So I've been sent home again! How do I feel about that? Well, I've just bought, pretty much on a whim, the embodiment of sadness, paying €20 to have her shipped from France. That may give you some idea!
 |
| They only made these for Sadness and Rage! I guess they've done their market research. |
She's not a toy, she's a "soft sculpture." I am not a CHILD, thank you very much!
The hospital was kind of a waste of time. I spent a lot of time in the hospital between December 2018 and March 2020, when COVID hit. I've been in twice since. Beforehand I was occasionally kept in for little reasons. I spent a few extra days one visit because my temperature would flare up at night. I had no other symptoms and it would be normal during the day, but that one spike would keep me in for 24 hours extra. A few times I've spent an extra night because the ambulance crew were too busy to take me home! Sometimes I've been discharged by a doctor during Monday rounds - if there was a doctor working Saturday or Sunday I could have gone home then. And of course, I was well enough to go home for a couple of months in early 2019, I just didn't have a home to go to! A place in a care home opened up, and then after seven weeks (six in care, one back in hospital!) I moved into a "temporary" flat, and I've been living there since! All my staff's there now, though I spend my days in a care home in a different county.
Things are very different since COVID. There's no waiting in hospital on a stretcher until a bed's ready, instead they wait in the ambulance until the bed is available in the right place, and wheel you right there. No waiting in limbo for the right ward to admit you, and they'll send you out as soon as you can bear it! It's a very different experience.
On my last visit I had a room to myself in what used to be the room they used to knock kids out before surgery. It was now partly used for storage,, but you could see old paintings that I guess we're meant to relax the young'uns. I had suffered an SVT attack but was now fine, so they just stuck me in whatever ward had a spare isolated room overnight whilst they waited for transport. It was not the best night's sleep, but I left the next morning.
This time around I was transferred from Majors, which is where they assess you first, to another ward at twenty minutes to one in the night! They don't serve food or drink in the Majors, except with medicine, and by the time they moved me I was sleeping anyway, though eager for a drink!
This morning I had the standard hospital breakfast of two pieces of cold toast and three ice cold portions of butter! I've long ago learnt to put two packs of butter up against my body under the sheets whilst I struggle with the first one. I set up my laptop and downloaded about 40GB worth of games - one large one, one small one, and most of a second large one. The internet at the home is very spotty, especially on my laptop. Most of the time my laptop won't detect a signal, although my tablet can. It's frustrating because my laptop cost a lot, lot more than my tablet, I would have thought (and would have preferred!) that it would be the other way around! Sometimes it finds the signal and will download at normal speeds for a couple of days, and the rest of the time it crawls along so slowly that it's not really worth using - video won't stream, pictures are slow to load, it's like using dial up! It's quicker at night, but 40GB will usually take about a week to download, so that's something!
Lunch was good - an "all-day breakfast" of sausages, bacon, omelette and hash browns. They called it "all-day" even though they don't serve it at breakfast or at dinner! They had a choice of about eight hot dinners, and also sandwiches or a salad. It's been years since I've been handed a menu! The care home gives you a choice between two options at lunch and dinner. One dinner option is always a sandwich, the other is usually a hot variation on a sandwich. Last time I had a bacon roll. Tomorrow I'll be having ham and cheese croissants. It was nice to have options, and nice to have properly hot food, straight from a kitchen! The dinners here are served with metal covers, and I don't know how far they come, but they're always warm, rather than hot. It was nice to have something too hot to pick up with my fingers!
Also nice: a wash with properly hot water! The water in my bathroom here never gets properly warm, and it's kind of embarrassing, but at first I didn't recognise the feeling of a hot flannel on my back! It was a shock to the system after eight months of cold washes, but then the right synapses fired and I remembered "Oh yeah, I rather like this!" How crazy is that?
Not so great: I was left lying on a sling overnight. They used a hoist to lift me on to a stretcher to leave the room; the first time I've used it since getting here, another positive! The sling is made from a plasticky material, similar to what they use for safety harnesses or rucksack straps (I've done some abseilling in my time! And a bungee jump, come to think of it!). I'm told my skin is "red raw" and that there are purple bruises, but I don't feel any different. The head carer said they should be reported for leaving me on it overnight, but I doubt anyone will. I'm certainly not going to! At the hospital end they used a slide sheet and board to slide me in and out of bed, and then used the hoist again at this end. The hoist puts some strain on my legs, as they stick out unsupported, but is basically pretty comfortable.
As for the treatment, I was prescribed some antifungal cream for my chest and eardrops for, well, my ear! The doctor that saw me said that my ear needed to be looked at by a specialist, as it is too closed up and full of wax and debris. He said it was "cauliflower-y, " and asked if I had a chronic condition! I told him it had all come on since Sunday. Thinking of Sue the nurse trying to convince me it was getting better literally makes me laugh, out loud, lying here in my cold bed! What was she thinking?
The specialists were too busy to see me today, and my condition isn't considered enough of an emergency to stay in, so I was discharged. The GP will have to refer me to them as an outpatient. I assume they'll have to come and visit me in the home; or else arrange for me to be transported there, seen, and taken home again. I'd have thought it easier to just squeeze me in today, but what can you do?
Whilst in they found I had slightly low blood pressure, so they've taken me off my diuretic for a couple of days. I think it's probably because I had very little to drink during my stay. I usually drink a lot! I had to see twice in the hospital yesterday evening; it was a little embarrassing asking someone new for help but they were proper nurses and used to it, rather than some of the new hire carers they take on here that need the procedure explained! Both times I went I overflowed the cardboard urine bottles slightly - it's a very effective diuretic! Today I didn't have to pee until 7pm, which is obviously not particularly healthy, I've usually been about three times before then!
Along the same subject: This evening (and I'm sorry if this is unpleasant for you, but illustrates my point about the difference in staff here pretty well,) I had to evacuate my bowels for the first time since early Sunday morning. I had one of my usual carers help me on to a bedpan, but when I was done I rang the call bell and a new hire answered. I explained I was on a bedpan and needed to come off, and she told me to wait whilst she got some help. She was gone about five minutes, which feels like a long time sat on thin plastic with your own fresh turd burning your anus! You diaper lovers don't know how good you've got it! She came back on her own, and said she would help me. I guess I was too euphemistic for her, because she let out a sound of shock and told me to wait whilst she got some tissue. She told me after she "thought I'd only done a wee," I guess five the byproduct of six days worth of meals had come as a shock! I can pretty much guarantee my toilet will be blocked, and as the handyman doesn't work weekends I can also confidently predict it will stay that way until Monday.
There are two main downsides to being back. Firstly, I'm in isolation for a fortnight, so my parents have had to cancel their plans to come here the next couple of Mondays. I don't want to downplay how serious COVID is; if you think there's a chance you're a carrier then isolate yourself. I get why they can't have people fresh back from hospital free roaming and interacting with the old fogies. I don't want to risk getting anyone sick. However, I've been discharged as medically sound. I have had both COVID jabs months ago, was tested in hospital, and can (and will!) be tested here. My parents get here half an hour early so they can be tested before seeing me. My room has patio doors which they enter and exit by, so there's no chance of them meeting another resident. As far as the home knows, they could have visited me in hospital (and would have if they lived closer)! With all those conditions in mind, I don't see why they can't spend an hour with me. I know it would make them much happier.
The second rule is that I can't have any medication within six hours of leaving the hospital, to save the risk of a double dose.I take routine prescribed paknkillers, and can top up with oromorph as needed. I asked for some oromorph before leaving the hospital to help with the journey. One of the ambulance guys said I could have some in the ambulance. I ended up going with a different crew, and they wouldn't give me any because they weren't sure if I was prescribed it. Luckily the care home is close to the hospital, but because of this six hour rule I couldn't ask for it then either! I actually got it, along with my other evening drugs, at 9 tonight, rather than 10. This wasn't out of kindness but laziness, I was out on the end of the nurse's drug round. It's definitely better, but I'm not allowed my most powerful painkiller, zomorph, until 7am tomorrow! This is because you can only take it every 12 hours, and they can't risk me having taken it at the hospital before coming home. They usually give out "controlled drugs" at 7am and 7pm, and don't want me getting out of sequence. I asked the nurse if I could have some at 10pm tonight, 9am tomorrow morning, and 8pm tomorrow night
"Surely an hour can't make a difference?" I asked.
"Sorry, but I've been told not to give any to you until tomorrow morning."
I know it doesn't make a difference; I've been woken up for breakfast at 9 to find the tablets on my table with no recollection of being given them, though the staff are meant to watch you take them. When I was in my flat I didn't set an alarm, I just took one when I woke up and one with dinner. These things aren't measured to the individual and timed perfectly for optimal 24 hour pain relief. Fucking bureaucracy and red tape over people. When I'm given a rule I like to understand the reasoning behind it. If it makes sense to me it'll help me remember it, if it's arbitrary then I am more likely to ignore it. My secondary school had around 2,200 people plus staff, corridors got busy. When I joined the rule was to walk on the left hand side of the corridors. One day, in my second or third year, it was announced that we'd be switching to walking on the right side, to make it easier to turn right when corridors met. I didn't see the point in this; it should be obvious there are as many left turns as right turns; all you've done is switched the burden to those making a left! I liked learning first aid because there is a logical reason behind everything you do. Learning about the bureaucracy and data protection was dull as fuck! For example, an adult member cannot be Facebook friends with a member of the cadets, who are under seventeen. It doesn't matter if you're a week older than your best friend and you've turned eighteen just before they have, it doesn't matter if you're a mother and your 10 year old child is a cadet. I don't have a Facebook account, but that's not a rule I'd worry about breaking.
I don't know if the hospital has a rule about watching sexy Swedish dramedies with full frontal nudity, but if there is I broke that rule during my stay! I thought that my ear problems give me the perfect excuse to research Love & Anarchy, the Netflix show that struck a chord with me in January and inspired me to reach out a little and drop some of my baggage. I've made some notes, expect a recap and some highlights soon!
I also used a VPN to look at Strict Julie's blog - it's blocked as a phishing hazard by the NHS, and Google safe search tells you "Strict Julie" yields no results! I'm glad I did, because I wanted to read the fallout from yesterday's fictional article about a new law in Ontario. It wasn't presented as fiction, but it is honestly not very believable. Some people thought she was being deliberately deceitful, others questioned the veracity of the whole blog. Trying to visit it here I still get a phishing warning but can skip past it - I think someone took her joke a little too seriously and has reported it as suspicious out of fear or spite. People! What can you do?
I thought it was clear she was joking. I'll admit to taking her a little too seriously in the past when she's misrepresented herself a little, usually because she was hoping for titillation rather than honesty! When she role played sex work for financial gain with her husband and went on to say that she couldn't understand why a working girl should feel ashamed, I felt as if she were looking at the industry through rose coloured glasses. When she said she was worried about being outed and meeting up with her ex company executive, I genuinely worried she might shut the blog down, and thought she was more worried of being exposed than she was. Her blog is obviously important to her and a lot of people enjoy it, it would be tragic if she lost it. I've learnt now that by the time she's asked for a second opinion her mind is generally made up and she's looking for support, or to have her decision validated. Today she was asking for opinions about a new book, feedback has been almost completely positive, but there's no doubt in my mind she would have pursued this excellent premise anyhow!
I read the first sentence of Julie's post and was immediately suspicious:
Consent Ring Gets Nod in Ontario
by Mary Barklay
May 10, 2021
Yesterday in passing bill C-97, the Ontario government gave the nod of approval to the previously legally precarious movement know as "Consent Ring".
I'm naturally a cynic, so before reading further I googled the headline, then googled "Mary Barklay." Nothing notable came up. I googled "bill C-97." Something to do with budgeting, housing or immigration. Okay, clearly bullshit. Let's see what her kinky little brain has conjured up! As I read on it was clear that it was nonsense, and that Julie wasn't even trying to fool the readers, she was just experimenting with writing in a new format. Still, some people will buy anything, or not understand when someone is pulling their leg.
I was about eleven when the internet started becoming a thing. I had a website early enough for Virgin to publish it in a book of useful URLs. I had the sort of friends who would spend twenty minutes in MS Paint sticking a photo of a friend's head onto the body of a hippo just to annoy them for five minutes. Early on I found a site that generates fake news articles. There were maybe six templates for stories, none believable, that you could fill in a person's details and they'd put them in to the story and e-mail them from a fake newspaper. I remember one story was about a man being stuck in a port-a-potty overnight. I filled one out with my friend's name, age and hometown. It was something like he was caught stealing $200,000,000 from Microsoft and that Bill Gates wanted him arrested, so police were hunting him down. My friend was eleven, he didn't have a bank account. I thought there was no way he'd believe it. I just made up the paper, naming the nearest town to his house and writing "Gazette" at the end. Well, he did believe it, and so did his classroom assistant, (Oh yeah, he was autistic! I didn't understand the condition, nor did anyone tell me he had it even though he had been my best friend for about four years! Whoops!) although, as a woman in her early twenties who hung out with teenage boys all day, she should have been more clued up. I bumped into them between lessons, and he told me he was worried. When I asked why, he said it was because the police thought he'd stolen millions of dollars from Bill Gates. He'd gone, WITH HIS ASSISTANT, to the IT TECHNICIANS, and shown them the e-mail, and they were all STUMPED as to what could have happened and why the POLICE were tracking this SCHOOLBOY. You'd have thought a copper might have popped by the school to see if he was there! Well, I agreed it was a head scratcher and left him to it; I was not expecting my joke to go so far, and was not going to take the rap for fooling the faculty of the school!
Well, a couple of decades later and I guess I'm accustomed to this kind of playfulness on the internet. I can usually tell when someone's kidding and when they're not. In the comments section I recommended Canadian dramedy Workin' Moms as something in her article reminded me of the show. When she liked that I recommended children's TV show Pingu as well, saying that the animated adventures of the plasticine penguin was my favourite Canadian reality show. I did watch the show as a child, and reading up on some of the banned episodes I have to wonder if it had a lasting effect:
I wasn't big on Twitter when I used it, but organically gained about 150 followers, which I think was pretty good seeing I was just making dumb jokes when I felt like it. When COVID struck someone I followed wrote a tweet saying she had to make an appointment with her gynecologist on Zoom. I tweeted something like "That old trick. I fell for a similar scam, and not only did naked photos of me end up online, I'm no longer allowed to bring my laptop to Starbucks." I think it got about a thousand likes, a few people commented they liked it, and a few posted something along the lines of " You had me going there" or "You had me fooled for a bit." I was obviously making a joke, I didn't think people would get so invested so quickly!
Another time I saw someone taking a swipe at Mike Bloomberg, drudging up an article from 1999 in which he described his then-16 year old daughter as blonde and busty, and saying that you could imagine what she got up to left alone in a hotel all day. Someone posted a photo of the daughter, and I made what I thought was a fairly obvious joke:
I thought I had been rumbled right off the bat, when the first commenter posted this, highlighting my laziness in editing the timeline:
I thought I was scuppered, but decided to keep my poker face. I tweeted back "Whoa, weird!" and received in reply "Very strange. All from Moscow no doubt." I believe this is what they call Trump Derangement Syndrome: the guy was smart enough to notice there was something wrong with the tweets, but not savvy enough to realise the whole thing was bullshit. He found it more plausible that the Russians were somehow boosting Trumps tweets, and not even his good ones. Other people speculated that Trump's aides had posted the tweets, some mentioned they couldn't believe his casual tone. Nobody pointed out that @SupremeCourt is not the right handle for the US Supreme Court. Someone went back and checked and saw the tweet wasn't there. I replied to every comment, getting more and more blasé. I would agree with whatever anyone said, and became less worried about getting caught and more worried about being funny for anyone who spotted the joke. Someone called me stupid for not realising you can get someone else to write your tweets, never realising that I was well aware Trump hadn't written it all. I was definitely flying close to the sun here:
Yuk yuk yuk! Ain't I a stinker?!
I think that just about does it for my first day back! I've spent so much time reliving past glories that I can ask for some more oromorph!
Peace!
✌ 🌈💰🍀
Ultimately you have an active enough life for someone bedridden.
ReplyDeleteOne of my wife's sisters brought us from England a video tape of Pingu and I watched it a lot with my son when he was 6 years old.
He liked it and me too. Long sleigh rides on the ice floe with his friend...
I learnt early on how to keep myself amused, as for the activity resulting from my illnesses, I could maybe do without that drama! Apparently there's a list of banned episodes running into the double figures! Blood, urination, scary monsters, beak on beak kissing, spanking and Pingu getting a slap in the face from his mother! I mainly remember feeling bad when he cried and him playing with a seal, and that snowman with a gazunder for a hat! I had no idea what I was exposing myself to!
DeleteIt is true that I usually have mostly made up my mind when I ask for advice, but I usually get some excellent suggestions that nudge me here and there, and appreciate them all.
ReplyDeleteSorry if that came across as judgemental or whatever; I just mean to say that I've gotten to know you better as a person, and as a friend, and know that you're generally looking for encouragement and suggestions as to how to proceed with your endeavour, rather than a pro/con list of reasons to go ahead, which is what you generally get when you try to branch out. Crab bucket syndrome.
Delete