back to the shower room, I stuck my head in once or twice to pass Terry tiles, or trim something down with the angle grinder, but I haven’t had a really good look in. I’m saving that for tomorrow because although it will be far from finished, it’ll be good for me to be surprised – pleasantly, I hope. I’ll post a couple of photos too if I remember, but I won’t be posting a photo of the ground floor because it is rather a mess, even with it being tidied up. There’s still too much rubbish in there, although I’ve nowhere else to put it and I need to make some extra room somewhere – anywhere!

On the way back here, we were pursued down the lanes by Liz whose last lesson of the day at Montlucon was cancelled. She’d seen some nice Christmas trees and so after a coffee, she and Terry nipped back up to St Gervais to do the necessary. After all, with little people being around, a Christmas tree is essential.

So I’m off to bed for an early night. I have a blood test in the morning and I need to be on form. And I hope that my blood count holds up because if it doesn’t, I can see me in Montlucon on Friday having another blood transfusion and I’m becoming rather fed up of them.

-2

Tuesday 15th December 2015 – I WENT OUT …

… to Montlucon and the hospital today – and thereby hangs a tail. I arrived early at the hospital, before the patient who was in front of me in the queue, and as it happened, the echograph machine was free. “Okay then, Mr Hall” said the nurse “you may as well go in now”.

So in I went. “You’re Mr X” said the doctor
“No, I’m Mr Hall” I replied. “Apparently Mr X (or whatever his name was) isn’t here yet”

And the net result of all of this was that I was in, out and gone, and sitting in the hospital café having a mug of coffee even before the official time of my appointment. That’s not something that happens every day.

What does seem to happen every day, or, at least, has been happening every day quite recently, is that I was on my travels again during the night.

Last night, I was working in an office where we had to calculate the value of cars used by sales people and work out some charge for annual use of them. I was inspecting a Daytona-yellow Mark II Ford Escort built in, would you believe, 2008 and carrying an 08 plate. But the car was filthy with a good deal of surface rust and a huge dent on the roof down the offside that looked as if a scaffolding pole had dropped on it (we almost had this once with Caliburn). I reckon that to repair the damaged roof, it would cost about £800. I lifted up the bonnet and it was bright yellow painted-over-rust with a reasonably clean engine but with a major oil leak (just like my Passat). I told the owner that he needed to put a different oil in it, to which he replied that he wasn’t on the Mercedes plan!
And talking of Mercedes cars, four of us then went off to do some checking up on the road, and we were in my Mercedes (I do have a W123 240D around at my house somewhere). We ended up driving up a railway line, one track of which was in excellent main-line condition and the other track (where we were driving) being all abandoned and overgrown. As we were climbing up the hill, a beautifully clean and shiny green steam locomotive came charging down the hill pulling a huge load of shiny black oil tankers and being chased by a light locomotive. Of course we all wondered what was going on here and we reckoned that the light locomotive was chasing the train to try to catch up with it (as if that was ever likely to happen). It never occurred to us, even when we reached the top of the bank and saw the incredibly steep climb up which the train had travelled, that the light locomotive had been banking the train up the bank and had just come off. But as we pulled to a halt at the top of the hill to open a gate at the side of the line that would let us off the line onto a dirt track, we were overtaken by a wildly-out-of-control machine something similar to Cugnot’s famous fardier, also painted yellow. As the fardier pulled back in line, it overturned onto its side. I immediately dashed out of the car to take some photos, but all that I had was my mobile telephone and I just couldn’t get any of the photos to come out properly and I was so frustrated.

I was so engrossed by all of this that after the alarm went off, I went back to sleep and it was a wild panic that saw me dash downstairs 15 minutes later. And it’s a good job that I did because the nurse was early to give me my morning injection.

I had a shower after breakfast and then set off for the hospital.

After the hospital I went, would you believe, for a walk. The first time since I’ve been ill that I’ve managed to do that. There’s a huge new shopping precinct that’s recently opened just opposite the Carrefour and so I went in there for a wander around, and did some Christmas shopping too. And then off to the Carrefour itself to do some more Christmas shopping.

For lunch, I treated myself to a plate of vegetables and chips at the Flunch – a long time since I’ve done that but why not? I’m ill and I need to cheer myself up. And as an aside, diesel at the Carrefour is just 102:7 cents – when was the last time that you ever saw it at that price?

I went back home after lunch. I’ve brought upstairs another pile of wood and now there’s enough to keep me going for about a week once I return home. What with the food that’s already up there, I should be self-sufficient for a while. I also made a start on the tidying up and believe it or not, I can actually see a difference (even if no-one else might). However, there’s still quite a lot to do.

Back here, and it was raining too when I drove home. First time it’s rained for ages (or, at least, rained that I have noticed) and those new windscreen wipers that I fitted the other day don’t half do the business. I had the nurse soon after I returned and then I had tea. There’s no footy so I shall probably treat myself to an early night.

I think that I deserve it.

-2

Monday 14th December 2015 – WELL …

… that didn’t work out quite as planned, did it?

I told you that I was going back home this afternoon to have a tidy-up, but it didn’t really work out quite like that. I did make it home with no problems but the first job was to unload Caliburn. There was all of the tiles in the back, as well as three big sacks of tile cement and grouting, a pane of glass, some floorboarding and a pile of other stuff too.

But although I moved all of the heavy stuff out of Caliburn, and one or two other bits too, but that was my lot, I’m afraid. It rather finished me off. I did manage a little later to make a door handle of sorts for the front door though, so my afternoon wasn’t completely wasted.

I blame a lot of it myself on what was going on through the night. I’d had an early night and started to watch a film, and that’s almost always guaranteed to send me off to sleep, just like it did last night.

And then I was on my travels again. With a fitful night, I don’t remember too much about it. But what I do remember was exciting enough. It concerns something like a vampire on the prowl over London and some kind of surgeon being implicated as the perpetrator. Doctor Watson was leaning out of the living room window at 221B Baker Street whilst musing to Holmes and recounting the 31 departments (are there 31? There were last night anyway!) in a modern Victorian hospital to which a surgeon might be attached. But I was exploring another avenue, a thread that led past a group of teenagers. I somehow managed to filter a message down to them with just enough information to provoke them, so as to see if it might smoke someone out of their cover. And sure enough, some girl rang me to thank me for the information which had helped them greatly. I tried to engage her in conversation, as part of my plan, but the line went dead – either we had been cut off, or (more probably) she had hung up. But I do remember being in my bedroom (wherever this might have been) which was a total tip (as usual) in a bed on wheels so that I could paddle it about the room. And I’d woken up at the usual time despite having had a late night but it was now in mid-afternoon and I was still in bed, not sure how I was going to manage to go back to sleep and also thinking that in five minutes I could have this room looking really tidy, so why wasn’t I doing it?

But that’s enough of that. I crawled myself out of my stinking pit at just before 08:00 and it wasn’t long before the nurse came. I had my injection and also my blood sample (and he burst out laughing when I told them how many goes they had had at the hospital to find my blood) and then I spent the rest of the morning working on the notes for my trip to Canada.

Coming back from home this evening I bumped (well, not literally) into Nicolette. She was taking their new dog Snowy (a younger version of Siroy who is unfortunately no longer with us). We had quite a chat and then I came back here, with Caliburn storming up the Font Nanaud, clearly enjoying being a quarter of a tonne lighter.

So tonight I’m watching Leicester against Chelsea and then I’m off to bed. I have the hospital in Montlucon tomorrow.

-2

Friday 11th December 2015 – EEEUUURRRGGGHHH

I had to go to the hospital today. And so that meant a 07:00 start. And never did I feel less like it either after yet another uncomfortable night.

When the alarm went off I crawled downstairs and made a coffee. Some muesli and fruit juice later, I was properly fed and watered but still not on the same planet as anyone else, I reckon.

As I drove to Montlucon I slowly started to wake up and by the time I arrived at the hospital I was maybe feeling as much as half-human. “Half-man, half-aardvark” I thought to myself. “I’ve clearly been varking too ard”. But at least my luck was in somewhere. I was 20 minutes early and there was a parking place right outside the door of the hospital.

One of the more friendly nurses was on duty at the day-hospital and she even found me a mug of coffee to go a little further in rousing myself from lethargy. But she has three goes at trying to put a drain in me, without much success, and went off to call a colleague to have a go. I thought to myself “hang on a minute – these b******s are playing darts with me!”. They were all having a good moan about not being able to find a vein with any blood in it. “Hardly surprising” I retorted. “You’ve already taken most of it!”

So I was there at 08:40 – I had a drain put in at 09:40, and the blood finally arrived at … errr … 11:40, by which time we were three people in a day ward meant for two. They managed to conjure up something for lunch too – mushrooms in tomato sauce with rice and bread, with a pear for dessert. Hardly the most appetising meal that I’ve eaten – I’ll take butties next time.

My first blood pochette was empty by 13:05 – and it took until 14:00 for them to couple up the second. As a result, I wasn’t able to leave until 15:30 and that annoyed me a little – I should have been long gone from here by then. But feeling like nothing on earth, I went for a coffee in the cafe while, apparently, all the time they were frantically searching for me to tell me that I need to come back on Tuesday at 10:40 for another series of tests.

So having recomposed myself a little I went back home – to Pooh Corner that is. I had a little relax, ate some biscuits and watched something on the laptop. And then I came back to Liz and Terry’s for tea and my evening injection.

None of this did anything to cheer me up and, being totally whacked and thoroughly fed up, by 20:10 I was off to bed. And it wasn’t long before I went to sleep either.

And the result?

Here I am at 04:00 updating my blog. I’ve been awake since about 02:15 and I can’t go back to sleep. I’ll probably be like this now until mid-morning when I’ll crash out yet again and this will mess up my revision plans for today – having had them totally messed up already for today. I’m never going to finish this blasted course.

I just really wish that I could bring a little order into my life right now, but that’s not going to be possible, so it seems.

-1

Thursday 10th December 2015 – IT WASN’T ANYTHING LIKE …

… as good last night as it had been for the previous two nights. It was another night of tossing and turning in bed for a couple of hours in the middle of the night and while I did manage to wander off on my travels, I don’t remember a thing about it.

The nurse came round early enough for my morning injection and also to take a blood sample. I have to go through this routine twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, as well as my twice-daily injections of anti-coagulant.

Later in in the morning, Terry had to sweep the chimney. It’s blocked up a little and the boiler here isn’t drawing to well. At least that’s his excuse. The real reason is that there will be a couple of Little People here over Christmas and Father Christmas will need to have a free passage into the house.

I think that I have it tough with having to stand on a step-stool and reach out of my attic windows with a very long brush to sweep the snow off my solar panels. To clean his chimney, Terry has to dismantle one of his attic windows, climb out onto the roof and then climb up onto the chimney stack. Then he can brush the chimney downwards from the top. He’s built a soot trap into the wall on the ground floor and all of the soot falls down into there where it can be shovelled out and vacuumed up.

After that, I cracked on alternating between having a doze and doing my revision. That kept me going until 18:30 when I had a most unwelcome phone call. It seems that my blood count is down again and I have to go into the day-hospital tomorrow for a blood transfusion.

An early start, a drive to Montlucon, an injection and then a blood transfusion. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow at all.

-2

Wednesday 9th December 2015 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… on my travels today – the first time since I came back from hospital last Friday.

In fact, I was out on my travels during the night too. I was working in an aeroplane hangar and one of the jobs that I had to do was to fit a new wheel and tyre on the undercarriage of ar aeroplane. In fact, the wheel bore a very great resemblance to the wheel and tyre that I fitted the other week on my wheelbarrow. And each time I fitted it, the air pressure went down and the tyre went flat. Eventually I had a good listen and I could hear the air escaping from a puncture in the inner tube. But like a good Civil Servant that I was, I’d been told to put this particular wheel and tyre on the aeroplane, and so I did. Fixing the puncture was obviously too much like hard work.
But from there we moved on a little and I was part of an undercover police force that was investigating the theft of a very dangerous chemical from this hangar. It was one that dissolved almost everything with which it came in contact (so how did they find a container in which to keep it?) and was on the Top Secret list. And as we were searching this hangar for clues, there was a man, badly eaten away by the acid and with bits of his body like his left thigh missing and with yellow skin, trying desperately to hide from our view underneath a 50-gallon oil drum that was lying on its side. But having failed in our search, we did however know that something had been posted to someone, put in a letter box somewhere. We were all crushed inside an old Ford Y van, a red Post Office van, and we were looking at all of the letters that had been collected from various letter boxes. All of a sudden, one particular letter caught my eye so I opened it. It was addressed to a cycle maker, and seemed to be some kind of coding in a five-letter group on an old blue order form. We sent a woman with the order form to give to the cycle maker to see what happened, which she did. And a couple of days later, she was called back and gived a brand new specially-made kids’ cycle painted green and white and she looked totally ridiculous on itn being a rather large woman. But we were no further forward and so we retired to plot our next move.

And this is when the alarm went off and I had to struggle to find the phone which, in the meantime, was waking everyone in the house. And I was thinking what another good sleep I’d just had.

After breakfast and the visit of the nurse to give me my injection, I had a shower and packed my bag and then Terry and I set off for Montlucon, stopping on the way at Pionsat for fuel and my order from the pharmacy.

At Montlucon we went to the hospital for my 11:00 appointment, which turned out to be about midday before I was seen.

The good news is that I don’t have leukaemia. The bad news is that I have a form of lymphoma. There are several types of this illness, some of which are quite aggressive and others not so. It seems that I have one of the lesser kinds. There is a whole range of reasons why this might have occurred, and one of these reasons is due to something to do with an aggressive protein, and my blood count shows that there is a protein that has gone off the scale in the blood count. It’s not the “usual suspect” in this respect, but nevertheless it merits further enquiries and so I’m due for further tests.

But as an aside, two points raise their ugly head. If it is a protein issue, there are not the facilities to treat it at Montlucon and so I will have to go elsewhere. It looks as if I’ll be on my travels again in the New Year. And in the second case, I seem to be full of ganglions. Not that they are dangerous apparently, but their presence has certainly been noted and in all kinds of places too.

On the way back we stopped for a late lunch and then went to Neris-les-Bains in search of chocolates for Liz because it’s her birthday today. After that, I went back home, for the first time for almost three weeks.

We’ve had plenty of sun, plenty of wind and plenty of excess solar energy, 694 amp-hours in just 19 days and that’s impressive for a period approaching the winter solstice. I also had a good rummage around and found a spare door lock, and I fitted that onto the front door so that it can be opened from the outside. This might come in handy if people other than me need access to the house.

I hung around here for a while too because, although it was cold, it was nice to be on my own for a while and relax in the relative comfort and security of my own surroundings. As Barry Hay once famously said on the beach at Scheveningen about 25 years ago “I tell you what man, it’s good to be back home”.

I started up Caliburn, threw some spare clothes, soya milk and vitamin B12 drink into the back and set off for Liz and Terry’s. First time Caliburn has had a run out for a while of course. And I mustn’t forget Strawberry Moose who has been invited to spend Christmas away from home.

As I drove back here, I remembered thinking “wouldn’t it be nice if the next round of tests were to reveal that I don’t need these twice-daily injections and the district nurse didn’t have to come round so often” and then I thought “blimmin’ ‘eck – it’s 19:00 and if I don’t put my foot down I’ll miss the nurse!” I had completely forgotten.

But I was back first and here I am at Liz and Terry’s. All ready for Round 2, and trying to work out a cunning plan about going home. I managed to take a huge load of wood upstairs to my attic without stopping, and that was certainly better than before I went to hospital, so things are looking up. I’ll see what my next couple of blood tests tell me and then I’ll make a decision.

-1

Friday 4th December 2015 – I’VE LEFT …

…the hospital today and I’m back chez Liz and Terry. And the first thing that Liz did for me was to make me a tea of baked potato, vegan cheese, baked beans and a side-salad. And wasn’t it lovely to have some real proper food properly cooked for once? Never mind eating it – I could have dived into it and rolled around in it.

Last night, with my late night, I didn’t seem to get very much sleep. I lost count of how many times I had to go to the bathroom – it was at least 5 times and could easily have been more. And then we had the usual interruptions of people sticking their heads around the door, people coming to give me injections, all of that kind of thing.

But I did manage somehow to get out and about on my travels too. Not that I remember anything much about it, but I do recall a separated couple being involved, and despite having agreed as part of the terms of separation that they would refer to each other as vous , but we did notice, with smiles on our faces, that they were back to referring to each other with the more familiar tu.

So having had breakfast and so on, I went for yet another shower. I’m really making the most of this. And then we had the bad news. It seems that my medical appointment for later this morning has been cancelled. They still haven’t been able to complete the analysis of all of my examinations.

Mind you, this might be good news. I imagine that they would look for the most serious options first and then they would work their way up the ladder, and the longer that it takes to find the problem, the less serious it might be. But of course, I’m ruling nothing out.

But apparently I’m to have an anti-coagulant injection twice a day at home for the next THREE MONTHS, and a blood test twice a week, and I’ve been given a prescription for a lorry-load of medication. Not only that, Liz has bought some vitamin B12 tablets and some iron tablets, and has found a fruit juice that has B12 in it. I need to make the most of my recuperation and keep a close eye on my diet for a while while I sort myself out.

And I did query the “three months” bit too. Would I still be here in three months? But the doctor did confirm that, in his opinion, there was every likelihood that i’ll be here then, and long after that too. And that’s good news;

At the pharmacy in Pionsat, the bill – just for the first month – came to €474. That doesn’t include the smelling salts that they used to bring me round. This is going to be an expensive illness, I can see that.

So after a good evening’s relaxation, I had an early night. We’d bought an ice -pack and we’d had it in the freezer for a couple of hours, so I put it on my swollen arm to draw the heat and give me a good night’s sleep. But it was totally unbearable after about half an hour so I ended up taking it off. But never mind – it had done the rick and, at least for the moment, the discomfort had gone.

I did warn Liz and Terry to make sure though that when they went to bed to wear plenty of garlic around their necks, just in case I feel thirsty during the night.

0

Thursday 3rd December 2015 – WELL, THAT SORTED THEM OUT!

Yes – clearly my discussion with the Accounts department yesterday seems to have worked, and galvanised them into action, because they rang me up this morning to say that the Direct Billing account has now been established and I needn’t worry about the payments.

As if I was worrying about the payments anyway. It’s no concern of mine. As I said yesterday, the hospital could have done all of this on the day that I was admitted.

Anyway, it’s amazing what you can do when you set your minds to doing it, isn’t it, Accounts Department of Centre Hospitalier Montlucon?

Before all of this erupted however, I’d already been on my travels. Down to the depths of the hospital and the domain of the Body-snatc … errr … scanners. It’s like a huge time portal (made by one of my former employers, General Electric) and you pass in and out of it on a cantilever trolley. I did of course ask if I was going to wake up in the 25th Century, but knowing the Auvergne like I do, it’s probably something for bringing people kicking and screaming into the present day.

I had to drink something totally disgusting before I was scanned and to give you an idea of just how unpleasant it was, this is the first place anywhere in any hospital in which I have ever been in mainland Europe where I’ve been offered a cup of coffee afterwards. But that didn’t work and even 15 hours later I can still taste whatever it was.

But there was a moment of light entertainment down there in the bowels of the hospital. In the body-scanner machine you have to wear a kind of helmet and there are different sizes of padding; depending upon the size of your head. Chief Body-Scanner went on a fruitless search to find the right size for me.
Chief Body-Scanner – “but don’t you have a big head?”
Our Hero – “well, there’s quite a lot in it!”.

After that, I was left pretty-much to my own devices and cracked on with my University course on Hadrian’s Wall. A great chance to catch up on the outstanding stuff.

But we did have some kind of interruption. The doctor came to see me “you can go home later on today. You’ll be back tomorrow for a check-up and again in another week”
“I’m not so sure that that’s a good idea” I replied. “I’ll have to disturb someone at work right now to come over 50 kilometres to pick me up, and drive over 50 kilometres back. And then tomorrow, he’ll have to drive me over 50 kilometres to come here and then over 50 kilometres back again. If I can stay until tomorrow afternoon, there will be someone in Montlucon already who can bring me back without the slightest inconvenience to anyone”.

And so common sense has prevailed and I’m here until Liz comes to fetch me tomorrow afternoon.

When Liz turned up later (with some spare undies and a punnet of grapes) I told her the news, and that is indeed the plan. I warned her and Terry to make sure that they had plenty of garlic in and to wear it around their necks when they go to bed just in case I feel thirsty during the night.

And so that was that today. But I didn’t go off to sleep easily. I had borrowed a couple of books from the library and one of them looked quite interesting – namely the story of the discovery of some “treasure” in 1924 in a small village called Glozel, about 60kms from here.

It turned out to be one of the most controversial treasure trove discoveries in the whole of the country because while many of the objects are of a typical early neolithic style, many of them appear to be made in the Medieval period and some even contemporary to the discovery. And this led to all kinds of village feuds, court cases and the like, and the affair rumbles on today.

Anyway, there I was, riveted to this book from start to finish and it was 23:00 when I arrived at the last page. It’s a long time since I’ve been stuck to a book like that.

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Wednesday 2nd December 2015 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I didn’t have a great many interruptions today. And even better, being free of tubes and pipes for once, I took advantage of the shower that is in my little washroom here and had one of the nicest showers that I’ve ever had. And don’t I fell better for it? It certainly cheered me up.

Last night’s sleep was nothing much to write home about, particularly after the good night that I had had previously. But nevertheless I was on my travels once more during the night. I was running a taxi business with a group of kids, all about 9 or 10 and one day we were clearing up the yard and gathered together an enormous amount of waste or scrap which was valued at £280. For this, I was offered a brand-new car and that seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime deal to me so I was keen to accept. But these kids must have misunderstood because they thought that I was swapping it all for a set of new tyres, which was nothing like the same deal. as a result they insisted on accompanying me to do the deal. But we ended up in the local swimming baths and the papers somehow or other found their way into the water and no sooner had I retrieved one of them then another paper would find its way into the water and I had to fish that out of the water too. And so on.

And so having sorted myself out, I had the first of my visits today. I have finally made the acquaintance of the doctor who is dealing with my case. And while she’s not yet completed her enquiries, it’s pointing more and more towards a lymphoma. But in other news, my haemoglobin count has gone right down again to 7.8 and that means that this afternoon I’ll be having another blood transfusion.

We then had the usual pantomime with the Accounts Department. I shan’t bore you with the details because I’ve talked about them before, and doubtless I’ll be talking about them again. But basically, they are moaning that I haven’t paid them anything for my treatment so far. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have an assurance from my former employers, and the idea is that whenever I go for any major treatment, I produce a card with an emergency phone number on it, the hospital or whatever phones it up and this opens a direct billing account. However, you might recall that the person on “reception” at the Emergency Admissions refused to call it up.

And so I had to request a form, which duly came, and I completed it and handed it to the hospital to fax off and to keep a copy so that they had all of the details to hand. But they refused to do that too, and so I had to post it off my snail mail.

And the result of all of this is that they now have to wait upon the pleasure of the Post office – and serve them right too.

While I was waiting for the blood I did the test that I needed to take for the end of my fourth week of my University course. I ended up with 90% which was disappointing as far as I was concerned because I fell down on the identification of the god Mithras and also on the pathological question concerning the kid’s skeleton that had been disinterred from under the floor of an army barracks.

I’m now four days behind on this course, despite at one stage of having been three days ahead. I need to get a wiggle on.

Later on, they came round with the blood.
“You’re having a lot of blood” said the nurse
“Well don’t worry” I replied. “If you run short, I’ll put on a black cape and prowl the streets of Montlucon at midnight”

They took so much time to organise themselves with this blood that by the time they had finished with the blood transfusion, it was after 22:00. I was too tired to try to watch a film and so I just crawled under the covers and went off to sleep.

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Tuesday 1st December 2015 – YOU WON’T BELIEVE ANY OF THIS …

… but never mind. Do your best, because it really DID happen like this.

First of all, last night’s nocturnal ramble is far from complete. And for a couple of very good reasons too.But the good news is that I had the best night’s sleep that I have ever had in a hospital (despite being woken up two or three times). That, I reckon, is due to the cold poultice or whatever it was that they put on my arm just before I went to sleep. That seemed to do the trick.

So, in as far as I could remember it, I was still in hospital but I’d been allowed out to go to a theatre in Deansgate, Manchester to watch a Chris de Burgh concert with my family (what are they doing intruding into my nocturnal rambles?) and also a very new girlfriend of mine, so naturally I was pleased about this. We went into the auditorium and the first thing that I noticed was that everyone – including us – was dressed in black. But as the concert got under way, I was called back to the hospital for a blood test. Once that had been completed I made my way back to the theatre and ended up going in through the stage door and there was Chris de Burgh, not actually performing, but using a record player to play his records to the audience. He asked me what I was doing there and so I explained that I’d been called away. He apologised that I’d missed half his concert and gave me a free ticket for another one (I noticed that I didn’t ask for two – one for my girlfriend) and so I went into the auditorium and … it was deserted. everyone had gone. I dashed outside and started to scour the streets around Deansgate and Whitworth Street for my friends and this girl but I couldn’t find them at all.

From here we went on, via various removes which I have now forgotten unfortunately what with all of the interruptions and so on, to Stoke on Trent and a housing estate built of 1960s bungalows rather like the top half of Coleridge Way in Crewe. In one of these bungalows lived someone whom I once knew, his wife and his daughter, Zero (who occasionally accompanies me on my nocturnal rambles). The bungalow where we were rather resembled the ground floor of my house in Gainsborough Road, but to get into the sitting room (where the aforementioned were gathered) meant passing under a rather low brick wall, which necessitated crawling, but each time I went to do so I was interrupted by someone who wanted something doing. So by the time I had done that and went back, I was convinced that the arch had become smaller. But before I could pass under the arch it was the turn of someone else to interrupt me with a request. And so it went on, and on, and on, but eventually everyone had been satisfied. So I went to the arch to crawl under into the sitting room, to find that it was now far too small for me to pass under, and I was stranded.

It’s a shame that I’ve forgotten everything else that happened, for I really was riveted to my bed by all of this that was going on, despite all the interruptions. But then someone awoke me quite insistently to say that the Day Ward was to open in half an hour and I needed to leave. And so I said OK and went back to sleep. 15 minutes later they woke me again and I really did have to go. And with that, most of the details of my nocturnal ramble left too.

Back in my real room, I was on my own. I don’t know what had happened to my room-mate of yesterday and I didn’t think it politic to ask. But it was round about here that all of the fun began.

First visit of the morning was the dietician. We had an extremely lengthy chat about my diet yet again, when I set out quite clearly exactly what my dietary requirements were

And the result? For dessert at lunchtime I was served a “Lactel” crème caramel “containing fresh eggs”.

I can see quite clearly that I’m wasting my time here.

But what surprised me even more about the dietician is that she knew nothing whatever about vegans and potential vitamin B12 deficiency and potential iron deficiency. What kind of dietician is this?

Next stop was the echography, where they examined my arm with an ultrasound scan. And not that I know all that much about echographs, but even I could see some kind of foreign body showing up in the scan. It might be a blood clot, or it might be a foreign object, and so I’m destined to have an X-ray all about it.

And so off to the X-ray department where we have one of these 20-somethings in charge. I went to take off my dressing gown but she replied “we can photograph through that, you know”.
I explained that the doctor had drawn on my arm the area of interest, to which her response was “I’ve been doing this job for longer than just yesterday”, and so I left her to it.

When she’d finished (11:50, this was) she wheeled me outside, presumably to wait for a porter to take me back to my ward, and she put on her coat and went off for lunch.

By 12:50, no porter had appeared and I was still sitting in this draughty corridor and I’d had enough. Spoiling for a fight with someone and in a totally foul mood, I set off on foot to find my way back to my ward. It wasn’t easy because the hospital here at Montlucon is quite a labyrinth, but it didn’t really take me too much time and the walk, and the change of scenery, did me good.

Back here, I sent out for my food – seeing as I was an hour late for my lunch – but before I could receive it, the doctor stuck his head around the door “you have to go back to be X-rayed- they’ve X-rayed the wrong place”. So much for our self-confident 20-something, hey?

Back in the basement, I had to wait 20 minutes before I could be seen, but as soon as our 20-something came out and saw me in fighting form, she cleared off and someone else came to X-ray me. Once this had been done, I didn’t even bother waiting. I walked straight back to my ward, and finally had my lunch (with “Lactel” crème caramel “with fresh eggs” as part of a vegan diet).

Liz came round later with a supply of snapping for me to keep in store. Biscuits, crisps, fruit juice, and a big bag of grapes. This is how to be organised for a hospital when the dietician doesn’t seem to have a clue what is involved in a vegan diet. And we did a trade too. I swapped my “Lactel” crème caramel “with fresh eggs” for Liz’s banana.

And the librarian came round with a trolley-load of books from which I could choose. And I joked to Liz that both previous times when the librarian had been round with books and I’d chosen some, I’d moved rooms straight away afterwards.

And so after Liz left, they came round to tell me that I was moving across the corridor. You would have bet your mortgage on this. But at least I’m in a single room again, nice, clean and modern.

Here I seem to have settled in quite nicely and if I have to stay anywhere, this will do me fine. But 5 changes of room in 24 hours must be something of a record in any kind of residential establishment. You couldn’t make that up.

And you couldn’t make up anything else that had happened to me during the course of the day either. It’s astonishing as far as I’m concerned.

But anyway, as the night drew on, I settled down to watch Bulldog Drummond in Africa and managed to see it right through to the end for once. I had another one of these cold poultices and then tried to settle down to sleep but for some reason I found it difficult to drop off.

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Monday 30th November 2015 – THIS WAS A TOTAL DISASTER.

We had the usual performance of falling asleep in the middle of a film, being awoken relentlessly during the middle of the night, the injections, the blood tests, the total rubbish food etc etc.

And then the doctor appeared. He wasn’t totally convinced that I had a phlebite – he was more of the opinion that I was suffering from an infection and he proposed a course of antibiotics. I told him that I didn’t agree with the use of antibiotics but he reckoned that it was essential given the gravity of the situation.

Anyway, a short while later, it was agreed that I should go back to the hospital at Montlucon. After all, they had been treating me in the past and they will still be treating me later in the week. Accordingly a private ambulance arrived to take me. And then this is where it all went from bad to worse.

In France, you have to pay for ambulance services, and this is covered by your health insurance, which means effectively that 99% of people don’t actually pay for it. But with my insurance scheme I have to pay for most things unless they are pris en charge and with this being sprung on me at the very last moment, I hadn’t had the opportunity to make a phone call to arrange it. And so I had to pay … gulp … €190.

And the driver asked me if I could pay for it, to which I replied that if we stopped at a cash machine. And then five minutes later she asked me “do you really have your cards on you?” to which I went totally berserk. It’s a long time since I’ve been insulted like that, and I’ll tell you something – I bet it’s been a long time since she’s been insulted like she was just then by the time that I had finished.

Some people might say that it’s not very gallant of me, but my response is that you shouldn’t give it out if you can’t take it back.

Back at Montlucon, the receptionist at the hospital asked me what I was going to do about my outstanding bill. I replied “nothing at all”.
She looked at me strangely, and so I continued “when I came here the other Friday, I gave your emergency admissions people my Insurance card with contact details and everything on it, so that you could set up a direct billing account on the spot, but they refused to do anything about it.
“And so I had a form sent to me on Monday and I filled it in and gave it to you on Tuesday to fax off so that you would know that it had gone and that you had a copy with all of the details, but you refused to do that too, and so as far as I’m concerned, what’s happening now is all your problem, not mine. I couldn’t care less”.

Back up here, the doctor looked at my arm and was horrified by what he saw. He was astonished that I had been discharged like this. He drew quite carefully on my arm the area of interest.

They managed to rustle up some food for me and even though it was rather ad-hoc, it was streets better than anything that I had had to eat in Riom.

I was ushered into a bedroom where a rather elderly gentleman was already installed. And as the afternoon drew on, I could see that it was going to be another one of “these” nights as my room-mate was clearly not at the races. But what did help was that one of the nurses found a type-of alcohol-impregnated covering that was freezing cold and when she put it on my inflamed arm, I could feel the relief immediately and I wish that someone had thought of doing that a few days ago.

And then the pantomime began. My room-mate had a seizure. I was evacuated and eventually ended up in a totally empty room, with my bed, chair, table and possessions following on behind. And so I settled down again, only for it to be decided that the empty room was more valuable as an empty room and I was moved yet again, this time to one of the empty day wards.

I had my alcohol pad changed, and then settled down for third-time lucky. I switched on a film and slowly dozed off into a deep sleep.

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Sunday 29th November 2015 – AND SO BACK AGAIN …

… in hospital, and back to the usual hospital routine. An early night, falling asleep watching a film on the laptop, and then waking up at about 02:00, lying awake for a few hours and then dropping off again just in time to be awoken by the continual comings and goings of nurses in and out of my room.

And I wasn’t alone last night either. I was in Vine Tree Avenue in Shavington, where we lived in the 1960s, and I was working on my 2000E saloon, TNY 143 M, sanding down the offside rear wing where I’d just welded on a wheel arch repair panel, and Nerina turned up. We were admiring a tree in the garden next door in Edwards Avenue – a small tree or plant about 2.5 metres high that looked like a very immature weeping willow – and we decided that we would like a cutting to go in our garden here too.

Strangely, when I went back to sleep a few hours later, I stepped right back into the dream where I had left off and was reading a catalogue that was displaying all kinds of kinky Christmas underwear made of tinsel. Nerina didn’t think very much of that and made a few typical disparaging remarks, and I was thinking that it was a good job that she hadn’t noticed what I’d been looking at on the first 10 pages of the catalogue.

So after breakfast, such as it was, we had what can only be described as a perfect example of extreme boredom. I hadn’t brought anything with me because I hadn’t expected to be here, so no laptop and a flat battery in the telephone because I didn’t have the charger. There wasn’t anything around to read either which was even worse.

But I did find a brochure about the terms and conditions of the hospital so I can tell you all about that now. And apparently I have the right to have a person of my choice in my room with me, and a spare bed will be provided. I did wonder what Kate Bush might be doing right now, and they needn’t bother about the spare bed.

At 15:00 Liz came round and brought me some clothes, my wash bag, a phone charger and the laptop. And not just that, but a couple of snacks too. Which is just as well because the food in this hospital is thoroughly disgusting. Part of the hospital’s charter, which I read assiduously this morning, tells me that the hospital will “take into account the tastes and the eating habits … of the patient”. How they do that is simply to remove from the plate anything that one isn’t allowed to eat. and so for lunch I had half a plate of carrots and green beans, and for tea I had half a plate of overcooked courgette. And that was that. It’s a question of whether they find out what’s wrong with me before I die of starvation. I can see me striking up quite an acquaintance with the lady who runs the cafe across the road and having regular wisits from her;

But there’s another thing as well about the hospital at Riom that is even more important. And that is that there is no internet. Luckily, Liz had helped me to set up “tethering” on my mobile phone and so I can stay in some kind of contact with the outside world.

But whether or not the outside world wants to keep in touch with me is another matter. Of my 132 “friends” on my social network, I’ve had just 14 expressions of best wishes. I know that everyone has their social network account for their own particular reasons and that’s not an issue with anyone, but I don’t see the point of being “friends” with anyone if you aren’t going to take an interest in them and their own personal issues. Consequently I’ve had yet another major purge of my “friends” list. and quite right too. it’ll soon be down to just me.

On that note I settled down to watch a film on the laptop because it’s the most sure-fire way that I know of falling asl……

… ZZZZZZZZ

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Saturday 28th November 2015 – DAY THREE …

… of my rehabilitation has ended up being something of a disaster. I had the worst night’s sleep yet.

I had a couple of hours sleep but that was basically it – I remember watching the clock go round at least three hours and I didn’t watch it after that – but I did somehow manage to go back to sleep, because I woke up again at just after 09:00.

By this time, my right arm was swollen out of all recognition and was starting to turn a blotchy red. When I had briefly chatted with the nurse on the phone about this yesterday, he told me that if it started to go red, I needed to have something done about it. As a result, we telephoned Liz and Terry’s doctor in Les Ancizes and as luck would have it, she was there and so we went round.

There’s no doubt that the world is a small place, and getting smaller day by day. The doctor’s son (or was it nephew?) had the same day and month of birth than me, and she was born in the same year as me. Furthermore, she comes from Romania and closer discussion revealed that she came from Brasov, which, as long-term readers of this rubbish will recall from one of its many, many previous reincarnations long-lost in the mists of time, was the scene of some of my many triumphs back in the early 1990s.

But returning to our moutons, as the French say, apparently I have a phlébite, which judging by a few things that people have subsequently said, might be a blood clot in the arm. I had to seek immediate attention, and the casualty department at Riom was by far the closest.

And so here I am. I’ve been inspected by a couple of nurses and a junior doctor, I’ve been injected with warfarin to stop the blood clotting (so it’s a good job that I’m really not a rat) and then I was stuck on a trolley in the corridor waiting my turn for a scan on the arm.

Unfortunately, despite waiting about 4 hours, we ran out of time and so I’ve been “detained” until at least Monday. I felt sorry for Liz who had to wait this long for no good purpose, but at least she nipped out to buy me some grub because I’ve missed all of the meals in here and I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast

They’ve found me a single room for the next two nights, and this was touch-and-go. Riom Hospital is quite small and there’s not much in the budget, but the rooms are light and airy and comfortable enough although the walls haven’t been painted since the place was built.

And so I wonder what the nurses are going to be like here. There has to be some kind of consolation for being stuck back in a blasted hospital yet again.

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Thursday 26th November 2015 – DAY ONE …

… of my rehabilitation starts today. And I celebrated by staying in bed until 08:30. Liz was up early and gone by the time that I surfaced, and so Terry was babysitting me because he has no work on the go at the moment.

My night hadn’t been quite so good though. I’d been asleep for a while but then I woke up at about 04:00 with the pain in my right arm. I had a quick ride of the porcelain horse and then couldn’t go back to sleep for ages, and so I wasn’t really with it for most of the morning.

I had two phone calls – the first one to say that I have to go back to the hospital next Thursday morning at 08:15 (yawnnnnnnnn) for a scan, and the second one to say that I have to go back yet again the following day where I shall be told the results of all of these examinations and some kind of treatment schedule to be discussed.

But one thing good seems to be that as they aren’t in such of a rush to start any treatment, it can’t be anything really serious. I would have imagined that if lights had been flashing all over the place something would have been done immediately – I mean, look how quickly they had me in when the results of my first blood test were announced. I was summoned within minutes.

So apart from that, I’ve not done very much at all. But then, that’s what rehabilitation is all about. I’ve done some of my course work again and watched some sport on the TV, and then I went off to bed.

It’s warm here, the food is excellent, the bed is comfortable and the company is so convivial. I can’t think of anywhere better to be while all of this is going on.

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Wednesday 25th November 2015 – I’VE BEEN DISCHARGED

Well, expelled, more like. Liz came by to pick me up at about 18:00 to take me home. She had to wait half an hour because the hospital hadn’t quite finished with me, but I soon put all of my things together, got dressed, and we were off.

Stopping off at the bank on the way back to start to build up a little war chest for the future, we were back at Liz and Terry’s for about 19:30. After a quick snack, because I wasn’t all that hungry, I wandered off to the bed that they had prepared for me, and that was that.

The plan now is that I’ll have a district nurse coming to see me twice a week to take a blood sample, and I’ll be summoned back to hospital in a week or so for a scan. Once they’ve assimilated all of the results, they’ll call me in again to discuss what they might be able to do for me.

But last night, with the difficulties that I’d had the previous evening, I was in bed by 20:00 and fell asleep while I was watching a film. As a result I was awake before the dawn chorus started. This morning’s blood sample was a farce – it took 5 goes and 2 nurses to find a vein that worked. I’m looking even more like a dartboard now.

This morning I was left pretty much to my own devices but it all kicked off this afternoon. They came to change my pochette of vitamins, only to discover that my right arm was incredibly swollen – no wonder it was hurting so much – and so they had to fit the drain in my left arm. And then I had another 2 pochettes of blood. I also had a biopsy, where they chipped a bit of bone off my pelvis to take away for examination and that’s the most painful thing that I have ever experienced.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The young Eurasian student nurse came to take my blood pressure this afternoon and with the drain having been moved, she needed to reach my other arm. Her solution to this was to lean right across me, in her low-cut nurse’s uniform with no t-shirt on underneath.
“Ohh – your blood pressure is up, and your pulse is racing a little”
“Really?” I replied. “I can’t think why”

Clearly I’m not as ill as I think that I am.

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