{"id":17714,"date":"2023-12-18T20:04:59","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T20:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=17714"},"modified":"2023-12-21T21:35:04","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T21:35:04","slug":"monday-18th-december-here-i-all-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=17714","title":{"rendered":"Monday 18th December – HERE I ALL AM …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in a seat against a window in a room on the second floor of the Batiment Heuyer<\/em> of the H\u00f4pital Piti\u00e9-Salpetri\u00e8re.<\/p>\n

That’s the Haematology department, so you can imagine why I’m here.<\/p>\n

And we’ve just had another delightful verbal exchange, of the kind that you can only have in a hospital.
\nWard orderly (about to take Our Hero’s temperature) "are you wearing a hearing aid?"<\/strong><\/em>
\nOur Hero "Pardon?"<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Last night I ended up going to bed rather later than I intended. Alison was on line, I noticed, and I wanted to have a chat so it was nearer midnight when I ended up in bed.<\/p>\n

Once I was in bed, I found it difficult to go off to sleep, as seems to be the usual case when I’m having to leave my bed early for something special.<\/p>\n

When the alarm went off at 05:55 I staggered to my feet and set the wheels in motion. I’d made some sandwiches and packed last night but I had to sort out my medication, have a good wash change my clothes and so on.<\/p>\n

There I was, all nice and ready quite early, but the taxi was late. Apparently my co-voyager is an inmate at the Centre de Re-education and having planned to be awoken at, coincidentally, the time of the change of shift, everyone there thought that everyone else had done awoken her. In the end it was the taxi driver who had to shake her awake.<\/p>\n

And hadn’t he hit the jackpot? Not only did he manage to cram two different trips into one car on the outward journey, there was also a passenger to bring back. That’s the kind of day of which every taxi driver dreams, and good luck to him.<\/p>\n

The other passenger had had a brain tumour and was blind, but its true what they say about other senses making up for those that you’ve lost, because she spoke enough to make up for it.<\/p>\n

The driver was quite garrulous too, an older guy for a change, and it turned out that all three of us were cat-lovers so we had a really good chat all the way to Paris.<\/p>\n

But I had more in common with the driver than the obvious. He too had lived with a woman and her child for several years and when they separated, he missed the little girl far more than he missed her mother. It seems that I’m not the only one who ought to have been a father. He certainly laughed at the story of Roxanne going off down the street several times on my Honda moped at 8 and 9 years old.<\/p>\n

Despite being late, we stopped off for a coffee at a service area too. I had plenty of time to kill and the other passenger didn’t seem to be too bothered.<\/p>\n

At Paris we dropped off our passenger at a hospital in the west side of the city and then headed across to the Porte d’Italie<\/em> and my hospital.<\/p>\n

My check-in time was 13:15 but I was here at 12:30. Nevertheless, my room was ready so I was installed here quite quickly.<\/p>\n

The room is nice and comfortable, but it’s cold, as I expected and there is no internet.<\/p>\n

All kinds of people came to see me so I didn’t really have a chance to settle down for quite a while.<\/p>\n

It only took two goes for the nurse to put a catheter in my arm, so well done her.<\/p>\n

We’ve had all kinds of orderlies and the like too, including a couple of doctors.<\/p>\n

So thanks to the doctors, I now know what is the plan, and it is as I expected.<\/p>\n

Apart from the usual tests that have been programmed, they are going to make a start on giving me this medication about which they talked the last time that I was here.<\/p>\n

It has some serious side-effects and is not really recommended for anyone who has cardiac issues (which is probably why they never prescribed it at Leuven) but they think that it’s worth a try.<\/p>\n

It’s only natural that they want to administer it under medical supervision. And so if you hear nothing more from me, you’ll know that the side effects were as serious as predicted and the cardiac team wasn’t quick enough.<\/p>\n

They tell me that I’ll be here until Thursday but I’ve heard promises like that before.<\/p>\n

Eventually I managed to find a quiet moment to transcribe the dictaphone notes. During the night I reached out for a green box that was on the bed with all of my shoe care stuff in it. Of course the box wasn’t there but I ended up with an absolutely enormous attack of cramp, thinking “what a way to start this flaming thing about Paris”.<\/p>\n

And then there was Aberystwyth Town v Drenewydd in the Welsh Premier League. The Aberystwyth keeper Dave Jones had the ball and was bringing it upfield ready to clear it forward when one of the Drenewydd players tackled him and kicked him on the ankle. You could hear him cry out from where I was and the noise actually awoke me.<\/p>\n

Later on, I climbed over the wall of a palace into the courtyard where all of this re-education was taking place. I found my particular body that was in there so I quickly took from it the elastic that was around the ankles and began to rock that particular version of me backwards and forwards to try to free off the movement in the legs but just then I awoke again<\/p>\n

The hospital food is pretty appalling, as you might expect, but that’s not my major worry right now.<\/p>\n

Having been off the Aranesp for a couple of months, my blood count has crashed down to 7.8. That’s below the critical level and will probably explain why I’ve been feeling so miserable just recently.<\/p>\n

And so they have sent off to the laboratory for some blood and it’s likely that I’ll be awoken at some silly hour of the night for a blood transfusion.<\/p>\n

It looks as if I can’t have a decent night’s sleep even when I’m in somewhere like this. I’ve spent most of the afternoon listening to Hawkwind so I’ll probably just carry on until I fall asleep or the world falls in on my head.<\/p>\n

I definitely TOOK THE WRONG STEP YEARS AGO<\/a><\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in a seat against a window in a room on the second floor of the Batiment Heuyer of the H\u00f4pital Piti\u00e9-Salpetri\u00e8re. That’s the Haematology department, so you can imagine why I’m here. And we’ve just had another delightful verbal exchange, of the kind that you can only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,4507,1616,8571,15483,1308,7876],"tags":[5920,5222,5181,1231,212,2560,5565,8581,7022,15484,1311,7891,1029],"class_list":["post-17714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-hospital-pitie-salpetriere","category-paris","category-place-darmes","tag-alison-weihe","tag-blood-count","tag-blood-test","tag-cramp","tag-dream","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-hospital-food","tag-hospital-pitie-salpetriere","tag-paris-2","tag-place-darmes","tag-taxi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17723,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17714\/revisions\/17723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}