Discharged

My blood pressure lowered overnight and isn't as volatile now. After breakfast, I was relocated in a ward up on the sixth floor. It was possible to look down from that height on a helicopter landing on the A&E helipad. I don't think there's air-conditioning here as windows were kept open overnight. A bit noisy and polluting high above the A48, but the breeze was definitely cooling in the small hours.

One of the ENT medics deflated the nose pack and removed it briskly without too much pain, confident the blood flow from the wound would reduce to a trickle. washed out by mucus in the coming days. I'll be kept an eye on for 24 hours to ensure all is going to plan, then discharged. 

A nurse with pharmacy duties delivered me a big bag of medications old and new. I took time organising them and their dosage on a phone spreadsheet. 

There were several elderly sick men with organ or mobility issues on this ward whose treatment plans and discharge plans are more complex to arrange than mine. One of them, with a teacher's voice talks audibly and constantly. I'm not sure if he speaks into his 'phone or if it's a stream of consciousness conversation with a person remembered. In much of the discourse he tells stories. He was treated for constipation, but it released more energy to give him verbal diarrhea. Non-stop, all night. The real life conversation he had with a night nurse was movingly kind on her part. It could have been from a script for a Radio Four play. Needless to say, I slept badly. Some of the talk is about his home being sold without his consent. Voicing his loss of control due to infirmity. I experienced that sense of loss of control after the stroke. It's a struggle if cognition is impaired, Medication can have the same effect.

Mid-morning, the cannula was removed from my left wrist and the discharge bag of medication checked. I called Clare, who came by taxi to collect me. The punishing routine throughput of emergency doctors and nurses must be tiring. I'm amazed and very grateful when I see them wave farewell to departing patients with smiles of satisfied pleasure on their faces. From the moment of admission onwards after a medical crisis there are so many possibilities of chaos to be coped with in complex and difficult cases. Focus on the moment and the eventual outcome is essential. If the backlog of patients drops by even a small number it's a job well done.

Good to return home, more or less stable now, despite the chemical fog in my head and metallic taste of antibiotics on my tongue. Fish pie for lunch, In hospital and at home. Clare's was better.  At 30C It was too hot to go for a walk in my present condition feeling fragile exhausted and drugged up. I slept a little occasionally and made an effort to keep to my medication timetable. My hand-eye co-ordination is chaotic leading to time consuming typos. The nostril bleed is slowly drying, and will need extra care to avoid a repeat. "It's like living on the edge of a crumbling precipice." as I said to niece Veronica. Bed now