T + 2264. In which I meet lots of new people and have some unexpected experiences.

11th January 2019

My leg was really very swollen indeed and a vivid throbbing red. I was unable to stand and had to drag myself into the dressing area like a wormy bummed dog, all the time making grunty man pain noises. Managed to find some baggy jeans to fit over the hot dog sausage leg. I could hear Jeannette rushing about down stairs getting my go bag ready- so cleaned my teeth and entered the fray.- 3 flights of steps doggy bum style until I was in the hall.

Just off to clean my teeth dear.

Managed to get upright enough to get in the car and it’s off to Eastbourne General Pevensey Ward.
I ended up staying for about two and a half weeks. Firstly to try and stabilise the insane swelling that was going on with my right leg and secondly, it acted as a holding bed while we waited for one to become available at KCH. The first objective was partly achieved - a cocktail of anti-biotics  stabilised (and maybe even slightly reduced) my elephantine right leg. But the consultant freely admitted that there was a limit to what Eastbourne could do and I needed to be at KCH to be ‘fixed up proper’.

In early February the long awaited bed became available at KCH, by this time I was pretty much wheelchair bound, as my left leg had checked out my right leg’s new look and decided to join in the fun. I was taken up to KCH in an ambulance and admitted to the Derek Mitchell Unit. Now I do believe that there must have been a couple of normalish days back then, when I was being hooked up to various IVs and getting used to a new drugs regime and chatting with visitors, but stuff seemed to get dark and serious very quickly.

My left leg blew up to the same size as my right, although weirdly not the same angry hot cerise colour and things from here on get blurry. I vaguely remember drifting in and out of consciousness and trying to talk to visitors but by this point painkillers, morphine etc were making it hard to make sense. I had conversations with people that weren’t in the room - to the hilarity of my visitors and at one point believed that the little sharps bin on wheels was a minion. An abiding memory is that whenever I woke up in the dark room, doped up and confused there was nearly always someone in the bedside chair sitting watching over me. It was at some point during this time I was shipped up to the Intensive Care Unit - apparently shit was getting deep.

I also remember constant all over pain and the clock that starts ticking in your head as soon as you are issued morphine or something else to banish the blues. Ok - this has got a half life of two maybe three hours so I probably need to use the call buzzer in about two hours from now - the time is 11.40, Ok call buzzer at 13.40. Remember that. Remember that. Experience had taught me that if you wait to feel the first tentative twangs being plucked in the pain banjo, then you are in deep shit. In the time that it can take a staff member to get to you, grab the prescription and get it down you-  after which you wait for it to kick in, you can find that the last previous hit metabolises and you are back to square one. When my marbles weren’t jangled or when I was nodding out, I was constantly trying to keep an eye on the time or checking myself for any changes in sensation.

I am told that my little cough had got its big boy trousers on and decided on being pneumonia again, this was swiftly followed by sepsis, both of which appear to be unrelated to my Mr Fatty Fat Legs symptoms.
Speaking of which , the swelling had continued north going as far as my hips. I was soon sporting the kind of curvy hip line that would turn a plus size model green. I woke one morning to find that I had been catheterised - this was just as well - as I was sporting a scrotum the size of a cantaloupe and the catheter sort of disappeared into the top of this arrangement, feeding down to a bag hooked onto the side of the bed.


I’m staring at a tiled wall pondering, how did this all come to pass then?

I’m standing (if that’s the word) in the bathroom of my isolation bedroom at Kings College Hospital, on legs that are wobbling like new-born Bambi with wet ramen noodle legs. My Zimmer frame is in front of me, I’m hanging on by both hands with a grip of death and I’m wearing one of those hospital gowns that is slit down the back. Hanging jauntily by a handle from the frame of my Zimmer is a clear plastic briefcase type thing that Is half full of my urine - a 10mm rubber tube has been inserted into the glans of my dick - this feeds directly into my executive wee wee case.

Yes you follow I think -  this is the first conscious instance that I can recall of having my bottom wiped by anyone other than:

a ) Me.
b ) That’s it.

I got used to it fairly quickly, the trick appears to be carrying on a normal conversation throughout. But the thing that pained me deeply for ages was to wake up fairly refreshed - almost ready for another day of this ball-ache in-patient monotony, only to find that someone had shit the bed. As disbelief and incredulity fade - you realise you have to ring the bell for a nurse to come in and deal with your shitty man/baby nappy yet again.

But the human spirit can overcome many things - extemes of heat and cold, . So let it come to no surprise to anyone that within a week or so I was quite happy to make eye contact and casual conversation with whoever was ahem on duty. Even going so far as to remind them that they’d forgotten the cream on my nappy rash.