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How not to pass a Friday
I am up rather early for a Saturday morning, having collapsed onto my bed at about 7pm last night and woken up for a half hour around midnight before sleeping through again until 8.30 this morning.
I am sitting here with a pile of medication on one side and a can of coke on the other, being banned from drinking (or eating) anything hot (or spicy) for 5 days. I have a snotty nose that I am not allowed to blow, but at least I can breathe through it most of the time. Thursday night and most of yesterday was not a pleasant period for yours truly.
You know that you're in for an interesting time when you realise that for the third time in one day, three of the five major orifices on your head are pouring claret in big, red and never ending blobs into any and every receptacle you can get your hands on. This went on, periodically for a four hour stretch, when any exertion greater than scratching an itch was enough to start the flow off.
Thus it was that I found myself sitting in the A&E observation ward at Barnet Hospital from 1am to 10am on Friday morning, wearing what can only be described as a nose sling, which held in place two charmingly named nasal tampons (now there's a picture), which at 8cm each are amongst the last things you willing want shoved their full length up your nostrils. In my right arm, I had what could only be described a plastic tap - not joined to anything, just there in case, after blood samples had been taken and a saline shot administered.
Between that and the nosebag, you will understand the level of trepidation I was experiencing at this point.
Despite being offered a bed, I elected to sit in a reclinable chair for the night. It's not as if there was any chance of sleeping despite being dog tired. Cold drinks only, and strict orders not to talk.
Out of sheer boredom, and to pass the time, I scribbled down some impressions on a photocopied Patient History Sheet, and it's those I am using to remind me now of what I was feeling at the time.
Spending the early hours being pretty much ignored except for a blood pressure test at 5.30 am, in a ward where one person is on suicide watch, and another, a very ancient and demented old lady called Lily passed the night being pretty much restrained from hurting herself by a nurse whose patience was severely stretched, is not an uplifting experience. Especially when your face is throbbing and you can only breathe through your mouth.
The only bright spot was that once it got daylight, I was able to wander on to the car park for some fresh air. The view across the ridge from Barnet Hospital is actually quite nice, and in the first hour or so after dawn, the view through the mist is quite enlivening.
By 8.30am it was clear that the local Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) people neither had the capacity nor desire to see another patient, so I am referred to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. The ambulance gets me there at about 12.30 and I am seen immediately, which is nice. Except that the correct equipment wasn't where it was supposed to be, and the rather prissy South African doctor threw a hissy fit and stormed off until it was sorted, leaving me wearing an increasingly manky nosebag, the condition of which was not helped by the sneezing fit I was now experiencing (I'd have thought it impossible to sneeze with bloody great absorbent thingies shoved up into your sinuses, but believe me when I say you can. Snot will find a way. And an exit).
Finally, by 2pm, the doctor is back, and despite his prissy, preppy nature, is very competent.
My nerves, already frayed, are stretched a little further when he produces a selection of stainless steel and plastic devices ready to invade my nose, and dons some rather technical looking post modern head gear, which would not come amiss in a science fiction movie.
For the next 20 minutes, I allow my face to be subjected to the most thoroughly unpleasant experience it's ever had with my co-operation and acquiescence. The word cauterization is involved. It easily beat the previous 12 hours, in which I thought I'd become an expert on just how mightily uncomfortable a malfunctioning neb could be.
And then it was over. No more blood, and a comparatively free airway. But my God, how the snot glands compensate...
I had to wait another hour and a half for the prescription to be made up by the hospital pharmacy, and spent that alternately wandering around outside, enjoying having a clear nose, and sitting in the cafeteria eating a couple of sarnies and a cold fruit drink (able to SMELL but not touch coffee). And then home on the bus.
Kudos to DT without whom I wouldn't have made it to the hospital, clutching as I was, various absorbent things in an attempt to prevent myself bleeding all over the taxi in the early hours of Friday morning, and for sitting around in A&E, providing moral support until it became clear they were not letting me out for the duration. I owe the lad a fair number of pints for moral support. And for cleaning the various sinks and bowls left around the Athenaeum Club in my haste to be gone.
I am off for another lie down.
I am sitting here with a pile of medication on one side and a can of coke on the other, being banned from drinking (or eating) anything hot (or spicy) for 5 days. I have a snotty nose that I am not allowed to blow, but at least I can breathe through it most of the time. Thursday night and most of yesterday was not a pleasant period for yours truly.
You know that you're in for an interesting time when you realise that for the third time in one day, three of the five major orifices on your head are pouring claret in big, red and never ending blobs into any and every receptacle you can get your hands on. This went on, periodically for a four hour stretch, when any exertion greater than scratching an itch was enough to start the flow off.
Thus it was that I found myself sitting in the A&E observation ward at Barnet Hospital from 1am to 10am on Friday morning, wearing what can only be described as a nose sling, which held in place two charmingly named nasal tampons (now there's a picture), which at 8cm each are amongst the last things you willing want shoved their full length up your nostrils. In my right arm, I had what could only be described a plastic tap - not joined to anything, just there in case, after blood samples had been taken and a saline shot administered.
Between that and the nosebag, you will understand the level of trepidation I was experiencing at this point.
Despite being offered a bed, I elected to sit in a reclinable chair for the night. It's not as if there was any chance of sleeping despite being dog tired. Cold drinks only, and strict orders not to talk.
Out of sheer boredom, and to pass the time, I scribbled down some impressions on a photocopied Patient History Sheet, and it's those I am using to remind me now of what I was feeling at the time.
Spending the early hours being pretty much ignored except for a blood pressure test at 5.30 am, in a ward where one person is on suicide watch, and another, a very ancient and demented old lady called Lily passed the night being pretty much restrained from hurting herself by a nurse whose patience was severely stretched, is not an uplifting experience. Especially when your face is throbbing and you can only breathe through your mouth.
The only bright spot was that once it got daylight, I was able to wander on to the car park for some fresh air. The view across the ridge from Barnet Hospital is actually quite nice, and in the first hour or so after dawn, the view through the mist is quite enlivening.
By 8.30am it was clear that the local Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) people neither had the capacity nor desire to see another patient, so I am referred to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. The ambulance gets me there at about 12.30 and I am seen immediately, which is nice. Except that the correct equipment wasn't where it was supposed to be, and the rather prissy South African doctor threw a hissy fit and stormed off until it was sorted, leaving me wearing an increasingly manky nosebag, the condition of which was not helped by the sneezing fit I was now experiencing (I'd have thought it impossible to sneeze with bloody great absorbent thingies shoved up into your sinuses, but believe me when I say you can. Snot will find a way. And an exit).
Finally, by 2pm, the doctor is back, and despite his prissy, preppy nature, is very competent.
My nerves, already frayed, are stretched a little further when he produces a selection of stainless steel and plastic devices ready to invade my nose, and dons some rather technical looking post modern head gear, which would not come amiss in a science fiction movie.
For the next 20 minutes, I allow my face to be subjected to the most thoroughly unpleasant experience it's ever had with my co-operation and acquiescence. The word cauterization is involved. It easily beat the previous 12 hours, in which I thought I'd become an expert on just how mightily uncomfortable a malfunctioning neb could be.
And then it was over. No more blood, and a comparatively free airway. But my God, how the snot glands compensate...
I had to wait another hour and a half for the prescription to be made up by the hospital pharmacy, and spent that alternately wandering around outside, enjoying having a clear nose, and sitting in the cafeteria eating a couple of sarnies and a cold fruit drink (able to SMELL but not touch coffee). And then home on the bus.
Kudos to DT without whom I wouldn't have made it to the hospital, clutching as I was, various absorbent things in an attempt to prevent myself bleeding all over the taxi in the early hours of Friday morning, and for sitting around in A&E, providing moral support until it became clear they were not letting me out for the duration. I owe the lad a fair number of pints for moral support. And for cleaning the various sinks and bowls left around the Athenaeum Club in my haste to be gone.
I am off for another lie down.
no subject
Generally, though, I wouldn't be without me neb.