I thought I was finished with the local hospital, I really did, apart from check-ups.
However last Wednesday night I felt so queasy I couldn’t sleep. We’ll just pause a moment to admire that word: queasy. It is so apt it’s almost onomatopoeic and that meaning a word that sounds as it is. Queasy is a wonderful word; you wouldn’t be able to say it leaning over a ship’s rail in a heavy sea, you’d be fulfilling the promise of it instantly and thoroughly.
Once again my friend the heirloom bowl and I sat through the night and I finally brought my tea up at seven in the morning. Well it’s that time of year, there’s a lot of stuff about I thought. I felt awful all day and then vomited blood at tea time. Oh oh. I rang NHS111 consultation service and was put through to an actual doctor quite quickly who told me to get to the nearest hospital in a rush. So I packed a suitcase quickly – how many times have you read that in this column? I can get survival necessities into a hand luggage size case with wheels (so you don’t have to carry it if you are weak and can sit on it if your knees go) in about five minutes.
So rush rush rush into A&E, who found me on the computer at speed (I have frequent flyer miles) and then sit and………….w…..a…i….t.
I think I arrived at seven, got triaged at nine, into a cubicle at eleven. Then, all tests done and hooked up to a machine my oxygen levels dropped dramatically and I set off the alarm ten times. Then I was on oxygen and in a barrier nursing facility in a couple of hours. It was quite the coldest bedroom I’ve ever been in, if you were brought up in the further reaches of Scotland you’d have felt quite at home. I was so tired I couldn’t even be bothered to shiver and kept falling asleep between visits from doctors giving me the once over.
Do you ever read your horoscope for the year ahead? I do. I don’t recall any at the start of 2018 saying that the theme for this year would be alarming medical emergencies and generalised apprehension about whether or not I would still be here tomorrow, but it has been. Let’s hope this was the final fling on the way to better things, better health and just being better. In the end it turned out to be simply viral gastro-enteritis, which was confirmed by the diahorrea that began just as I was being discharged (in the circumstances another very apt, unfortunately apt, word) at tea time.
So I am at home (which you could probably have deuced by the fact that you are reading this) resting quietly and definitely not eating.
Look on the bright side – could be slimming, didn’t happen at Christmas, OT was helpful (apart from a phone call when he got angry because he didn’t know when he could shower or eat and got very ratty with me for being unpredictably discharged.)
Talking of which, gotta go.
Just gastro enteritis – lovely gastro enteritis thank goodness for that.
Must go.
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