When I got back on that Friday night, I went straight to bed, something which I rarely, if ever do. I didn’t need the hot water bottle this time around, but I did still feel grim, grey and grotty. Saturday morning came and went, unbeknown to me. Eventually, about lunchtime, I surfaced. I didn’t feel at all good. In fact, in the armchair downstairs by the fire, I quickly fell back to sleep again. Both Debbie and I realised I wasn’t doing anybody any favours by just lying around like a drugged-up walrus, so I dragged myself back upstairs again, and went back to bed.
And stayed there all Sunday, and some of Monday morning. Having decided that I was feeling too ill to try and drive, I phoned the local surgery. No, there were no home visits, but if I could get to the surgery, I could see the Emergency Doctor. Whoever he was. I decided to attempt it.
I got as far as the bathroom before I fell. Once on the floor, I found I couldn’t lever myself up, nor could Debbie, a) because I weigh much more than her and b) she wasn’t supposed to be exerting herself anyway. By a process of sitting up and shuffling on my bottom, I managed to get down the stairs and onto the settee next to the fire. It was pretty clear that I wouldn’t be attending at the surgery, so we rang them back. No, there was nobody available to come out and see me. They suggested if it was really bad, calling an ambulance.
I stayed on the sofa for the remainder of Monday, Monday night, all Tuesday, Tuesday night, all Wednesday, and Wednesday night. It wasn’t as much of a trial as you might think, since I wasn’t eating or drinking anything. I just passed the time dozing in a sort of pain-haze. I had several attempts to get up, but couldn’t summon the strength. On the Tuesday, I had rung the surgery as soon as the appointment line opened, trying to get a home visit. Nothing doing. In fact, on Tuesday, all of the appointments at the surgery itself had already gone by the time I climbed from number 47 in the queue to actually speaking to a human being. So that was Tuesday. On Wednesday, the same again – but this time the surgery did offer to send a squad of district nurses round to take my temperature. Or I could call an ambulance. I persisted, and finally managed to speak to “the Emergency Doctor” by phone, describing my symptoms to him as best I could. He prescribed me some anti-biotics - I can’t remember the name but it began with “Endo” – oh, hang on, it was Erithromythrin - over the phone, sight unseen. Desperate for any remedy by this stage, I despatched Debbie to the surgery for the prescription, she returned with the drugs, and I popped some straight away. No discernible effect.
Finally, on the Thursday, I had to deploy my secret weapon on the surgery. A phone call from my little sister. Sis was in fact a “sister” in more ways than one. She ended up as a ward sister at Leicester Royal Infirmary after twenty years of various nursing. Nowadays, she is in charge of a squad of district nurses in Northamptonshire. Not a lady to mess with. After she had called the surgery and used a few choice medical phrases, probably including all the ones she learnt when she dropped a full bedpan on her foot as a student, the Emergency Doctor phoned me back. Would this afternoon be convenient? I replied that, in my present state, there was no need to consult a diary, I wasn’t going anywhere.
At about a quarter to two, he turned up, and was ushered into my presence by Debbie. Tiggy, on her own sofa, in the warm, sunny conservatory, raised a quizzical eyebrow in his direction, determined that he was an unlikely source of either treats or threats, and promptly went back to sleep. He, meanwhile, took one look at me, at my general demeanour, and at my distended abdomen, and dialled 999 on his mobile for an ambulance. And that was him, gone.
The ambulance came not long after. Two burly ambulancemen hauled me upright, the first time I had stood up on my feet for three days, and frogmarched me out to the lobby. Once they had got me through the narrow part near the kitchen door, they sat me firmly in one of their little wheelchairs. Then they wheeled me out, along the drive, winched me up into the back of the ambulance, transferring me on to a trolley. Debbie handed them a bag of things she had hastily thrown together for me, the doors closed on her, the blue light came on, and we set off in a cloud of dust. And that was me, gone.
2: Admission
The first ward I was admitted to was a general assessment unit at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, which is where I guess all the waifs, strays and neer do wells get dumped – at least until someone with a smattering of medical knowledge can decide whether they are dead or not, and if not, how much of the NHS’s resources it is worth expending on them, and at what likely reward.
It was teatime when I was first admitted, and predictably, the first steps were to document that I was indeed Steven James Rudd, dob 06/04/1955, that I was not diabetic, allergic to anything, or on any long term medication. They also rigged up a drip and started pumping clear fluid of some sort into my arm. I wasn’t fazed by this, I mean, come on, I have seen Holby! I may even have used the word “intubated” in my incoherent ramblings in a vain attempt to impress them. Soon I had added “Patient 461169” to my impressive list of titles and decorations I’ve collected in my life, which had hitherto been a very short list, but at least for this one, unlike, say, my university degree, I got to wear a tangible manifestation of it, for all to see, in the form of an indestructible laser label bearing the number, round my wrist. Still, it could have been worse, it might have been on a luggage-tag, tied to my big toe.
The first slightly strange departure from what passed for normal came when one of the doctors, young, female, blonde, pleasantly pneumatic, utterly charming, came to my bedside and said that they had been having a word about me, and they thought I would benefit during my stay with them by having a catheter fitted, to drain the urine from my bladder as I produced it, thus saving me the trouble of having to pee. It seemed to me to be an admirable idea, so I assured her I had no objection.
Unfortunately for me, it turned out not to be the luscious Dr Pneumatic that fitted it, thereby denying her the sight of my todger in all its glory, but a rather callow, nervous youth who appeared to be about 14, and whose only intelligible mumbled sentence, as he first snapped on the rubber gloves and then introduced the thin plastic tube on its rather improbable journey, inexplicably contained the word “balloon”.
Anyway, suitably fitted, there it was. I looked at the clear plastic tube leading from it over the edge of the bed and in no time at all, I had invented “Catheter Scalextric”, whereby you try and hurry the pee around all the curves and into the bag. Other than that, it looked just like the tubing used in home winemaking, and I was glad that I had never made white wine at home, only red, or I may have been put off the enterprise altogether in future.
There was some talk amongst the knot of miscellaneous medics who kept glancing over and muttering about me, that I might be transferred on to a more general, surgical ward, which left me in a rather anxious fame of mind, but I was also told that, given how late in the day it now was, I was unlikely to be moved that night. Relieved, I settled down to sleep, awaking suddenly at about midnight, when one of the porters dinged the tip of my catheter against a door jamb, as I was being moved into my new ward. Welcome to the Hotel California. Too tired to care by now, I cursed the throbbing, and went back to sleep.
My first impression of the new ward, next morning, was not a good one. Two beds along from mine was a guy who had just woken up with a massive pain in his head, a fact he was stressing to the nursing staff over and over again in no uncertain terms, very loudly, with added expletives for emphasis. This triggered a full-scale, draw-the-curtains emergency, with people piling in left, right and centre, to try and stabilise him, I guessed. Eventually, they wheeled away his bed, with him on it, still plumbed into to tubes and monitors, out of the general ward and into a side room where they could, presumably, work on him, but he died there, an hour later. According to others on the ward, he was a former engineer, aged only 61, and he’d been sitting up and chatting with them all the night before, as good as gold.
Having taken time out to reflect on that sobering experience, I realised that the ward was starting to take on an even-busier aspect. At the same time, though, everything gravitates to the same level, and everyone tacitly joins in the