Saturday 3rd December, 2011

Out of hospital, but very tired
 

I started the day in hospital, while Chris and Sue were in Aldershot trying to get the South East Region Swimming Championships underway .. very frustrating.

At 1am, I was woken for my last dose of intravenous antibiotic. The nurse and on call doctor sorted out the lack of a prescription, and at 7am, I had been switched to tablets.

I started the day with the prospect of going home. One of the other patients seemed not so lucky. People started to congregate in the central area between the wards at 6pm and gradually through the evening more and more came. They were still there at midnight. One of the nurses confirmed that the patient was very poorly and her family had been summoned.

At 9:45, one of the nurses told me that my discharge medication had not been written up properly and I would need to wait for one of the haematologists to come in and authorise it. More patience was needed. I was just about to go and find out what was going on when one of the nurses came in with my discharge drugs and told me that I was free to go.

My daughter Jenny came to pick me up from hospital. I had a very good hour at home with my two grandsons, while Jenny organised them some lunch and got ready to go back to Birmingham. They were both in delightful moods .. I wish I had taken some photos. Sammy, now not far off 1, spent the whole hour grinning.

I did not realise how tired I was until I sat down in a really comfortable chair and dozed for almost the whole afternoon. Neither the chair nor the bed in my hospital room were very comfortable, given the combination of an infected toe which was sensitive to the touch and a broken hip which is mending, but still uncomfortable in the wrong position.

Sue and Chris came in not longer after 6pm, which meant that the swimming competition had run more or less to time. We went out for dinner at The Hatch, a very welcome improvement over hospital food and my first glass of Merlot for a week.

Apart from having a sore toe and being very tired, my week in hospital left me very stiff, from lack of exercise and with quite a lot of discomfort in my digestive system. I was finding it difficult to work out what dose of laxatives to take, given the effect on my system of very strong antibiotics, side effects of which include both constipation and diarrhoea (which I really need to avoid because I need to look up the spelling every time I use the word).

The final luxury of the day from being home was watching Match of the Day on my HD TV. The picture quality on the TVs installed in hospital is truly awful.