… cardiac unit of the regional hospital at Avranches while they try to work out why my blood results have gone so berserk just now.
To say that things are not unfolding as well as I would like is proving to be something of an understatement.
It goes without saying that last night I didn’t have much sleep. These hospital beds such as the one on which I was trying to sleep aren’t actually made for comfort and then of course the surroundings weren’t actually comfortable.
To my great surprise though there was something on the dictaphone so at some point I must have dropped off into the Land of Nod. At one point I was dreaming that I was thirsty so I opened my mouth and grabbed hold of a hose but it was the green house of the car and I think that that was where air came out. I felt so stupid not knowing that the green hose was not water at all but it was something else and I didn’t know it.
When the alarm went off (yes, an alarm. Bane of Britain strikes again!) I was a dispatcher for the US Air Force arranging their planes to go off on bombing missions against the Germans in their big Superfortresses … "actually B-17 Flying Fortresses" – ed … etc. It involved finding crews, preparing the crews for departure, putting them in their aeroplane, making sure that when they took off they knew where their meeting point was, over which beacon etc, generally keeping up with the thousands of changes that would take place during the course of the preparation of the mission
Of course they would actually be Flying Fortresses. It would be extremely rare to say the least to find a Superfortress flying on combat in the European theatre of operations. An expensive aeroplane such as that would have been a luxury when its advantages (super-long range and extremely high altitude) wouldn’t be reached anywhere where it would be required to deliver a bomb-load in Europe. Dollar for dollar, a Flying Fortress could drop many more bombs on Germany.
Of course, dispatching would be nothing new as far as I would be concerned. By air though would be a totally new medium but the principle would be pretty-much the same as by road.
However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, and things developed as I expected. I’ve been here before, once in Verdun and once in Winnipeg and the results were the same.
Luckily, with having expected it, the necessary precautions had been taken and it wasn’t as embarrassing as it might otherwise have been.
Naturally, I refused any food for breakfast while things tried to settle (a forlorn hope) but at least they moved me to a more convenient location, a little side room off the emergency treatment area, where things could evolve in comparative peace.
Nevertheless a few people came to see me, including the duty doctor. She told me at first that they were planning to keep me under observation for 24 hours and then send me home, but when she saw what was going on, she went away for another think.
In the meantime my blood tests came back. Something in my blood that should be less than 100 and I’ve been living with figures in the 260-270 range for the last few years has suddenly shot up to 316 in the period since my last blood test.
Apparently those kinds of figures won’t usually support life and they are quite concerned. Consequently an ambulance pulled up and I was bundled on a stretcher and stuck in the back.
So here I am at Avranches, 30 kilometres down the road where there’s a regional hospital.
Strangely enough, this was where it all started in March last year when the neurologist sent me here for tests and they couldn’t find the problem – hence my visits to Paris.
The hospital is an old monastery by the looks of things at the front, but there’s a whole huge new extension built on the back and it’s really quite nice and modern. The rooms are small but it’s not as if I need much
So here I am, being cared for and cossetted by a group of nurses. Actually, for the most part they are quite brusque and business-like which differs from most of the nurses in Paris who are much more patient-orientated, but I suppose that they have much more work to do and can’t find the time to be as sociable
While I was asleep at some point during the afternoon there was a dream about a lorry driver who was saying something about how easy it was to set himself up in business. He had a tanker lorry but I remember him having an old “D”-registered ex-RAF tanker before that one. He had several trailers that ere quite substantial trailers and I was saying that he didn’t pick these up for peanuts, and by the looks of things were specially-made. It was quite obvious to me that yes, you can set yourself up in business but you need to have the kind of capital to ba able to do that kind of thing. That’s not just available to everyone at all
And that reminds me of someone I know who lives in the countryside a few miles south of Nantwich, who made a fortune simply by being willing to go crawling and climbing where other people dared not go
The food here is the usual hospital rubbish, I have to say, so it’s a good job that I’m not feeling in the mood to eat anything right no, which is just as well.
And so I’m going to try to sleep – a forlorn hope, I reckon. I’m feeling a little better, but not that much.
I’ve set the bed fairly high so it’s easier for me to get out and in without any help (something that will be quite important as the night develops) but they aren’t happy about it and keep on trying to lower it. I’m winning the fight at the moment but things will almost inevitably change as the night goes on.
It’s “visions of Bernard Bresslaw” in CARRY ON DOCTOR hobbling around with his leg in plaster
"What’s the matter with you?" asked Frankie Howerd
"Appendicitis" said Bresslaw
"So why the plaster on the leg?"
"I fell off the operating table"
