After a short pause

So I’m in this room, which has a prefabricated wall and door. It used to be a cubicle I suppose. I’ve had a number of injections, they’ve taken blood I think, and I’m on oxygen. People come and go. I tell a nurse in an elaborate breathing device which covers her head that it looks like she’s wearing a vintage hair drier – the ones that had a plastic hood which inflated. (I don”t know if I was right. Iwas still a bit spaced out.)She was amused but said that she thought she looked like a nun. I said well that too. I was glad she could get something interesting out of the protective headgear.

I saw a lot of odd looking PPE during my stay. A nurse wearing a kind of weird gas mask helped me with washing a day or so later (they really don’t pay them enough).

There was a long picture above the door showing a panorama of a forest floor with tree trunks and bluebells. I had the idea that the image was moving slightly as some screen savers do but at the same time I thought the movement was in my head. I hadn’t been thinking very coherently for several days.

Now I was pretty sure of where I was, lying in this room in A&E. My son was nearby in a similar room. My wife was somewhere else in the building. She wasn’t intubated but a machine was helping her breathe. It was a couple of days before we saw each other.

As you’ve probably worked out, all three of us had new variant Covid-19 and were now in hospital. But don’t be too concerned. I had a bit of pneumonia, but I never had trouble breathing as far as I can recall. There were fleeting visits from doctors, plenty of drugs and oxygen, plus the usual issues of getting the TV to work (bit of a first world problem I know).

Relief at being snatched from the jaws of death (maybe) turned to plotting escape, and a few days later I walked out of the hospital in a borrowed pair of pyjamas and my own dressing gown (we don’t live too far from the hospital). Back in my own home I spent an almost coherent evening on my own reunited with my own machines. My son and wife followed over the next couple of days. We survived.

Thank you to the staff of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and special thanks to my friend and colleague Isabel who kept me sane over a series of phone calls. Thanks to all the friends and medical professionals who have helped me while I’m recovering. Thanks above all to my wife and son.

This post is not to make you feel sorry for me, but to explain my absence from the blog. So there you are. I’m still here and regular posting will be resumed as soon as possible. Apologies to everyone who left comments and had to wait for me to approve them. The truth is that the blog got on pretty well without me. Page views were good. The annual total last year was more than the previous year. January’s monthly total was the second highest ever total for that month. I know. The lockdown. Many people with more time to spare. I’d like to think it has a little to do with the quality of the back catalogue, which is pretty extensive.

I have a bit more time off now, and there were a few draft posts waiting to be complete. So you can expecta return to actual blogging quite soon I hope. Pictures next time, too.

Oh yes, one last thing. In case you were wondering, I saw and experienced nothing which would lead me to think Covid 19 is a hoax. Anyone who thinks that should probably take another look at the evidence.

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