Looking into holes. Part nine

Wednesday started ok but turned out to be a vile day. I had a fillip on Tuesday when one of the new anti-biotics seemed to significantly diminish the virus. Went for a CT scan which meant being wheeled through air conditioned corners and straights and it felt so fresh. I was placed in the scanner for a few minutes and when released I said to the operator, in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger “I need to go to Mars”. The operator looked at me confused and said “takes all sorts”. I thought “yeah I’ll take some liquorice allsorts.

Im kind of getting my timelines messed up here so I’m losing some of the chronology but hopefully retaining some of the sense. There are always staff challenges in the NHS with the staff shortage of 100K nationwide. So when something goes wrong, like turning up to work when some of your colleagues didn’t, suddenly you’re expected to just get on with it. 

Young soldier in the film Zulu: “Why us Sarge? Why us?”

Nigel Green, staring full ahead and barely moving his mouth responds.

 “Cos we’re here lad. Nobody else”

Try being that stoic every day of the week; you’ll have a breakdown in a month or certainly want to harm something or someone. Hospitals are a massive wide ranging enterprise and feel this strained everyday. I heard something kick off on Wednesday and I think there may be a disciplinary because angels are held to higher accounts than demons. If you hear someone say that the NHS is too big then that’s like saying the Lake District is too big. We just need to have people at the top whose main qualification is not to take advantage of a global financial crisis, make millions, become health Secretary and then tell us we need to be more responsible for ourselves and our health. Frightening.  

Any way temperature up, down and up, up, up. Antibiotics in, in, in.. panic, not confusion, as choices are being made about how long someone from the doctor’s coterie take to acknowledge you and you can secure a confirmation that the patient will be seen. 

When I was younger I sometimes would get the bus into town. Times didn’t always match the timetable and I would lose patience and run to the next stop only to find the bus sail past me. This pattern of indecisive travel planning was eventually exhausted when I reached town. “I’ll get the bus back, I’m knackered” I’d think to myself.

At some point in the late afternoon I suddenly became important, temperature above 45, breathing very short and weak and uncomfortable. Again a bit of a mess I pass out and when I wake there’s a consultant from the ICU looking at me with doctors and nurses around him looking in awe at me. They looked like one of those very serious family portraits.

ICU man in a wheelchair, speaks, looking through me, but conscious of his audience:

“You see that? You see it? Do you see it? In the end it can be that simple.”

Apparently they’d opted for an infusion of morphine and it did work I felt fresher and quickly played to that feeling.

“My work here is done” and he turned on a sixpence and was gone.

Can’t believe how tiring it is to just type so was going to do this yesterday. All done now. I’ll have a rest and I’m just going to be very relaxed about how and when I follow up.