Tag Archives: hospital

Tuesday 24th November 2015 – NOT AGAIN!

Yes, I had another bad night.

As most of you know, I’m a night person rather than a day person, and so being awake at midnight is no big deal to me. In fact last night at midnight I was watching a film on the laptop. It’s a good job that I’ve downloaded all of those films and radio programmes from www.archive.org for when I go off on my travels.

The result of all of this was that from about 04:30 we had a new type of dawn chorus – a relentless stream of nurses and doctors performing all kinds of rituals on me. By the time breakfast came round at 08:30 I had given up trying to go back to sleep.

No blood transfusions today – just a prise de sang and a change of vitamin pochette.

After lunch, Liz came round to visit seeing as how she’s teaching here today. Amongst the things that she brought me was a form to sign from my insurance company about paying my bills, and also a vegan cheese and tomato sandwich, which was the nicest thing that I’ve eaten for a while. The mobile library came past too and I liberated a couple of books.

Later on, the doctor came by with the news. It seems that they are ruling out leukaemia for the moment and focusing more on lymphoma. This can be fatal in some circumstances but they reckon that in my case it’s not very profound and so there’s quite a bit of hope.

The plan is that I can be liberated tomorrow and go home (although it seems that I’ll be going home to Liz and Terry) for a week. And then when the results have been collated (which might be a week or so) they’ll call me back to see what they can propose for me.

The important thing is that I’m likely to be here for a good while yet. You aren’t going to get rid of me that easily.

Monday 23rd November 2015 – AT LAST!

Yes, a good night’s sleep. It took me ages to drop off but once I fell asleep that was me gone away with the fairies and I felt absolutely nothing at all. Totally painless.

And for once, no-one came to bother me during the night (well, if they did, I know nothing about it) and the morning visits were later than usual so I had a really good night’s sleep. And didn’t I feel better next morning?

I’d been on my travels during the night too. In the south of France during the war and a member of SOE had just paddled ashore in his canoe, evading a German canoe patrol just offshore (you could tell the Germans because they had 2-pronged tridents with points that pointed outwards). As he paddled along the road (yes, you ought to be used to thins right now) a Vichy patrol consisting of an old man in a Citroen H-type van silently pulled up alongside him and leapt on top of him. This is where I came in and I cracked the old guy sharply across the back of the head with a Stillsons wrench.

I had a quiet morning doing my University course but I was quickly interrupted several times in rapid succession.

Firstly, it seems that they suspect that I have leukaemia so they wanted a bone marrow sample, and that’s not something to be undertaken lightly – I’ll promise you that. And then I had a new room-mate – a guy in his 70s or maybe even older.

But what was nice was that Ingrid came to visit. She’s Dutch and lives in Biollet and came to the Anglo-French group. She works as a Health Visitor and one of her clients is in hospital here, so she popped in to say hello and have a really good chat. That was quite a pleasant surprise.

While Ingrid was here, one of the nurses came by and dropped a packet on the table. “Take this with you when you go – it’s your tea”
“When I go?”
“Ohh yes – you’re moving”
I thought that the issues that I’d been having had resolved themselves but it seems that they have resolved themselves into another direction. I’ve now been moved to a new department – the Oncology/Haematology department – and so it’s looking very much as if their suspicions are indeed lurching towards leukaemia.

I’ve a lovely little room here all to myself. Nice and modern with en-suite facilities – I’ve paid good money to sleep in far worse hotels and motels than this and for once my luck seems to be in, although the nurses aren’t quite as young, vibrant and exciting, which is a disappointment.

But you can’t have everything, I suppose.

Sunday 22nd November 2015 – THINGS HAVE A HABIT OF WORKING …

… themselves out if you let them, no matter how unlikely it might seem at the time.

My plan about getting off to sleep didn’t work at all because it wasn’t long that I was awoken by the earth-shattering roar of a VC 10 taking off just about 8 feet from my ear, and that was that. At 04:00 the night nurse came round on her rounds and by this time, having had quite enough, I told her quite plainly that I wasn’t going to spend a third night like this. If another room couldn’t be found for me, I was going to discharge myself and that would be that.

Mind you, I must have had something by the way of sleep because I was at Dover during the night, standing on the concrete pan that was formerly the hovercraft terminal (which isn’t there) looking at a huge storm breaking over an island just offshore (that isn’t there either) and watching a group of boys trying to encourage a group of young girls to join in.

But anyway, after breakfast, and I was flat-out exhausted, my neighbour was having an “issue” with the medical staff, something to do with the question of having a shower. There was some unpleasantness involved in this discussion and it ended round about lunchtime by him dressing and leaving the room.

Later on that afternoon, while I was having my next blood transfusion, a team of nurses came in, stripped my neighbour’s bed and started to clean all around his side of the room. It appears that, quite astonishingly, my neighbour has decided to discharge himself, and he’s cleared off home.

There are no admissions scheduled for today, and so unless there’s an emergency during the night I’m going to be on my own tonight. That means that I’ll be having a good night’s sleep (I hope) and so I’ll be fit for whatever the world can throw at me tomorrow.

Saturday 21st November 2015 – HELL!

Yes, it looks as if I’ve arrived in hell.

I can cope with most things, including hospital food, but sleep is quite important for me too and while I don’t particularly need a lot, I just become miserable and in a bad mood the less sleep I have.

And this is why I am miserable and in a foul temper right now, because my neighbour is a big guy and has the loudest snore that I have ever encountered. Sleep is totally impossible if he’s dropped off and I am going to be having a long, sad stay in this hospital.

The prognosis isn’t all that good either. The three pochettes of blood that I had last night have done some good. I’m supposed to have a blood-count of 15 or so for my haemoglobin and I now have 5.8, which is a far cry from the 3.8 that I had when I arrived. No wonder that I’ve been so exhausted and pale just recently. But even this improvement is far from adequate and so the transfusions will have to continue.

Talking of hospital food though, I spent about 20 minutes last night talking about my diet to the admissions doctor, and another 15 minutes this morning to my personal doctor. And so for lunch they have brought me a chicken dinner.

I had a nice surprise this afternoon though. Liz put in an appearance with a big bag of grapes and we had quite a long chat. That cheered me up considerably. What also cheered me up is that winter has arrived. It’s -5°C outside and we’ve had the first snows of the year, and I’m inside in the comparative warmth being waited on hand and foot by a bevy of beautiful nurses. So there’s an up-side for everything.

After Liz left, I had tea. And for some reason, the boiled potatoes in their jacket smeared with vegetable margarine was the nicest thing that I have ever eaten.

So now I’m off for an early night. Liz brought some ear plugs for me and I’ve fitted them. If I can fall asleep before my neighbour, I might stand a chance.

Friday 20th November 2015 – AHH WELL!

So here I am.

It’s 08:00 in the morning and I crawl (and I do mean crawl) out of bed. I can safely say that I’ve never felt as bad as all of this. Getting down to Caliburn was something of a struggle and I’m sure that I couldn’t see straight as I drove down to Pionsat for my blood test. A surprise awaited me at the reception of the medical centre – on duty was one of the girls who runs the pie hut at FCPSH.

So having dealt with the blood test, I staggered back here and had my breakfast (luckily I’d prepared it before I went off) and then crashed out on the sofa.

I managed a coffee at about midday and then crashed out again, to be awoken by the telephone at 14:30. It was the doctor. “You have a very bad case of anaemia and you need to go to the hospital at once. I’ve prepared a file for you and there’s an ambulance voucher here at the office”

An ambulance voucher is one thing, but finding an ambulance is something else. In the end I ring up Terry and Liz, but they are out, but Rosemary is in and so she comes to the rescue. I have just about enough strength to throw a few things into a bag and then we are off.

At the hospital I check in, but I don’t even have enough time to find a seat before I’m whisked off into an emergency room and stuck on a bed. They couple me up to a vitamin tube and give me a good interrogation – and after about an hour, the blood arrived.

I had one “pochette” of blood in the emergency room and then they took me up to a room where they gave me two others.
“We have to check your blood pressure every 15 minutes during the transfusion process” explained the nurse.
“I’m a very light sleeper” I replied
“Well you are going to be in for a very long night” she answered.
And she was right.

-2

Monday 3rd August 2015 – I HATE PEOPLE …

… who post on the internet photos of what they have been eating.

However, just very occasionally, there are rare occasions where a meal merits being photographed, and this is one of them.

Right in the centre of Clermont-Ferrand this lunchtime, not one of the restaurants had a vegan meal on offer, but there was one where the chef was busy plying his art (and art it was) in the corner of the dining area and so I went over for a chat.

And this is the result. And no complaints whatever from me. I had a struggle to finish it.

So after a telephone call at a time where quite often I hadn’t even been to bed, I was down at Sauret Besserve and picked up Liz, and off we went to Riom for Liz’s hospital appointment.

I had a wait of about 50 minutes for a groggy-looking Liz to emerge, and then we went off for a coffee so that she could recover.

Next stop was the Auchan but there weren’t any of the Nikon D7000 cameras there – it’s an end-of-range deal and the prices had been slashed so I wasn’t expecting much, but nevertheless, we were nearby so it was worth a try.

And then a first for Liz.

We decided to go into the centre of Clermont Ferrand and the tram lines pass at the rear of the Auchan so, leaving Caliburn on the car park, we hopped on a tram that whisked us silently and effortlessly into the city.

€1:50 a ticket and there can’t be much better value than that. Anyone who has driven into the centre of Clermont Ferrand and tried to find a parking place will tell you all about that.

We went for a walk, went to the Tourist Information office and down to the Conseil-General – and I had a brainwave. I need to insure Strider, the Ranger, in Canada and I wondered if I could obtain a printout of my licence showing my motoring history.

We queued for a good while and, at the counter, “yes, we can do that. Do you have your driving licence?”
So I duly produced it
“And do you have your identoty papers?”
“Ohh blast! I’ve left them in Caliburn, haven’t I?”
“We are really supposed to see some identity papers in order to do this over the counter, but I’ll tell you what – let’s do it anyway”

So there we were!

Back to the city square and in the shadow of Pope Urban II preaching the First Crusade to the pigeons fluttering around the Cathedral, we had our lunch.

Back on the tram and off to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais programmes for the next few weeks, giving Samantha Fish her first run-out, and then back home.

All in all a quite profitable day.

And hats off to the reception staff at the hospital at Riom, hats off to the chef in Clermont Ferrand and hats off also to the lady at the driving licence desk at the Prefecture in Clermont Ferrand. Things are definitely looking up!

Thursday 4th December 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that I was in bed before 23:00?

It wasn’t last night, to be sure, but it wasn’t long after 23:00. Certainly at 23:00 I was downstairs taking the stats, the last thing that I do before going to bed.

However I was awake at about 06:00, despite having an exciting night where I was in Montreal. I’d been to see someone about mounting a wind turbine on my land in New Brunswick but he told me that it was a waste of time. In fact he had had the same idea as me and bought some land on the Canada side of the Mars Hill wind farm in the USA, but has decided to sell it on as the projected extension of the farm wasn’t ever going to happen. We then had a long drive around Montreal with me taking the wrong turnings all the time, and him jumping out of the car each time that I did so, and waiting for me on the corner when I realised my error and turned back.

Once I was awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep and was tossing and turning until the alarm went off.

After breakfast, I went round to Liz and Terry’s. Liz was at work but Terry had a medical appointment at Riom and needed someone to go with him.

That was a pleasant morning, not the least of reasons being that I met a couple of people there who go to watch the football at Pionsat. I have’t seen then for w while, and it turned out that the guy has been quite ill. He’s had an operation in the hospital and was going back for a check-up.

On our way home, we had a major surprise. Just outside Les Ancizes we noticed something big and black moving at quite a substantial rate of knots across the field in the distance. As it drew closer (and what a good artist it was) we realised that it was a sanglier – a wild boar – and one of the biggest that I had ever seen. He roared across the field and right across the road in front of us – a really impressive sight. Magnificent beasts, these wild boar. No wonder I love living right out here.

I stopped off at the Intermarche at Pionsat to do my shopping. These shopping trips are getting earlier and earlier in the week but there’s no point going out shopping when I don’t need to.

And isn’t this attitude a change?

Back here I don’t know what happened but at one moment I was sitting eating my lunch (it was 15:00) and the next thing I remember, it was 18:06. I had crashed out completely and I’ve no idea why, especially after my early night last night.

-1

Thursday 3rd January 2013 – WHAT A LOUSY …

… day

Grey, wet, miserable, depressing

But that’s enough about me – the weather was even worse.

So with almost no solar energy today I didn’t do all that much. When I opened my eye and saw the weather, I closed it again and went back under the duvet.

And if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary to visit the beichstuhl I’d probably be there now.

After breakfast and working on the website for a while I started on the floor in the shower room. But I wasn’t there as long as I might have been, and for a very simple reason too.

I will swear blind that I bought 5 packets of tongue-and-grooved flooring planks, but I’ve only been able to manage to find four – there’s one missing somewhere. And the result of that is that I ran out of floor with two planks to go.

GRRRRR!

So that means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot on Saturday, doesn’t it? I’m never going to finish this blasted flooring seeing as how all of the fates are conspiring against me.

To pass the rest of the time I started to sort out the firewood in the lean-to in order to make more space.

I could have cut it up as well but I have to do that outside and with it pouring down with rain it wasn’t much of a good plan. But there’s progress all the same.

This evening I had another meal the same as last night and it worked just as well, if not better.

Having a rip-roaring blaze at the beginning is definitely the key to cooking with the wood stove. It heats the oven up quicker and that cooks the potatoes better.

Basically, 2 hours for the spuds, 60 minutes for the sprouts and 90 minutes for the rest of the veg. The veggie-burger takes about 20 minutes or so.

I had a few phone calls too. Cécile called me twice and spoke to me for hours. She’s giving a dinner party tomorrow night and wants to know if I can help her tomorrow afternoon to prepare.

Seeing as I don’t have the wood to finish the floor, that seems like a good plan.

Marianne also rang up for a long chat and to tell me about her adventures at Riom hunting down old historical documents. One of these days when I’m not busy, whenever that might be, I’ll have to go with her.

As for me, this afternoon I telephoned the hospital at Montlucon to enquire about Bill.

The receptionist wasn’t all that forthcoming. After much verbal fencing, she expressed an interest in knowing who I was, and so I explained that I was neither family nor close friend but just an everyday run-of-the-mill friend of no particular significance.

She then said that she couldn’t give me any more information, but would I care to leave my phone number so that she can pass it on the Bill’s daughter – his next of kin

I don’t like the sound of that one little bit

-2

Saturday 15th December 2012 – I DIDN’T BLOG …

… last night before going to bed, and I bet that you were all disappointed.

But no matter, I’ll serve it up this morning for you.

Actually, I was far too busy, working on the radio programmes and it was 02:30 before I went to bed. “If you have the inspiration, keep on at it”, as the actress once famously said to the bishop.

But at least it’s all finished today, all …errr … 60kbs of it. That’s the equivalent of almost 2 hours of discussion.

And then you have to add the ad-libs in too and then of course the music that we’ll be playing in between – so that should be enough for the next three years.

At least, I hope so. As I said yesterday, it’ll all come in handy.

And so, apart from writing the radio programme, that was that

The weather warmed up dramatically this morning and it was 17°C in my room when I woke up. That makes a nice change, and at least I was comfortable without the fire when I was doing the radio programme

Shopping was next on the agenda and so a run out to St Eloy-les-Mines was called for.

But there’s been a change of plan as far as the diet goes. Pasta doesn’t work in the oven, and rice is a bit samey day after day and so I’ve bought a big bag of potatoes. Baked spuds should be just about fine for the rest of the winter I think.

But while I’m on the subject of changes, I’ve changed the room around a little.

I’ve moved a bookcase or two and shuffled the pair of chests of drawers around a little, and now the end wall underneath the little window at the side of the oven became miraculously free.

Remember the table that I brought up here a while ago? That’s gone nicely just there and I now actually have a kind of kitchen in that corner. Won’t that be really handy for the winter.

And I’ve finally heard from Bill.

I set Marianne a task viz to contact the hospital. Marianne is not easily brushed aside and managed to find out where he was. So she came up with a number and so I rang him.

He’s out of danger but he’s not himself yet. Time will tell but I’m so relieved.

I was really worried.

Tuesday 11th December 2012 – I rang …

… Marianne’s house this morning to enquire after her well-being and she was there. She told me that she had been released. “Expelled, more like” I told her, but it was nice to hear her voice. She certainly sounded better than she did the last time that I spoke to her.

What wasn’t so good was the news that I had from Rosemarie when she phoned up later. It appears that Bill has been rushed to hospital, quite ill apparently. That’s really sad news because his general health isn’t so good at all. I do hope that he recovers quickly.

Apart from that, the Christmas Special is progressing nicely. There’s enough now to make a decent programme and when Liz tells me of her choice of music I can tidy it up and finish it off.

I’ll be glad when it’s all done – I can go back to bringing up to date the Quebec web pages upon which I’ve been working since the summer.

-1

Monday 10th December 2012 – And there I was …

… lying in bed going through in my mind the things that I should (and shouldn’t) have done during the day, and it was then that I remembered that I hadn’t written up the blog for today. Mind you, it was about 03:00 (I had a late night) and I wasn’t going to get up and do it at that time. Hence the reason that you’ve all had to wait for it.

It had been a comparatively busy day too for round here. An early start saw me bash on with the Christmas special and I made huge strides in putting down what I need to say. In the best traditions of the Open University, I just write stuff down as it occurs to me, and then go through and edit it later. Ohhh, the joys of “cut and paste”.

A break at lunchtime though because Terry came round to pick up his orders from the UK. Piles of stuff there was too. We agreed that, seeing as he knows all of the best contacts, he’ll order on my behalf the new winter tyres for Caliburn off the internet. Caliburn won’t know himself, what with all of these new tyres just now. He’s certainly having a good Christmas, even if no-one else is.

At the Anglo-French group, at first there was just me. Terry came in later and explained that he had had to fight a major blizzard round by St Gervais d’Auvergne, which explained why no-one from that neck of the woods appeared. Jex told me that Marianne was in hospital (she hadn’t been looking too well last time I saw her) and so that explained that. I’ll have to get on to her and see how she is.

Friday 25th November 2011 – YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN IN STITCHES …

… watching me cut down the conifers at the front of the barn this afternoon.

But I’m not in stitches – I’m in staoles.

6 of them!

All across the top of my head.

I did something today that I vowed that I would never do – and that is to use a power tool to cut down a tree. When you are sawing away by hand, you can feel the tree start to give and you have plenty of time to move out of the way as it slowly keels over.

But with a power tool you can’t feel it and it takes you by surprise. And that’s not good if you are 3 metres up a ladder.

So it caught me under the chin, lifted me off the ladder and dropped me on the floor where my head struck the trailer with a glancing blow.

But I’m inpressed with that Ryobi 18-volt saw that I bought in the USA last year (almost as impressed, Rhys, as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin). It didn’t take long at all to go through this tree.

So let’s look on the positive side.

I was bleeding everywhere and so I went to Rob and Nicolette’s to get Nicolette to look at it as I couldn’t see anything of course. One look from her and Rob was detailed to drive me to Montlucon.

We waited for a couple of hours there (and I chatted to the father of one of the FC Pionsat St Hilaire footballers who had been admitted following a car accident) and then I was examined and stapled up.

What a waste of time that was, though. I have a stapler at home and Rob could have done that without having to waste 4 hours of his time. But I was grateful for his help – it’s nice to have good neighbours.

Of course we had all of the old jokes – “the Doctor examined your head but found nothing” and all that kind of thing.

But one piece of optimism is that many things work better if you give them a kick or if you bang them. I wonder if that will work for me now.

What makes it worse was that I was only cutting down the trees for something to do while I was waiting for some paint to dry. It was so nice again today that I gathered up all of the pieces of wood from the greenhouse and I’ve painted them with a couple of coats of wood treatment and the first coat of the wood staining.

And I was only doing that because I can’t do the roof on the lean-to yet – the scaffolding is in the way.

I was going to give it all a second coat this evening and then start to assemble it tomorrow but badger that. I’m going to have a day off tomorrow.

-2

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality