The ENT Ward

Despite my Sister being super-organised and giving me a comprehensive list of what I should take to the hospital with me, she failed to tell me that I would need earplugs.  This is because as they wheeled me into my ward the woman in the bed next to me never-stopped-talking!! I am a talker…I’ll hold my hands up to that, but this lady never drew breath.  Her phone rang constantly and then she would talk really, really fast for a very long time.  I didn’t mind too much as for the first hour I just sat and puked for a while and then they hooked me up to a lot of pain and anti-sickness drugs and I started to feel soooo much better.

I recognised the woman across from me as being in the waiting room with the willy drawn on her neck.  She was out of it, but I waved at her anyway before thinking she could actually be anybody, I didn’t have my glasses on.  In fact, where were my glasses? Where was everything? I buzzed the nurse, and we realised my glasses were missing, I searched through my bag, but they weren’t there so the nursing team began a comprehensive search throughout the ward, back down in recovery and in the theatres. It was all systems go on the hunt for my glasses…and then I found them…in my bag! I could tell the nurses weren’t best pleased and imagined the handover to the night team would be, “the girl in bay 4…partial thyroidectomy, has been sick a few times, pain in the arse!” 

A lovely nurse called Ange came onto the night shift and helped me get out of my gown and get into my pyjamas. She then straightened my bed and tucked me up before bringing me more drugs…she also told me I didn’t look 40 and she had thought she had got the wrong person when she saw me lying there as I looked so much younger.  At this point in the day, I looked more like 85, but I decided I loved Ange and she was making me feel so much better. The drugs kicked in and I started to drift off to sleep, the lady next to me was STILL TALKING!!! But I drifted off anyway…until I woke around 3am and could hear whispering, it was no surprise that it was the lady next to me, seriously how long had she been on the phone and who on earth was she talking to at this hour? I gingerly turned over and sighed trying to block out the sound. 

When I woke up it was morning and the light was poking through the window, it looked like a beautiful day.  The view from the hospital is pretty amazing, if you don’t look at the car park and the road you look out over beautiful green hills and farmland…unless you’re round the back, and you look out over A&E.  I laid in bed and remembered I didn’t have to get up, I could just stay here and wait for somebody to bring my breakfast…it was probably my first proper lie in for 5 years! I felt good considering everything, I was in little pain and I’d bravely turned the phone camera on myself and could see that my neck didn’t look that bad…I didn’t look like Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas, so all was good, and breakfast was on the way!! 

Disney - Nightmare Before Christmas