Friday the 13th

'I've just realised its Friday the 13th, shall we call the hospital now and make sure there is a bed ready for you?' my wife joked on the second day of our very recent trip to Norfolk. Ha ha ha we laughed. Within 3 hours I was shaking uncontrollably (rigors) and my temperature had soared to 39. This left us in the awkward position of being on holiday, with kids that hadn't been fed since lunchtime, no phone reception (this was Norfolk after all) and needing to get to a hospital which was more than 2 hours away. At around 18:30 we bundled everyone in the car left pretty much everything at the campsite and headed for the hospital.

I spent the entire journey drifting in and out of sleep with Jo trying to keep me awake. At 20:30 we arrived at A&E and because we had called haematology I was whisked in a wheelchair passed crowds of waiting people (I felt eyes burning into my back but I don't think anyone should be jealous of me being prioritised when you think about it!) and taken straight to a side room, assessed (temperature 40.1!) and prescribed antibiotics and fast acting IV paracetamol, which perversely then took 2 hours to arrive! I spent that two hours drifting in and out of consciousness and have very little recollection of the time spent in A&E...

Except the moment when I called my eldest daughter across to my bed, both kids came in shortly after I was admitted, and told her in my delirious state that she should be a mountain rescue dog. I don't think I'm ever going to forget the blank nod she gave me. It was meant to be a compliment for something she gets very little credit for, but it just came out all wrong. My eldest has an ability to talk incessantly for long periods of time when given the opportunity. It is possible to make a 1 hour round trip walk to the shops and get home to realise that she has been talking the entire time. The sad thing I have to admit is that quite often if you asked me what she had been talking about I couldn't always tell you. There is only so much the human brain can take and although it may be possible to keep up for 10-15 minutes and you may tune in to something particularly odd, she shares every thought, theory and memory and quite often she doesn't realise you don't have the memories she has, so out of context it can just be meaningless jibber. Thus this skill generally goes unpraised, and is more likely to be accompanied by 'is she still talking?'. However, on arrival at A&E Jo had to run in to sort things out and I was left in the car with the girls, and my eldest, completely oblivious to the fact I was slumped with my head in my hands barely awake, talked to me constantly for what must have been a good 10 minutes and I had to keep responding, keeping me awake which was a good thing. Which explains the dog comment - she was doing the verbal equivalent of licking my face and giving me brandy.

At 1am I was admitted to a ward on the 5th floor. Now I have very little in the way of negative comment when it comes to the NHS, the care provided so far has been excellent and I hope these feelings come across in my blogs. However, this ward appears to be run by the Raggy Dolls of the nursing world. I can't help imagining that on every ward there's a 'reject' chute direct to the 5th floor for all the most miserable, lazy and odd nurses that turn up. The majority of patients were elderly and I imagine it's wards like this that provide the headlines: 'sent home at 1am' or 'no water given to Ethel, 86, for 48 hours'. I've never been somewhere where the nurses cared so little. For example on arrival I had to pee in bottles as I was tied to a drip which was fixed to the bed, which is fine. So I did my wee and started to line the bottles along the wall. Not a single nurse who came in to provide medication or do blood pressure thought to take them away. And I thought I'm not going to tell them, I'll see how long it takes for someone to just do it. But 12 hours and 7 full bottles of wee later (with Jo arriving soon) I caved in and said 'could someone please take these away?'. It still took another hour to happen. I will not bore you with numerous examples of shocking incompetence but I'm glad to say I have been moved to the haematology ward where things are so much better (thanks go to Jo for sorting this following my many stories of the 5th floor relayed to her). And get this: I am confined to my room due to the fact I have an unknown infection. On the 5th floor I was allowed to wander round the ward, leave the ward, do what I want! Incredible.

So I'm still in today waiting for blood culture results to understand what the infection is so it can be treated. Unlike last weekend where my temperature was brought under control quickly, this time it keeps going up and down spiking over 39 every evening. So it seems I have something a little nastier than before. The good news is my neutrophils and white cell count have gone through the roof. A normal neutrophil count is 2-9 (thousand) and my last count was 14! Which shows my body is responding to the infection, but still needs a little help in fighting things off.