(no subject)
There is a limit, I have discovered, of how many times you can say "I'm in hospital!" before your journal starts getting repetitive. For future reference, it is this many: I am in hospital.
We're into Week 8 of this infection, the whole thing dragging more than a mid-season Merlin, but by the magic of changing IVs every couple of weeks it's officially only Day 4. And to be fair, that's not eight weeks in hospital, the technical term for which is sod that for a game of soldiers; it's a fortnight of IVs at home, a weekend off for LARPing, three weeks in with a pity-discharge, two sputum-filled weeks of rapid deterioration at home, and now another fortnight in, of which we're on Day 13, only we're not 'cos it's Day 4 now, so... well, you've seen that film Groundhog Day? That, but with mucus.
Anyway, to break up the monotony I had a CT scan today: part of an expanding range of things to do being given me by bored doctors who have run out of new antibiotics. "Maybe we're coming at this from the wrong angle," they say. "Maybe there's something going on down there that we're missing, some new bug or virus or, you know - it's worth taking a look". They don't want to say it, but they're thinking xenomorph gestation.
So down I went ("Is he going in a gown, do you know, or will he put on his own clothes, or will he in fact punch me in a minute if I don't acknowledge that he's right fucking there?"), wheeled in a stroppy-patient-herding wheelchair to a cold room full of The Future. They take a list of things I'm allergic to, recent operations, next of kin, hobbies and interests (yes) and explain that the dye they're about to inject into me might make me feel warm and tingly. This I can live with: I haven't felt warm and tingly since Day (properly) 1. Now, lie on the special mechanical bed - watch the big iris thing spin round like the world's shittest stargate - get trolleyed through it, lasers all round you, pretty pretty ("Remember to keep your eyes closed as you go through", oh) - and have drug plugged into you on the other side. "And remember, like I said, this might make you feel a bit warm and tingly, or like you're wetting yourself."
What?
This isn't the future, this is a machine for simulating the experience of wetting the bed. I already have one of those, and it's called wetting the bed. Much cheaper, no lasers, and doesn't involve doing any such jesus christ I'm warm, what's that tingling, oh my god I think I'm -
And then, and this the bit that's really freaking me out, more than the lasers, more than the pissmatron, more than the fact that I'm doomed to repeat this experience eternally only with Bill Murray fucking about in the background - and then, the electric queue woman from the Post Office asks me to breathe in.
Honestly. "Counter Number Five, please", it's her, unmistakable, those politely nagging rounded practised vowels, "Now hold your breath - ", and I can't help obeying, warm and tinglish or not, distantly aware that in these days of an increasingly elderly population I'm probably not the first person to discreetly piss themselves in her audio presence, and things whir around me and lasers pulse above me and it all hums and thrums and it really is very very warm indeed, and then she tells me to "Stop breathing" and for a moment I'm worried that's it, game over, perhaps this is how life ends, not with a bang but a pre-recorded message and a request to vacate the simu-pod for the next player, and then, blessed relief, "Breathe normally", and it all sort of drains away (though not, it turns out, down my legs), whirrs down into silence and the mechanical bed extrudes me like some magic electric turd and I'm wheeled back up for a nap.
Anyway, I only mention this because half an hour later there was a knock at the door and some bloke told me it was time to go down for my CT scan. I told him to piss off: sometimes there's only so much Bill Murray you can take.
We're into Week 8 of this infection, the whole thing dragging more than a mid-season Merlin, but by the magic of changing IVs every couple of weeks it's officially only Day 4. And to be fair, that's not eight weeks in hospital, the technical term for which is sod that for a game of soldiers; it's a fortnight of IVs at home, a weekend off for LARPing, three weeks in with a pity-discharge, two sputum-filled weeks of rapid deterioration at home, and now another fortnight in, of which we're on Day 13, only we're not 'cos it's Day 4 now, so... well, you've seen that film Groundhog Day? That, but with mucus.
Anyway, to break up the monotony I had a CT scan today: part of an expanding range of things to do being given me by bored doctors who have run out of new antibiotics. "Maybe we're coming at this from the wrong angle," they say. "Maybe there's something going on down there that we're missing, some new bug or virus or, you know - it's worth taking a look". They don't want to say it, but they're thinking xenomorph gestation.
So down I went ("Is he going in a gown, do you know, or will he put on his own clothes, or will he in fact punch me in a minute if I don't acknowledge that he's right fucking there?"), wheeled in a stroppy-patient-herding wheelchair to a cold room full of The Future. They take a list of things I'm allergic to, recent operations, next of kin, hobbies and interests (yes) and explain that the dye they're about to inject into me might make me feel warm and tingly. This I can live with: I haven't felt warm and tingly since Day (properly) 1. Now, lie on the special mechanical bed - watch the big iris thing spin round like the world's shittest stargate - get trolleyed through it, lasers all round you, pretty pretty ("Remember to keep your eyes closed as you go through", oh) - and have drug plugged into you on the other side. "And remember, like I said, this might make you feel a bit warm and tingly, or like you're wetting yourself."
What?
This isn't the future, this is a machine for simulating the experience of wetting the bed. I already have one of those, and it's called wetting the bed. Much cheaper, no lasers, and doesn't involve doing any such jesus christ I'm warm, what's that tingling, oh my god I think I'm -
And then, and this the bit that's really freaking me out, more than the lasers, more than the pissmatron, more than the fact that I'm doomed to repeat this experience eternally only with Bill Murray fucking about in the background - and then, the electric queue woman from the Post Office asks me to breathe in.
Honestly. "Counter Number Five, please", it's her, unmistakable, those politely nagging rounded practised vowels, "Now hold your breath - ", and I can't help obeying, warm and tinglish or not, distantly aware that in these days of an increasingly elderly population I'm probably not the first person to discreetly piss themselves in her audio presence, and things whir around me and lasers pulse above me and it all hums and thrums and it really is very very warm indeed, and then she tells me to "Stop breathing" and for a moment I'm worried that's it, game over, perhaps this is how life ends, not with a bang but a pre-recorded message and a request to vacate the simu-pod for the next player, and then, blessed relief, "Breathe normally", and it all sort of drains away (though not, it turns out, down my legs), whirrs down into silence and the mechanical bed extrudes me like some magic electric turd and I'm wheeled back up for a nap.
Anyway, I only mention this because half an hour later there was a knock at the door and some bloke told me it was time to go down for my CT scan. I told him to piss off: sometimes there's only so much Bill Murray you can take.