ACT ONE
I was in a lot of pain and started taking Ibuprofen which always works a treat with me but as the days rolled by, then weeks I was taking them every four hours and towards the end they lost all efficacies. I started taking 2 Paracetemol, then 2 hours later 2 Ibuprofen - It is 2022 after all.
Four weeks into that regime and nothing was working and so I found a stashed antibiotic and necked that. It really helped for a couple of hours. A month of putting things off and I finally conceded I'd have to go to the Emergency Treatment Centre at the local hospital. They used to call it the walk-in clinic but if you ever been to one, 8 out of 10 cats have foot injuries, so it needed a rebrand from a somewhat limp name as it were.
So, I tipped-up at the ETC and as usual the waiting room was full of the rejects from Lourdes. I wasn't looking forward to a few hours with more miserable people, one of whom, naturally I considered to be myself. I approached the counter, and as I was wincing a bit I kind of had my spiel ready for the receptionist so there wouldn't be too many questions. I said my piece and she directed me to sit down in the waiting area with the rest of the crippled and maimed.
I'd barely sat down, when a voice came over the Tanoy (is that the right word? maybe 'speaker' so the youngsters can understand) "requesting Mr. Frith to report to Triage".
As I got up, I felt the entire waiting room's eyes outraged at my priority treatment, but they'd all heard my pitch and I asked for no preference, so I lurched forwards looking straight-ahead to keep the guilt concealed, but everybody knew.
Inside I was dealt with by a competent professional who was more worried I'd poisoned myself and ordered me a taxi for tests at Emergency in the General Hospital.
Living as a beach-bum in Asia I'd learned to sort out meds for myself on a shoestring budget as often, the important ones are available over the counter. This entire fuss could have been handled with antibiotics and a codeine prescription. Instead, it ended nearly three days later, and I'm ashamed to say, at considerable unnecessary cost to taxpayers.
ACT TWO
After getting trolleyed in A&E I was warned it would be a long wait.
It was 6-9 hours punctuated by a 30ish but slight of frame, Indian nurse who came and held my arm.
It was both intimate, in a mammalian sense, perfectly soothing. How much cheaper health care will be when the value of a healing touch returns?
4 or 5 hours into the big wait, I knew I was being toyed with, so I sat up and pulled out the plastic Cannula in my arm. Bad move, blood started spurting everywhere, and so my escape was stymied by mopping the floor first with tissue.
I made it out. Ordered an UBER and sat down for a puff on the pipe.
A couple of security guys came out looking for me.
Are you Charles Frith?
The taxi pulled up, "no that's not my name I replied".
Another guard turned up so that made it three security guards for an escapee patient. Heavy handed I thought.
I submitted in the end.
It was out of embarrassment. I was fighting off all three guards in another man's taxi-carriage and means-of-living. So, I got out, and they nearly frogmarched me back to those boosters y'all used to love, but have since gone off... but which they were gagging to squeeze into me (how I handled that is classified).
After A&E I got the royal treatment again. King Charles, while not impressed, mentioned it was notable.
The guards checked me into a first-class Kubrick COVid Ward in white, then red and black. The receptionist had one of those 2001 head-encasing oxygen suits from Space Odyssey, and yeah, I get a bit triggered by Kubrick, but only in an enthusiastic manner as I've laid out many times before, under the Kubrick tag my friend.
I met a 32-year-old on blood thinners.
His life of drumming for a band [and Football career] all over due to the vaccine. He was great, he made an effort to talk to everyone on the VIP ward the systematic service had just misattributed myself into. I tried to be as candid with him as possible, therefore we talked about much more than myocarditis now scrubbed from the NHS website (and Pericarditis too).
On my life the night-ward Dr spent hours trying to get me more permanent relief than painkillers. I never asked for that, but it was a Promethean attempt at leaping bureaucratic hurdles, I heard every call. She protected me, a Muslim woman protecting an unknown Occidental fella, for hour after hour. Tell me there isn't bravery in the world. Even in the heights of Southampton.
It's not easy to reassemble, as warp-speed space and time, and more, play with the senses. As you well know...
I was awoken by a medical Dr/Teacher and his eager student faces. The smell of warm, freshly baked bread is far superior to smelling salts. I was fully engaged, and then heard him diagnosing me as type 3c.
I'd mentioned it to my GPs but none had any expertise, so my cursory research on the subject was dismissed.
Not through malice, but through ignorance. There's no bitterness. That's a promise. This is now about pragmatism not driving the rear-view mirror
ACT THREE
I was trolleyed through the hospital corridors for what seemed an age in the dead-stillness of the Neon light.
Hushed tones
Sleeping beds
Whispered requests
Procrastination
Security Guards
Redress
My new Homies. I was in the Neurological ward.
None of us awoke at the same time when morning arrived, but the dawn light had risen, and eventually we commenced amiable conversation.
Two beds with faces and the soles of their feet facing me. One bed curtained off to my immediate right.
Windows to the left.
Mr Fawley directly opposite was most hospitable and we chatted about our lives while recuperating... from the very stories that had brought us together. We discussed eclipses and the introduction of light and its withdrawal. Eventually we touched on movies and Masterful Matey to the right chipped in that he liked war movies.
I asked him if he knew that Audy Murphy was the most decorated soldier of WWII?
No, he replied. What film was that?
He asked me if I knew the Latin for Mi Casa es su Casa. I said I thought there was a secret-society similar-story of sharing-meals idiom?
We bonded
Later on, he got his cock out for the bed I haven't mentioned.
He put him down in front of me.
It was a brotherly act
I told you we bonded.
The discharge nurse tried spitefully hard to cut my arm off with the replacement Canula before I bailed out. I swallowed the pain and pretended it was nothing. Why give her the satisfaction. Medical professional my arse. More like resident Satanist.
Nevertheless, that afternoon, I was untouchable. I'm not always untouchable, but when I am I can walk across hot coals like the rest of them.
I caught a taxi home carry a fivers worth of codeine, the antibiotics arrived a little late, but they're stored for a rainy day.
(I'll add the Swiss Intel anecdote later/still ongoing)
