The road to recovery..is not always smooth

Hospital seems a lifetime away as I lay in my bed this morning. Two days without food as I clung to my drips nil by mouth. When a nurse attempted to remove my jug of "rinse and swill" water that had, at least kept my mouth moist for 48 hours...she was treated to a Gollum like portrayal of a man in need.

I had also not fully appreciated the luxury that I had been allowed in having a single room to myself for the first here nights. handy for the amount of visits that I had to make to the toilet sometimes one after the other. I spent a night out on the ward at the end as my temperature was a bit high. high due to the excessive heat, the inability to open windows and the fact that I'm used to a 450 year old house with no heating.

The ward. Now here was an experience. A night with the great unwashed. A night with people who I only had one thing in common with. An opportunity to watch society in microcosm. One lad was a private contractor who was desperate to get back to work otherwise he might lose the contract. Another who had a damaged elbow that should have been operated on but he hospital had timetabled his CT scan and theatre time together so he had to wait another day for his second operation. a third gentleman had limited English and apparently sleep apnea and didn't seem inclined to take on any of the suggestions that the doctors were giving him. He also had a love of putting his gown on backwards despite numerous requests not to. The last gentleman in the bed next to me had lost fingers due to German booby traps at the end of the war. He asked where I was from. hen I said Takeley, near Stansted Airport, he said that he had lived in Stortford all of his life and never heard of it. I filed him under "mad as a piece of cheese," and though conversation over. On his first night he also managed to snore loudly, talk frequently in his sleep and then exit he bed from the wrong side and disconnect any tubes he was attached to as I lay in the next bed unable to sleep, having played 150 games (1 level of Flow Free) on the ipad and the watch a movie.

Mind you if there's one thing that I did get was an appreciation of the constant strife that the nurses go through and how they, for the most part remain cheery through it all. When you have to deal with one back to front gown and anything that may pop up in the limited conversation and an 8 fingered attempt to put on fresh pyjama bottoms as you open the curtains, a quick smile and they take it in their stride and its off to the next bed.

It always pays o be nice. I read the discharge notes which described me as a "51 year old pleasant gentleman." Mind you if he had seen me when the nurse tried to take my water away......