Hospital

Mackworth Water Tower by Simon Johnson  

You may or may not have noticed, but I’ve been away from the keyboard and have not replied to comments or written any new posts. The posts since Friday have popped up automatically out of the queue I set up on Blogger.

I won’t go into the gory details, but I had an urgent hospital admission on Friday because my bladder has applied for early retirement - cheeky sod. It’s pretty sobering for a blogger to discover he’s full of piss.

Anyway, I’m back now and at least I’ll be able to write a few posts about the experience. 

The first is how easily the days slipped by even with nothing to do but read my Kindle and make some blogging notes. I expected to be bored but wasn't. Keen to get home and get on with life, but not bored.

I’ve only ever been to hospital as a visitor, apart from having my tonsils out at the age of four, which I barely remember. For some reason I associate that remote experience with the drawings of Mabel Lucie Attwell.

Anyway, on Friday I was admitted to the Derby Royal, a big and much extended hospital on the outskirts of Derby. I had a bed by a large window, which helped pass the time whenever Thackeray's writing palled. The days ought to have been long and dreary, but were not. Long yes, because we were woken as six in the morning by the bustle of staff changeover - but not dreary for some reason.

Idle days didn’t drag, at least not for me. They were punctuated with clockwork routines such as meals, hot drinks, endless tests of blood pressure, heart rate, weighing, medication and the taking of blood samples. Alternating bouts of bustle and quiet – that’s what it was like. I quickly became used to it.

As I lay there or sat by my window (my window?) I could see Mackworth water tower in the distance. The old water tower is a local landmark I’ve barely seen for over fifty years. It’s the area where I grew up - felt strange to gaze at it again, childhood long gone, age catching up with me rather more quickly than I’d hoped.

Ah well – life goes on. At least there seems to be nothing malignant in there, chewing away at whatever time I have left. Quite a major relief really and I only had to gaze round the ward to see many who were not nearly so well off as me.