I write today's blog at somewhat of a different venue from usual. Having woken on Wednesday morning with a sensitive ear, it (the ear) then started to develop into what I think medical students call a 'case'. Over the following day I developed a temperature whilst my ear developed into a great big prize cauliflower with my cheek, jaw and neck joining it in sympathy.
So after being bounced from A+E to home, to the walk-in centre back to A+E, who called in the ENT specialist. I was sent 'upstairs' and admitted to hospital for what was described as a 'hardcore' session of antibiotics. I explained to the doctor that is was only my ear but she tapped me on my shoulder in a reassuring way and said "If you don't want it to fall off then this is the best course of action"! I thought she was joking, but there was a sinister undercurrent to her delivery.
Laying here in bed with a penicillin drip in my arm and another type of penicillin being injected into me every six hours I have to admit that I am not feeling quite so cavalier about the thing now. My ear is bright red and highly inflamed with about 50% loss of wrinkle definition. I also have reasonably significant swelling on the face right down to my neck. The fever is gone but that is about it. I don't do hospitals normally - well not overnight, anyway - and for my part I can't see the attraction.
At A+E the porter was called to take me up to the ward for admittance. He wanted to push me there in a wheelchair but I explained it was only an ear, and I could walk. I think he was a little put out that he couldn't push me and as he took us up to the ward he told us how sad it was that they had a child die today. He explained that pushing an adult into the refrigerator is easier than a four year-old. I can't say that it was the reassuring "Welcome to the ward, you're in safe hands here" speech I would have preferred.
So the guy opposite me is an amateur boxer who got a bit drunk and angry and boxed his front window in with one punch, partially severing a muscle. I didn't think I'd be able to knock up a rapport with him somehow. Apart from the time the surgeon was sewing him up most of his time was spent calling his partner to beg for one more chance. This went on into the early hours. The little sleep I did get was interrupted by him chatting with another 'guest' at 4:30 in the morning!
Another guy is a double amputee from the knee downwards and he was trying to persuade the surgeon to remove two of his fingers. They ended up compromising and the surgeon took off just one finger.
Sleep was hard to come by, especially with the tubes in the arm. However, the radio choices are not helping and having plumped for the hospital radio you'd think they'd be circumspect with their choices of music. Having come in with a temperature and an ear so hot it burned the first two songs did not help. 'Fever' followed by Johnny Cash singing into my ear that 'it burns burns burns, the ring of fire...'
It is possible that they were being tongue-in-cheek with "A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down" and the Baron Knights (who has heard of them nowadays?) doing "A little white bum" (tribute come piss-take of "A Little White Bull"... not much better than if they had done the real song, I feel. And did I really need "Come on and get happy, get ready for judgement day" bouncing into my ear?
Having not turned off my radio before I drifted away with the fairies I roused to the surreal sound of Frankie Howerd and a female singer duetting on a very odd version of 'All Through The Night' and when Handel's Water Music came on I can only assume it was the association that meant off I had to trot for a pee.
What with the mobile phones, the not very dimmed lights and some nurses commitment to a tidy store as she opened what can only have been the bed pan cupboard at 2am causing a landslide of bed pans falling to the floor echoing around the entire hospital... I am surprised I got any sleep at all!
Whatever happened to Matron?
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