There is no news from Queens Medical Centre. Yesterday was Sunday, the doctors re-assure me on their ward round. Everyone will be back at work today, so we should hear something. What is the social etiquette of a ward round or nurse changeover? Should you, as patient, make eye contact, smile and nod as you are discussed? Or even chip in? Or is it more polite to stare out of the window, pretending not to hear, until you are spoken to?
Now I'm no longer on a drip, I manage a shower. It requires military planning and feels chaotic and painstakingly slow. When I drop something, the world spins when I bend to pick it up. But it's also blissful to sit down under a stream of warm water, to feel my skin prickle and relax, to smell my own, chosen bathroom lotions. It feels like an achievement. I also start going to the toilet independently, planning my route down the ward, staking out the hand holds before I set off. I crave fruit and think about mango and avocado salad with prawns. I wonder what Jamie Oliver would do with hospital food. Is there really a need for a three-course hot meal twice a day? Does anyone still eat like that?
I sit in my chair by the window, staring at the Connect Four tower that I can see from my office but from the other side. I ring work and tell them what's happened, I speak to my secretary and cancel appointments. It doesn't seem real. My mobile phone is heavy with texts. It's a struggle to answer them all. I sleep and sleep. At the end of the day, there is no word from QMC. The other patients come and go, the very elderly returned to their half-lives, the suicides restored to the life they don't want, the chronic alcoholics wasting the lives they have, the mentally unstable unwittingly destroying the lives of those who care for them.
I'm visited by Hospital Radio. I choose Ruby Tuesday by Melanie for the request show that night. Listening to Hospital Radio is free and I hear my request, 'for Morag, on Ward 16'. My TV money has run out and I'm reluctant to buy more because I'm moving on aren't I?
On Tuesday morning I hear from QMC. The doctors tell me there's nothing urgent to be done (which I guess means it's not an aneurism) but they want another scan done, this time a CT Angiogram. I can't move to the Stroke Unit until the scan has been taken. I have to wait. This is actually nonsense. I could have moved to the Stroke Unit and the scan could have been done there but I don't know this yet.
Another big step forward today; I manage to wash my hair. It's hard to believe but there's no hairdryer on the ward. I'm not allowed to use my own (brought with all my possessions in the suitcase) because patients 'musn't use their own electrical equipment'. I understand this, I know about PAT testing, but it's hard to understand that no one has thought that women patients will need a hairdryer. Here's a tip, if you're having a stroke, go to the hairdressers the day before (and get your legs waxed- those hairy legs matter to you, if not to anyone else). The matron at boarding school talked a lot of sense when she explained that clean pants were necessary every day because if we were run over by a bus, she wouldn't be shamed at the hospital.
Another patient was told off for charging her mobile phone so after dark, when the night shift starts, I secretly charge mine, hiding the charger behind the curtains. I also start to sabotage the persistent fans. Such minor rule-breaking brings a certain satisfaction.
In the event, my hair dried like a bush but the friends that visited in the afternoon were too polite to comment. They brought fruit and magazines and I let them see me walk. We talked about the nurses. Revenge is sweet.
I telephoned my potential new employer and relayed what I'd been told; the bleed is small, it might never happen again, I should make a full recovery. Since I haven't yet seen a specialist, this is only somebody's guesswork but I don't know enough to question. It's what I want to hear. She is kind, re-assuring and we agree to speak again.
By 'lights out' (optimistic since whenever a new patient appears they go back on again) I still haven't had my CT scan. That night I start to feel nauseous and the headache starts. I worry that the bleed has started again.
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