Tuesday and I wake up with my usual injection ache, so I head for the kitchen to make muesli and fresh coffee. I settle down to eat and take my morning meds while I watch a forensic expert talk about 16 groove right hand gun barrel rifling. My partner goes out to see the GP and I learn more about hollow point 2.2 rifle bullets. I get a call from a friend, and as we are catching up my partner returns and says that the doctor has arranged for her to go to hospital. Not what either of us expected, so preparations got under way, a bag packed and clothes changed.
I was going to drive and then I remembered the queues at the hospital car park and brought up the Uber app and we were on our way. When we get to the hospital we see what a good decision a taxi was as the street queue to get into the hospital car park tails back at least three streets. We find our way to ward 16 and my partner checks in.
This is how the waiting starts. My partner finally gets called to have her blood pressure taken and returns with a catheter in her arm and a few millilitres of blood short. All we can do is wait for the results to come through, hours go by and we improvise a game to keep us occupied while everyone around us are buried in their phones.
Eventually my partner gets called back to see the doctor. She returns after some time, back after more probing and prodding, with the news that she is to have a scan but there is between a one or two hour wait. We settle down for the wait, its gone four o’clock and I am hungry. I go to the restaurant and grab a sandwich and as I tuck in my partner text me to say she has been called back in to see the consultant. By the time I get up the five floors to the ward waiting area my partner is there waiting for me. The consultant has decided that my partner can become an outpatient and have her investigation in due course. In the meantime she is prescribed codeine. We wait for the paperwork to arrive and when it does there is a discharge repot and a prescription. The nurse says we can go however is a bit embarrassed when my partner points out that she still has a catheter in her arm. There is a quick hunt for a nurse and my partner returns without catheter and the hospital gown she has been sporting.
We leave the ward and head for the pharmacy. We think we have found it at reception but are redirected to a portacabin by the car park to get the prescription fulfilled. We are order 173 and it will take half an hour to get to us, so we sit in the waiting area still masked up, unlike the overweight bloke in shorts and two families. Bastards. On reflection there was a woman in the ward waiting area, clearly sign posted a mask area, who just sat there without one. Bastard, I should have ranted but I had other things to do. 173 finally gets called and we collect the codeine from someone who clearly had had a long day, either that or she was just miserably lacking in social skills or just plain miserable. Any way we left, took our masks off and applied the Uber app. This driver was chatty all the way home.
It was a relief to get home, with a flurry of activity the bin gets put out, coffee made, clothes changed and food decided on. My partner goes for simple cereals, banana and savoury bagel while I and my eldest daughter go for an Indian takeaway. We all slow down and watch the Great British Bake Off and I draft the blog. It’s been a long day, Longest of all for my partner. There will be early nights. I will take early night meds and retire spoonless.
