19th April ‘For I am already being poured out like a libation, … I have fought the good fight’

 

19^th April ‘For I am already being poured out like a libation, … I have fought the good fight’

After a wonderful weekend in the bosom of the family, Ben – full time barrister and by now part-time Uber driver – dropped me off at hospital.

As instructed, I checked in – or tried to check in, for it was before 9am(!) – at AMU, in the bowels of the hospital. I was sent packing to the X-ray department for my CT scan of the chest, and told not to darken the AMU doorstep until “after 9am” in future.

Obediently, I headed for the X-ray department and was seen quickly. Like last Thursday morning I was told that iodine would be injected into me, and like that Thursday morning I intoned, for 40 seconds, the Maundy Thursday Psalm (22.14) “like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.” Once again, the metallic doughnut did its thing, and I was returned to AMU via WH Smiths, Costa, and the Friends’ Shop. Happily, it was by that stage 9am.

For the next six hours I sat watching frenetic activity for no obvious reason. Up until this point the NHS had crowned itself with glory in my eyes. Now I witnessed drudgery and inefficiency personified.

For example, in the chairs opposite me were two people receiving blood. The sequence at the beginning and end was as follows:

• Patient A has cannula fitted.
• The nurse removes gloves, washes hands, puts on fresh gloves and fits a cannula to Patient B.
• The nurse removes gloves, washes hands, puts on fresh gloves and inserts blood into A.
• The nurse removes gloves washes hands, puts on fresh gloves, and inserts blood into B.
• Blood given to both, both can now be sent home. So…
• The nurse washes hands, puts on fresh gloves and disconnects blood from B.
• The nurse removes gloves, washes hands, puts on fresh gloves and disconnects blood from A.
• The nurse removes gloves, washes hands, puts on fresh gloves and removes cannula from B.
• The nurse removes gloves, washes hands, puts on fresh gloves and removes cannula from A.

For fear of sounding like the worst sort of Dr Beeching, I am sure the whole exercise could have been done in half the time, using half the resources.

After six hours of this rip-roaring entertainment, my bored mind and body were taken to a ward on the fifth floor. I was clutching my colonoscopy prep (which I had to cite on numerous occasions as the staff were determined to feed me notwithstanding the clear instructions to the contrary!); and then the horror began….

In the past I had had a partial colonoscopy (sigmoidoscopy). On that occasion, a plug had been inserted and 10 minutes later, the ‘magic’ began.

This time, though, I had to drink something euphemistically called, ‘Klean Prep’. No problem, I thought, despite the somewhat intimidating volume (4 litres!!!) to be consumed: “they’re usually a pleasant orange flavoured concoction”, I said to myself.

However, the extremely clever people at Klean Prep wouldn’t dream of insulting our taste-buds with anything as artificial as ‘orange-flavoured’ laxative, when they can produce the real deal: authentic liquid fish innards.

It was without a doubt the most disgusting thing I have ever drunk, every sip was accompanied with the sound of me gagging. I hunted around the ward looking for Ant and Dec to bring this ‘Bush-Tucker Trial’ to an end, but no joy.  As I sipped and gagged a kindly junior doctor allowed me the concession of adding orange juice to it.

At least the gagging stopped. Over the past few days I had had many ‘dark nights of the soul’, but this night I felt so embarrassingly, unbelievably sad, that I couldn’t even take calls from Sarah. I, like Job, just wanted to sit in solitude, on my dust pit and weep; the most dejected man in London.

In the midst of this undiscovered circle of hell I was transferred to the seventh floor of the hospital and my self-pitying bubble was briefly pricked by a text from an old friend (RB) saying he’d heard I was bed-blocking the NHS, a pearl of joy in a field of Sh1t.

At 23.58 I finished my last glass of Trawler Swill, and my hourly visits to the loo began. The now familiar 2am depression was compounded by the loo roll feeder which would only administer a miserly one sheet a tug (four sheets fewer than the then industrial levels required). By 5am I had fallen asleep, only to be woken at 6am for a cup of tea. I politely declined, having neither the energy nor will to offer anything ruder or more engaging.