Am v glad you had such a fun weekend Seafour - also glad you seem to have decided to stay here. Obviously I manage to miss Crucial Happenings, just relieved didn’t find I had 70 pages of them to catch up on or something.
Wasn’t even doing anything super-exciting, just that Friday my ridiculous body tizzed out & everything had to go into Brownie stuff + Brownies (we were dressing up in several weeks of my [suitable] saved-up recycling plus my Assistant Leader’s odds & ends of wrapping paper [is there a 12-step programme for giftwrap, am slightly concerned after the amount she turned up with...?] & the girls had a spectacularly joyous time; & I got to give out badges that have seen girls REALLY challenge themselves to achieve & I’m Just. So. Proud.); then yesterday I was playing Pokémon Go! with a friend which = today in bed, apparently. Which was not the plan, the plan was Playing More. So possibly “sulking in bed” = strictly more accurate.
Have just realised I’ve not eaten the chocolate from my advent calendar yet today. I have eaten, though, but my food diary is not exactly looking stellar. I do not understand the whole eating-when-not-hungry thing. Ditto drinking-when-not-thirsty. Meh.
Have you your pyjamas chosen for later this week? (Possibly I’m just a bit weird about PJs & needing The Right Ones, to be fair, but I always feel More Settled when I have those sorted. Sod the enormous bag of medications, most of which pharmacy do not stock, the jamas are the thing 🙄)
Hope that for once everyone Follows The Plans. It is scary how people will autopilot in face of huge signs & repeat briefings though. I just have a chlorhexidine allergy (that, obvs, trying to avoid provoking to anaphylaxis) nothing like your response to lying flat. Still v stressful having people trying to use the stuff on you when there’s a sign on your door & over your bed (& obviously you’re clearly labelled & it’s in e-notes).
It’s kind of amazing that - despite the new Dignity Champions there seem to be all over the place, that must be a fun thing to have on your CV - patients are worryingly often left unwashed. Or staff don’t raise with family that a patient doesn’t have any underwear, so they’re left using paper pants. After having my appendix out (with bonus removal burst ovarian cyst; do not recommend either thing i. 2 weeks after major knee surgery ii. just after New Year) I wasn’t able to mobilise bathroom for over a week. Couldn’t wash myself, either. Unfortunately [lack of] care I received meant I developed a nice wound right on my knickerline - around where the femoral artery is, ish. Left open & weeping & growing as the split in my fragile skin worsened. I couldn’t actually see it to start with as my abdomen stayed INSANELY distended, but I could certainly feel it & when I asked I was told nothing was wrong. My hair was left to go rancid until a student nurse took pity on me & washed it for me. To the absolute rage of the staff. Eep. A couple of years ago I was on a ward with very lovely staff though & still ended up, after my attempts to find knickers for 95yo amputee in hospital shops were unsuccessful, begging a friend to get some & bring them when she came to visit. Lady in question was in fact mother of one of my daddy’s schoolfriend’s, just to make situation that bit weirder. (She was so very pleased with her knickers, after a moment of embarrassment that she’d confided in me about her lack of them while I was reading her the menu so she could choose her meals the day before [she was almost blind & had severe hearing loss so it took very clear enunciation of the menu choices for her to understand & she got upset if hurried... & our bay’s caterer, while lovely, was not only busy, but dealing with a patient who’d no clinical need to be in hospital & kept making up dietary requirements every time someone arrived on the bay with an actual need, so she was somewhere beyond the end of her tether... still not sure how it was staff had missed that the elderly Hindu lady in the bed opposite me would be best on the vegan diet given she’d forgotten all her English & couldn’t understand the menus/pick something that would be suitable though... really REALLY awkward starting a conversation with her son about it, too, because the staff were lovely & were trying, but they literally couldn’t communicate with her beyond mime; but I couldn’t bear seeing her being given foods that she couldn’t eat & some staff getting frustrated at her not eating things someone had basically randomly ticked... she kept getting hopeful I must speak Hindi because I understood her better than anyone else & I felt so bad having to keep telling her I didn’t... thankfully her consultant did, but that really was just luck!]). Is it really terrible to hope to not need to look after/fight for anyone else & only advocate for yourself? You are probably the wrong person to ask... I know that if I see someone needing help I will [try to] give it. Is it bad, though, to hope for an admission where that won’t be necessary?
If I don’t get up & rescue that advent calendar chocolate it may be left uneaten until tomorrow. That would be a bit sad.
Hope that you’re able to keep doing fun stuff in run-up to admission.
Oh & just how eclectic is eclectic? Mongolian throat singing followed by [thrash] metal followed by musicals followed by Motown followed by madrigals followed by music hall followed by mash-ups?