HOLIDAY IN HOSPITAL

 

Holiday in Hospital

I spent Thursday 16 – Tues 21 July in Southampton General Hospital with what turned out to be norovirus exacerbated by the underlying bowel cancer.

               

Lucky I've got cancer!

I could have been stuck

for several hours in A and E

suffering the same debilitating symptoms…

I was able to attend the relatively queue-free Acute Oncology unit

 

I took my degree in PPE

so I’m pleased to see a study room is set aside,

implying that such knowledge

could be useful here.

 

I didn’t check, but suppose it’s possible the reference was to Personal Protective Equipment rather than Politics, Philosophy and Economics (which I studied at Oxford University, 1977-80)

         

Turns out I have noravirus

I'm not claiming to enjoy it,

but at least its highly infectious nature

means that I get my own separate room. 

 

Although I'm pretty positive

I'm negative about the two hours of jabbing

it took to fix me with a cannula.

Still, that's finished now.

 

A combination of bad veins made worse by chemo and thick blood due to dehydration meant that a succession of nurses and doctors struggled in vain (ha!) to insert a cannula

 

 

Of norovirus

people tell me ‘You don’t need that!’

I’m tempted to agree

but, then, who does?

 

          

Forty poos in sixty hours

has felt a lot, but who’s counting?

Actually, Steph is counting as I text her,

and the doctors are keen to know.

 

 

In hospital

you get a lot of night,

and, waking every couple of hours,

there seems a lot of night to see.

 

            

I resent being woken

for observations -

especially when this

is the only thought with which I come around.

           

The spousal support

is wonderful here:

visits, advocacy, data gathering, snacks,  newspapers, clothes...

I'd recommend all hospitals follow the model.

Not only that

but Steph must add hoovering, ironing, doing the bins

and watering the garden in this record heat wave

to coming here, and all of her usual tasks… 

Five days now in this one room

At least the view out -

of the corridor I’m missing -

doesn’t increase my regret.

 

 Welcome Andy Burnham!

Cancer life may not be long

but we’re on to our fifth Prime Minister

since I started out!

20 July: Boris Johnson was responsible for the pre-diagnostic beginning of my cancer journey in 2022, soon followed by Lis Truss (5 Sept – 24 Oct 2022), Rishi Sunak (25 Oct 2022 – 5 July 2024), Kier Starmer (6 July 2024 – 19 July 2026) and now Andy Burnham (from 20 July 2026). Burnham is an outlier: the first of those not to have studied at Oxford University and the only one I’ve advised in meetings (in 2009-10 when – appropriately enough – he was Secretary of State for Health and I was Financial Controller for Social Care at the Department of Health and Social Care).

             

Fetch some scissors

I'm being discharged! 

No longer do I need to prove

I know when I was born.

It is routine for nurses to ask your date of birth prior to any treatment, to check they are not treating the wrong person.