Destruction of anatomy

So, it's been an exciting few days and is good to have a sit down.

Do, please, when reading that load it very heavily with sarcasm.

What this is, is an exercise in not using the internet to self-diagnose. I'm sure I would not be in this position were it not for Wikipedia.

So, I went to work on Wednesday. I started feeling a bit funny on the train, but I put this down to having a bit of a jog on my recently consumed porridge. But then it started feeling a little worse. Nothing hugely odd about that - the previous day I had eaten a bit of pork which had been in the fridge for around a week. It hadn't seemed bad at the time, but even at the point of eating it I was a little wary. So it must have been that. Or the prawns - I had prawns that evening which I had fried lightly in butter, herbs and lemon juice and tossed into pasta. Perhaps I hadn't quite heated them through properly - they were precooked, then frozen, but even then it can still go wrong.

So I put it down to an upset stomach and ploughed on to work, where I worked diligently for as long as I could. But it got to lunchtime and I didn't feel like lunch. I didn't feel like anything. I just wanted to curl up. So I made my excuses and went home. I say 'went home' - it takes me 25 minutes to get from work to the train station; then around an hour on two trains, then another 20 minutes walk home from the train station. 2 hours of discomfort until I could crawl into bed. But crawl I did.

I had a phone conversation about my stomach cramps with my friend on the other side of the world. As you do. She had suffered with something similar around New Year and described it as the Crazy International Virus as her dad had contracted something similar over Christmas in Spain. So I had caught a bug from Spain via New Zealand over Skype.

But that was it. I'm never one to make too much of being poorly. I hate being poorly at the best of times. Sick days should be for shopping. Well, that was the policy of one of my ex's - he always thought sick days should be spent shopping, only he couldn't shop in his home town in case anyone from his workplace saw him. Karma caught up in due course, obviously, and having taken a sick day to do Christmas shopping ("Everyone else at work has at least a couple of sick days a year, I should have a couple of days off") he was promptly poorly on Christmas day. My policy is much more along my dad's lines - you are given by good grace a specific number of holidays to do with what you choose; and you are expected to work the remainder of your time unless you are incapable. Just because other people flaunt the rules, doesn't make it correct.

But I generally am a terrible patient. Even where I am incapable of doing work-work, if I am off poorly, I don't enjoy wallowing in bed or lounging around on the sofa. I'm still tidying, or cleaning, or anything that I can do, quite probably to distract myself from my poorliness. It doesn't mean I'm not poorly - I am, and I am usually hindering my progress. Nor does it mean that I'm not thinking everything under the sun is wrong with me: on this occasion I had a very real concern that this was, in fact, bowel cancer or something similarly terminal. Well, it didn't happen that way. I did just curl up in bed, hoping to fever out whatever nastiness had accompanied the pork into me.

Anyhow, that was Wednesday - general discomforting, increasing to considerable discomfort almost certainly food-poisoning.

And then on Thursday it developed. The 'generalisation' disappeared over time, localising itself to my right-hand side. This was odd. This wasn't a general bad-belly. This wasn't a Crazy International Virus. This was something quite particular. And so the netbook came out and Wikipedia was dragged into life. As it had localised over my right side I immediately thought this could be appendicitis. No huge bain - people get appendicitis all the time, surely? It's just a niggle. It often sorts itself out, doesn't it?

Well, this is where the internet is possibly both a daemon and a saint. Whilst it confirmed almost certainly for me that it was appendicitis; what it also did was increase my concern - if this wasn't treated quickly and the thing burst, the risks of mortality were very high. Very high? How the devil could that be? This was my own body working against me. But it powered me into action, and I dragged my fettid, infested, self-destroying body down to the doctors. I told them I thought it was appendicitis. The student doctor told me he thought it was appencitis. He then told the doctor he thought it was appendicitis. The doctor then told me he thought it was appendicitis and packed me off into an ambulance to go to hospital for the hospital to tell me they thought it was appendicitis.

Now, that all sounds very smooth and urgent. An ambulance possibly wasn't strictly necessary; however this is another example of external forces rubbing in how single I am, in that had I a partner they would have been the one to take me. As it was I had to lie reasonably motionless on the doctor's couch for around 2 hours waiting for an emergency ambulance because they had determined that I was in no fit state to get the bus.

Anyhow, eventually I got to hospital, though only after my parents had arrived, bringing news of the deliciousness of their fish and chips.

Let me put their remarks into proper context.

On the Wednesday I had had my breakfast. I didn't fancy my lunch and was trekking to get the train in any event so a cup-a-soup would not have been ideal. I didn't feel like eating when I got in. On Thursday I started feeling a little more peckish, but wasn't really in the mood to prepare anything for myself, other than drinks. So I hadn't eaten for a long while, despite starting to feel hungry. So I was obviously delighted that they had a delicious fish supper.

I had also had my last drink around 4pm before setting off to the doctors. The doctors considered that I may get assessed quickly and potentially operated on quite soon, so they wanted to retain my nil-by-mouth status; as did everyone in hospital. It's just such a shame that I didn't actually get assessed until 1am. There it was confirmed that it was appendicitis and that an operation was required. There I was given a window of one hour to eat before returning to nil-by-mouth, but the nurses did me proud with their scavaging.

So it was that I had a confirmed diagnosis and a sandwich and a flapjack. And ultimately an operation. In hospital I am actually an incredibly good patient. I appreciate that the doctors and nurses do a difficult, usually altruistic job throughout the day and night, and there is absolutely no reason why I should do anything to make it any more difficult. And I don't get nervous about being put under general anaesthetic; so there I was having a joke with all the people in the antechamber to the operating theatre; and as soon as I was brought round I was doing what I could to assist, albeit without my pants which had gone somewhere during the operation.

But the operation was done and I awoke and recovered very quickly. Indeed I was ready to return to the ward within 15 minutes. Unfortunately the ward wasn't ready for my return for four hours; a very convenient 15 minutes after dinner had been served. They offered me sandwiches, but I was all sandwiched out. Fortunately my mother came to my rescue with some stew and all was good.

Now, my 'perfect patient' routine can work somewhat counter-productive. For example, my tendency not to bother the nurses results in me getting up to get my own drinks; which leads to nurses dropping whatever they are doing to chase after me to castigate me for getting out of and risking my stitches. And so it was the case when I was to attempt to recover my belongings. You see, when they took me for my operaion they did so from ward C31. When they returned my, it was to E14. Without my bag, my laptop, my mobile, or my pants. It took me around six hours to recover my life, considerably longer than it took for me to recover my senses.

That night in the hospital was an eye-opener. It was going to be difficult anyway, as I was being woken up every couple of hours for my observations to be ... observed. But I was on a ward with five other people - one quite a bit older Polish chap; and four extremely old chaps. Aside from myself, the least problematic of the patients was the very old chap next to me who was so unresponsive the only problems that occurred were when his machines stopped beeping. The Polish chap managed to set an alarm off by smoking in the toilets. The other old chaps were, in turn, racist, offensive, problematic, and plain obnoxious to the nurses. It was cringeworth to hear a patient refusing to be treated by a 'foreigner'; or another to ask why his 'rights' as a patient were being ignored, apparently on the basis that he wasn't getting 24 hour, one-on-one nursing from his favourite nurse.

Breakfast time couldn't come soon enough. And soon after was the assessment that I was fit to leave - fortunately after the lunch order had already been taken, ensuring that I would at least have one proper meal in hospital.

And so it was that I returned to normality. Well, a form of normality. I am off work for the next two weeks whilst I recover; and I have to cope with my mother and father regularly 'dropping by' and fussing me to the point of annoyance. And I have a few new scars and a little less hair now as a reminder of the excitement. And nothing else planned.

But already I have had the urge to pick up a hammer...