For much of this year so far, Thursday has been Chester day. Up at 05:30 to be sure of catching the 08:10 from Euston on which I have a cheap Advance reservation in First Class so I can get breakfast. At lunchtime we usually go to the Harkers Arms by the Shropshire Union canal. The Harkers has a menu running from a quality burger to an excellent suet pudding with red cabbage - I have to stop myself having apple pie and ice cream every time I go there.
Except last week, when I was sitting in A&E in the Countess of Chester Hospital, about to have a hefty dose of penicillin and flucloxacillin administered intravenously. The Registrar who saw me suggested that was the best course of action: I could carry on with the 500mg flucloxacillin prescribed for me the previous day at the Soho Walk-In Centre for what I thought was a nasty infected spot on my hairline that was spreading a little. Well, it did spread, right down to the fleshy bits around my eyes, which had blown up so that I looked like the Weird Guy in a 1960's spy movie. I first noticed it on the train up, found it more irritating as the morning went on, and then asked a colleague to take me to the A&E.
Where I had barely sat down after having my details taken before I was seen. Where the triage nurse had barely parked me in a curtain-icle when the Registrar saw me. After which I had my first treatment within about half an hour. I'm used to south-west London hospitals where it takes three hours before an actual doctor able to diagnose and prescribe appears. On one visit to Kingston Hospital, the nurses told my then partner with some perverse pride that there was only one doctor available and if he had to go into an operation, that was it: no-one in A&E would be treated for the rest of the day. At the Countess of Chester there were Consultants and Senior Doctors actually walking around, visible, amongst, well, the Common People! Some nurses in London hospitals have never in their whole careers seen a living Consultant.
I spent the day and a chunk of the evening in the "Five-Bedded Area" - because it has five beds - and had a shot at six in the evening. The plan was to review me at eight in the evening to see if the infection had stabilised and if it hadn't I was to stay in overnight with shots at midnight and six the next morning. The idea that anyone who walked into an A&E in London would get a bed, let alone overnight? In London, if you walk in, you are by definition well enough to be thrown out just as soon as the last train has gone, so you have to get a cab. I had however decided that I would rather not spend the night not sleeping in the A&E if possible, but felt pretty sure I needed another shot.
It was at this point that my Higher Power intervened. This is something we drunks have that you civilians don't. I'm not sure how it works, but it's about trusting that whatever happens is what you need to happen. I think it affects the way you interact with people: you do so in a manner that makes them want to help you rather than treat you as a pain-in-the-butt or a naughty patient who won't do as they are told. I was sent a nurse who knew how to play the system and understood that I didn't want to spend the night there if possible. She asked a consultant (in London, nurses can only talk to consultants when spoken to and certainly may not approach them) to review my case, because a consultant can over-rule any previous plan. I was seen by a pleasant, energetic middle-aged lady who looked at me, asked the usual questions and decide I could get a last shot at ten that evening and then be discharged with some really powerful specific antibiotics. All I had to do was find an hotel to stay in, which I did even though there was a Conference and all the usual ones were full. So I got a decent night's sleep, a cooked breakfast, and caught the first off-peak train back to London.
It only occurred to me just how scared I had been on Saturday morning.
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