Easy Does It

Convalescence has to happen in a confined space. Life is stripped back to essentials. But what remains is curiously amplified.

Tastes are more intense, even though my diet is restricted. Noises are louder. The sun is unbearably bright as it breaks through the clouds.

The machine is being recalibrated.

Hey, I’m still here, I think to myself with gratitude each morning.

The absence of pain is welcome, but the price paid is a feeling of having a head full of jelly instead of a thinking brain. Time is marked by mealtimes and sleeping and not sleeping, and passes very slowly. Small achievements are ridiculously satisfying, perhaps due to the effort required; dealing with e mails, working out the chords of a Horace Silver song on the piano, changing a meeting date…

Lucy came to see me today and time speeded up to more like its usual pace. She took Mol and Porridge out for a run, which was a kindness (Porridge is getting fat from lolling in front of television, helping me doze through endless Hercule Poirot repeats).

Patience, patience and all will be well.

The English Patient

Well, yes I have had to be patient with the patients.

After the wedding celebrations, some of us found that we had lowered our immunity considerably and so it was that I spent a lot of time sitting in doctor/ clinic and hospital waiting rooms while everyone tried to decide whether Darling d had appendicitis...or just an enormous hangover.

Apart from Naomi Campbell, she must have the most photographed body on earth...but on the inside. She had ultrasound and was bombarded with x-rays, which were still not conclusive. She seems all right now though, so it must have just been a gastro bug. The French medical system is slow but thorough and she staggered off to university with a giant bag of medicine.

While we were at the hospital, a clown arrived in the emergency waiting room in full regalia, but with a doctors bag as well. He prescribed a red nose and applied it directly to Darling d's face. I told him that we had just been to a wedding of a clown and asked if he knew her. This seemed to perturb him and he made off quickly...

No sooner did I lose one patient, when illness struck once more. This time it was Mysweet with back pain so intense that the poor dear was unable to stand up straight. We got him into the car with great difficulty because he was fixed in an unmovable position, or rather when he did change position even slightly it was accompanied by screams. We prised him out onto a trolley which I accompanied to the very familiar waiting room.

The clown was lurking by the reception desk, but for some reason he ran for it when he saw me...

UPDATE...Mysweet is expecting to come home on Saturday, and is feeling much better.

Welcome to the house of fun...

The sound of groaning and spluttering has dominated the household since Thursday night. Both teenagers are incapable of anything other than lounging on sofas in front of the television, and obscuring the plot of any films by coughing over every third word of dialogue. It's just as well that I know Sense and Sensibility off by heart. Though I don't remember our Jane describing the sex and violence in such lurid detail. There was also a line about women being the playthings of men which struck a modern note.
Gallons of honey and lemon tea have been downed, the floor is knee deep in tissues and nurse is getting fed up. No one wants to eat any proper food that is cooked at proper meal times, just sweets and hamburgers. I'm off to get some fresh air before my nose goes the same bright colour as everyone else's...