A horrible day

[smokingboot]

I am writing this because writing is my therapy, but I can imagine that many of my chums would find my details visceral and unpleasant, so be warned, it is intimately physical, very nasty and it happened to me today. Please don't feel you have to read it. I however, have to write it.



I have spent most of the day in A&E/Casualty and Gynie at Lewisham hospital. What follows next is a record of one of the worst days of my life, though it started sweetly enough with me in a little white/pink and brown dotted sixties dress that looks really cute on me, or looked really cute - its high hemline is currently covered in dried blood.

There I was getting on to the train to get to work for the breakfast show. See, there's always a gap between the train and the edge of the platform, and some gaps are smaller than others. I stepped onto the train with one leg - and then the other slipped and fell down the gap, and I fell down too, first caught on the edge of the train, then backwards onto the platform, and lay there, growing stiff and cold while passengers gawped at the tops of my tights, and I suffered that most humiliating of girly nightmares, the horrible sensation of trickling and flooding between my legs with everybody watching. My period had finished two days ago.

'Maybe it's just urine' said a nearby doctor. I was embarrassed at the idea, but more scared when I thought of the alternative. One of the railway, er, guards (I don't know what they do) was talking into his radio and kept asking me if I could descrube where it hurt, what kind of injury it was. I couldn't tell him. 'She's in shock,' he said into the radio. *I'm not in shock!' I screamed at him, though I clearly was. Then I yelled ineffectually at all the spectators, telling them to go away. I was fortunate to have really dark tights on, so there was nothing to see, but still...never have I felt so angry, so vulnerable and stupid.

People were very kind. One lady's posh coat served for a pillow. A gentleman laid his jacket over me, and laughed gently when I said it smelled good. Someone put a towel over me to cover my modesty, such as it was.

Then the ambulance came and the world was full of funny tough sweet people who strapped up my neck and my arms and tethered me to a stretcher for all the world as though I was Hannibal Lecter. They made me laugh all the way to the hospital, possibly not a great idea as the bottom of my stomach hurt like hell. Then miraculously waiting at the hospital, was the stalwart larians , and just as well, because the shock truly started there, after the x-rays.

They had been wise not to let me see the state of myself below the waist. It was a gorefest, and they looked at it and advised me that I might need stitches. I got very cold and very out of it, and suddenly wanted a dad. Not my dad, you understand, a proper dad, a lovely archetypal caring protective dad, some old London or Kent guy with white hair who called you 'gel' and looked after you, and I felt so sorry for myself it was deeply pathetic. As one lady mentioned later, I had a lovely strong friend looking after me, and she was right. I can't thank him enough for his for being there.

I started seeing the sky through everything, a kind of transparency, which was nice but combined oddly with nausea and dizziness, and this, the doc explained, was down to blood loss. They pumped me full of painkillers, stuck a plug in my arm and hooked me up to stuff that bleeped and other stuff that went into my arm. There was concern about my blood pressure, and they cleaned me up and got me out of the maelstrom that was Casualty (some poor guy came in right after me with a bust up pelvis, and his cries were heart rending) to the soft and quiet world of gynie, where I lay on a sticky plateau of blood soaked pads and sheets, and slept.

Now the problem with gynie world is that it is a woman's world with all the traditional accoutrements, ie children. No, I won't start this again (see earlier posts). Suffice it to say that little Rohanna, having been told not to touch anything in a stern voice, a sweet voice, a pleading voice and a commanding voice, then set off the fire alarm, which no-one could switch off for 20 minutes. Imagine my joy, nay, imagine the joy of the whole ward, people not even related to Rohanna benefiting from her presence. I had to get out.

It took a while. I've been in hospital hands from 7.30 this morning to 9 pm tonight. Observation revealed that stitches were not necessary, and the dramatic wounds are just that - a little blood goes a long way. I have loads of drugs and I have been treated well. But I cannot work tomorrow, and despite my earlier hopes, do not think I can work the next day either.

Still, at least I'm home.

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