Tag Archives: priest

Wednesday 7th December 2022 – FOR THOSE OF YOU …

… who were keeping score, I made it as far as the railway station before I fell down the stairs there. A couple of kind passers-by and a railway employee helped me to my feet and bandaged the cut on my hand, and then a railway porter was summoned to escort me – well, rather half-carry me to the hotel because my legs had turned to rubber.

Previously though, I couldn’t summon up the strength to climb onto the bus and a passenger had to help me. And then at the station, I couldn’t climb up the kerb so I couldn’t go down the ramp from the bus station. I had to walk all the way up the side of the road and onto the station where I had my encounter with the stairs.

There’s no doubt about it. This is serious.

At least I had a good sleep last night. It took ages to actually drop off but once I’d gone I’d gone for good. The alarm awoke me and I even managed to go to the bathroom but I had to be shaken awake for them to give me a blood test and I really didn’t notice breakfast coming in. It was already on the windoowsill when I looked for it.

Later on the nurses came to visit me and they went through their usual questionnaire
Senior nurse – “have you been to the toilet this morning?”
Our Hero emerging from the toilet – “errrr …. “

They gave me all of the medication that I needed to take over the next few days and also some of the paperwork. We had to wait for the rest.

The priest finally came to see me too but he had nothing to add to our discussion of Monday and it really was a waste of time.

After lunch the doctor came round and handed me the rest of the paperwork and wished me well, with that crooked smile on her face. The nurses came along after and took out the catheter from the back of my hand which was a great relief to me, that’s for sure. The pain was starting to get on my nerves.

From there I bravely staggered off to the showers for a good wash and brush up before I set sail. And then I changed into my own clothes.

Some of the stuff I’d packed before leaving and the rest I quickly gathered up and then said “goodbye” to the nurse who came to see me off.

There’ a sign on the wall from the rest area by the top of the steps near the entrance that “it’s 4 minutes” to the lift up to the ward where I had been living. The walk took me 25 minutes and I really did have to stop for a rest.

While I was there I took a gamble and went to book a room at the Ibis Budget Hotel at the back of the railway station. The bad news was that they only had rooms for tonight and not tomorrow.

Not to be outdone, I noticed that tomorrow night there was still a room at the hotel by the Gare du Midi in Brussels where I stayed when I arrived and where I had left some stuff. Consequently I booked the room there and with a bit of luck I can recover my things, if they still have them.

My journey down to the bus stop was slow, steady and painful and I’ve described my journey from there down to the hotel. And how I was glad to fall onto my bed.

in the evening I went across the road to the fritkot for some food. It was slightly easier without anything to carry so i have made an executive decision – and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, an executive decision is a decision where if it goes wrong, the person making it is executed.

And the decision? I’m going to jettison absolutely everything that is not essential – everything – and just make a crawl for it with just the laptop and a little paperwork. No medication, no washing equipment, no food, nothing. Alison will come past at some point at her convenience and pick up what I’ve left and keep it for whenever.

If that doesn’t work then nothing will. Of my 700km journey I’ve gone about 5 kms so far and already had one accident. How many more am I going to have before I make it home? If I ever do.

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Monday 5th December 2022 – SO THAT’S THAT THEN.

On Wednesday I shall be out on my ear. Complete, presumably, with the dressing on my left shoulder but without the virus, without my mobility and without an answer to the dozens of questions that I have asked.

And without the possibility of going for this physiotherapy thing either. Apparently there are strict criteria about who is and isn’t permitted to go and I don’t fit.

So what are the possibilities of going home?

  • having an ambulance (actually a Voiture Sanitaire Legère) to take me to my door – at a cost of €3600
  • having an ambulance of the hospital deposit me anywhere I like within the borders of Belgium
  • being shown the door here and left to fend for myself

Quite obviously, the first option is out of the question. It’s an absurdity.

The second option is out of the question too. Being deposited at Quévy or Doornik where I don’t know anyone or anything, don’t know where the railway stations or the hotels are – those kinds of options are out of the question too.

And so n°3 it is. I’ll stagger to the bus stop if I can, take the bus to the railway station and then head for the Ibis Budget at the back of the station and plan my next move.

Of course, going home and arriving as quickly as possible is my goal and I can’t wait to to be in the comfort and safety of my own four walls. But if I have a fall I’ll find myself in the Casualty department. The hospital isn’t the only thing that can play at going round and round in circles and eventually disappearing up its own catheter.

The doctor took quite a delight in telling me this. You could see her trying to suppress a smile as she spoke. She actually said “although we know that you’re not in any fit state” to make my own way home, or something like that. You can imagine the guffaw that that brought forth.

The Social Services woman just sat in a corner trying to pretend that she wasn’t here so I took a great deal of delight trying to drag her into the chat, much to her dismay.

Of course you can imagine how this developed. I told her that if this had happened 40 years ago no-one would have believed it. But what would have been satire 40 years ago is now very much the norm these days and no-one bats an eyelid any more.

Half an hour after they had left, bang on cue, the priest turned up – the one who saw me a while ago. He asked how I was so I told him the situation. He was appalled as you probably are by the whole situation.

So seeing as I had his attention I rather bent his ear with my problems. I concluded my rant by saying that the Byzantine administration is totally divorced from reality. He described it as an administration disjoncté (we were talking in French) and that’s a phrase that I’ll remember for future use.

In the end he wandered away. Somehow I’d managed to beat him down. I don’t think that anything will actually come of this but as I have said before, “throw a lot of whatsit onto a wherever and some of it might stick”.

Actually, I’m rather lucky. Their plan was to heave me out tomorrow morning and then I’d have to come back in the afternoon for my appointment with the Oncology department. But they agreed to let me stay until Wednesday and the Oncology department will come to me on Tuesday.

In actual fact, what I bet will happen is that instead of coming to me, the oncology department will send a messenger with the plasma and a nurse will couple me up. No-one from the Oncology department will set foot in here.

That would be in accordance with usual practice from the departments involved in my (lack of) care.

On the good side though, once more my friends have rallied to the flag. I was chatting to Rosemary later on the ‘phone and she said “why don’t you come and stay with me? Get the train down here”.

This is on a par with Rachel’s offer to fly over from Canada to look after me. As I’ve said before, I don’t have many friends but those I have are the best in the world.

Unfortunately I had to decline Rosemary’s offer. If I’m going anywhere, I’m going home. I need to have my things around me, regroup my forces, and make plans for the future. if I’m going to stay at home and let nature take its course, I won’t be able to negotiate the long journey home from Rosemary’s whenever it becomes necessary,

Last night I needed to regroup my forces because I had something of a rough night. I went to sleep late but awoke at about 03:00 with the computer and the Old-Time Radio going and my headphones on. I switched everything off and tried my best to go back to sleep. But that wasn’t easy.

It was a very tired and exhausted me who dragged himself out of bed when the alarm went off at 06:30. I was playing about on the laptop when the student came to see me. She told me that my breakfast would be delayed as they needed a blood sample.

When she came back with all of the equipment she told me that she’d heard that there was a lot of trouble trying to find one of my veins and that they moved about quite a lot.

Nevertheless she crawled all over me inspecting my arms until she found something that she thought would do. “Be brave” I urged, so she dived in with her needle. It was the most painless that I have ever had and she cried “look, it works!” and I was so pleased for her.

When she’d finished I asked her how she’d managed to do it so well if it was so difficult and my veins moved around so much.

“Before I come to work” she said “I practise skipping with a rope to keep myself fit.”

She also tells me that she has a deep-sea diver’s licence and has been scuba-diving around the odd wreck or two. Here’s a girl who has a lot to say for herself.

Before she left she took my blood pressure etc. And after all of her mountaineering it’s hardly a surprise that half an hour later a qualified nurse came by to take my blood pressure again.

“Your blood pressure was rather high just now” she explained.

“Ohh really?” I asked. “I wonder why”

The rest of the day has passed between falling asleep and being shaken awake for something or other.

There was a new physiotherapist who took me down to the door at the end of the corridor. It was the usual stagger down there and a rather undignified stumble back here. It’s clear to almost everyone that never mind the 600 metres to the bus stop – I can’t even make 60 metres right now.

She had me doing a couple of exercises afterwards and I managed to tear a muscle in the side of my thigh. This bodes well for Wednesday, doesn’t it?

The doctor passed by during the morning too, presumably to soften me up for the meeting this afternoon. There are very strange things happening in this place, to be sure.

At some point I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I dreamt that all the nurses were trying to do something to me, pulling me about some on one side of the bed, some on the other so I couldn’t actually roll over into a comfortable way for them. I suddenly awoke and found that it was 02:15 and I still had the headphones on and the radio on the computer was still going. It was a programme about doctors and nurses coming to the bedside. I had something of an imaginary fight trying to deal with the skeleton of this situation before I realised what was going on and decided to go to sleep.

I’m not sure if I recorded this but somewhere during the night I dreamt that there was probably 20 people sleeping with me last night, all officers in different army regiments who had somehow come down to see where I was and what I was doing, and who I was doing it with, and ended up sleeping all around me. What I’d done was that I’d awoken early and switched everyone’s alarm clock around so that they would all be awoken at the wrong time, or each person would be awoken at the wrong time so that I could have a lie-in that particular morning

While I was asleep in the morning I was dreaming that I was Ali Baba. I was actually at an office and we were having a Christmas party. It was a fancy-dress parade and I’d bought everything for the people who worked for me, some little presents. When they’d all left after this party in this room that the office was throwing I changed into someone who was half-naked and climbed into some kind of silver sack kind of thing, a mesh sack, and went into the room where the party was taking place as Ali Baba in his laundry basket. I went to have a look and there were all kinds of stalls over at one end of the room with flowers and Christmas wreaths etc. There was some kind of stall selling DiY tools, all old kinds of stock that you’d typically find in a market stall including liquid easing oil at £2:99 a tin, like a reasonably-sized spam tin size. It was all quite interesting, this old stall selling these tools that were there. The strange thing was that no-one too any notice of me. I thought that my costume of Ali Baba was extremely ingenious but no-one made any kind of comment about it whatever. I was quite disappointed about that.

So right now I’m off to bed I’ve had enough for today and with the Oncology department becoming involved it’s going to be a tiring day.

And then there’s Wednesday and leaving here too. I’m not looking forward to that but even so, I need to be on form.

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Tuesday 22nd November 2022 – I WAS WRONG …

… about having a good night last night. All kinds of things were going off.

But never mind that – something much more important and unusual happened this morning.

In fact, a priest came to see me.

The timing makes me think that it’s to do with my request for euthanasia but he never mentioned the subject. He listed to all of my complaint. He even made me ages late for my Welsh class but I wasn’t all that bothered because I enjoyed his visit, strange as it it to day it.

However the antics of last night were hilarious.

Having an urgent need to visit the bathroom and tied to the bed by the sac of fluid from my pericardium, I asked for a bottle.

Sitting in bed trying to use a bottle was psychologically impossible so after a while I changed position and sat on the edge of the bed to try again

Just then a nurse came in and asked how I was doing My reply of “nothing yet” brought forth a lecture about the dangers of a full bladder

She measured it and found that it was indeed full so she went to find another nurse who subjected me to yet another lecture on the subject of full bladders and insisted on fitting a catheter. Naturally we had quite a stand-off on this point and the argument raged for quite a while.

At some point a third nurse joined in the fun. and with three nurses now watching me, however was I supposed to use the bottle under these circumstances?

In the end I chased them and their catheters away and once they had gone it took about 10 minutes to make use of the bottle.

The upshot of all of this is that they brought me a “toilet chair” that I can use in comfort and taunt whoever it is who is interested in my “output”.

Eventually I finally managed to drop off to sleep. There was something about being in a cricket pavilion last night. I was there with Nerina. There was something about people had to register and register the clubs from which they had come and where they were signing for. After 3 or 4 entries it all became very confused. There was some kind of issue about Derbyshire but nevertheless I wrote “Derbyshire” on the form and thought that I’d deal later with any flak about it. It was raining outside. I thought “how are they going to start this cricket match?” but anyway they did, as far as I knew. Later on I was standing on a bank at the side of the road when a large lorry pulled up, a farm cattle truck-type of thing. It was Sherman Downey with a couple of rubber edgings for doors or windscreens. I was surprised and said that I hadn’t actually ordered anything at the moment. That took him by surprise too. he was there with these 2 rubber edges that I didn’t want.

So with the priest making me late for my Welsh lesson I joined in the class somewhat later. And I wasn’t there for long before an endless stream of nurses kept on interrupting me. In the end I logged out.

This afternoon I went for a couple of tests and examinations. The last one of this bunch was an echograph performed by a doctor with an assistant who looked as if she was about 12.

After he finished with his examination with the echograph I asked the little girl if she’d like a go and so with a big smile and with help from me and from the echpographist she used the echograph to examine my heart

The net result is that here is no more water around the heart for now – just a bit of sediment that causes no problem

After the echographist went to make his report, I had a chat with his little assistant. I asked her how long she’d been a student and she replied “2 days!”.

She’s actually a schoolgirl on a work placement and she was ever so pleased because I was the first patient she’s ever examined. But as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m all in favour of letting the students practise on me.

They have to learn somehow.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’ve finished my notes, had a good chat with Alison and Rosemary and have everything prepared just where I need it.

And I’ve had a fever too – a temperature of 38.7°C. They’ve packed me in bed with a few ice-packs and it’s down now to 37.9°C

After falling asleep yesterday evening and having all kinds of issues during the night, I want a peaceful evening and a good sleep. I wonder how someone might come along and disrupt me again.

It goes without saying that they won’t let me have any peace and quiet. This crew in the ward this week are nothing like the kind souls of last week.

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