… 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.
