The man in bed eight

If you've been keeping up with the blog you'll know that last week didn't exactly go very smoothly and come Thursday afternoon I was having a little bit of a sense of humour failure. So when I finally did get to sit down in the comfy chair and start connecting up to the necessary tubes and wires what's the last thing I want to hear from next door?

"Groan... Moan... Nurrrrse!"

Oh dear Jesus Christ on a Pogo Stick, it's the return of The Man From Bed Seven

Except it wasn't as it became quite clear that this chap was indeed in some kind of distress. I caught a glimpse of him when the overstretched nursing staff finally did get around to him, curled up almost in a foetal position on a hospital bed, wet from a spilt drink and a smell indicating that something had gone rather wrong in the stoma department.

"Where am I? What's happening?" he asked. Over and over again.

"You're in hospital Mr Smith¹ they told him.

"Where am I?"

There were brief flashes of lucidity, he apologised to the nurses for the state he was in and the trouble he was causing, back in the day he had clearly been a civil and polite gentleman, but then the clouds rolled back in front of the sun and he couldn't understand why they needed to change his shirt.

"It's because you're all wet Mr Smith"

"What's happening?"

And then you hear the words you never want to hear in an oncology unit or quite frankly in any medical context. "Oh my god! <Senior Nurse Name> can you come here right away please"

I stuck my head in my laptop and tried to ignore the grunts and moans of pain from beyond the curtain.

After about half an hour whatever it was had been sorted out, treatment was over and they bundled up Mr Smith into his outside coat and humiliating knitted woolly bobble hat and plonked him in a wheelchair.

"Where am I going?"

"You're going home Mr Smith?"

"Home?" his voice visibly brightened.

"To the nursing home."

"I'm going home?" not so bright this time.

Then they left him. They were running late and had to cram the last few of us cancer dudes through the poking and prodding by eight when they shut up shop so Mr Smith just got unceremoniously parked up in a chair, hunched over in a huge coat and stupid hat like some kind of decrepit smurf who asked over and over "Where am I going?"

At one point he tried to move his chair. As the brakes were on all he succeeded in doing was making it rock backwards at such an alarming degree myself and another patient called out for one of the nurses to grab him as he was severely in danger of toppling backwards and dashing his brains out.

Eventually his transport must have arrived as some orderly came and wheeled him away, still asking where he was going.

He had nobody with him. He had no clue what had been done to him. He had no clue where he was going.

And as I sit here reeling from the effects of the treatment I consented to I have to wonder why we as a society were inflicting the same poisoning on this poor bastard. Maybe to ease his symptoms? Maybe some (absent) relative was a "You must save my grandpa at all costs" emotional mess? I don't know and I don't have any answers.

I'm not sure though that me and that other patient who called the nurse over did him any favours though.




¹ not his real name of course.