Hospital Visit

In recent weeks I’ve spent some time as an in- patient in hospital. Not on a maternity ward, oh no. My pancreas, prompted by some sweet and sour chicken, felt like it wasn’t getting enough attention and so I ended up in hospital. I was taken into A&E, by ambulance. I know, it all sounds very dramatic- it wasn’t.

Anyhoo, they good doctors at A&E decide to admit me, and we trail round to a little side ward off the emergency department. By the time we actually got to a bed it was about 11pm as we’d waited a fair while for meds to be set up etc. The ward had 8 beds and most were full- turned out that it was a feeder ward, so you stay there whilst you wait to be admitted onto a proper ward or discharged home.

I get settled into the bed with some painkillers and the next thing I hear, in a low sinister whisper, is “how many people have you killed?” erm….looked round and there is a little old lady sat in my visitors chair in her nighty. I swear to god, I nearly gave birth there and then. She then follows this up with “they’re watching you” and my personal favourite “you’ll come to a bad end you will” bear in mind, all this is said in possibly the thickest Wigan accent you can imagine. By this point I’m sat up in bed with my head swivelling round like a meerkat looking for a nurse…in the end I resort to pressing my buzzer and trying to work out if I’m hallucinating or she’s real. Why of all things I would hallucinate an elderly Wiganer I don’t know. Tom Hardy in a loincloth is more my style.

So the nurse toddles up and goes “ooh Annie, you naughty thing, everyone’s been looking for you”. Annie gets carted off to her own bed, under protest, and I assume that’s the end of it.

Oh no. Annie decides that she wants “a good old fashioned sing song” and starts belting out Oh when the Saints. I’ve come to the conclusion by this point that a) She has dementia/ Alzheimers or the like and so should be humoured and b) I’m getting no rest in the near future. When the nurse comes back to my bed to reset my drip, I asked if Annie had dementia etc. No, says the nurse, absolutely nothing wrong with her mind. She wants to go home and has decided to be a pain in the arse so they will discharge her early. And a pain she was…some gems from Annie;

To the nurse

 “I want a cup of tea” the nurse gets her a brew “whats this? I didn’t ask for this. You’re trying to poison me”

“I’m freezing” screeched in the manner of a wounded animal. She gets extra blankets (bear in mind, everyone else on the ward has a sheet each) then “You’re suffocating meeeeeeee”

“I’ll be telling my daughter about you, she’ll see you’re trying to kill me”

To a police officer (wandered in from A&E in response to the howling)

“You’ve come in to molest me”

“That’s right, run away- I see your bad intentions”

Howled into the night at no one in particular

“I’m soooooooooo collllllllllllddddddddddddd”
 
 
Eventually around 4am, the nurses got Annie’s daughter to come in a taxi and pick her up, so the wily old coot got her own way because as soon as the very harassed and tired looking daughter walked in, she became all smiles and skipped off home quite merrily.

And we all went to sleep.