Chicken pie and mash; fruit pot / banana and meringue yoghurt stack

Right, where were we?

When I left you, I was drifting off to sleep on a surprisingly comfortable recliner chair in a converted hospital corridor. Two hours later, I was awoken by a member of staff telling me they had a bed for me.

I was shuffled into a wheelchair and taken upstairs to a small room which wouldn’t have put a small B&B to shame:

And there I slept soundly for about three hours, until I was woken up by the usual early morning hospital start. A kindly healthcare assistant (HCA) found me a commode frame so I could use the toilet (the actual toilet raiser having wandered off somewhere, as such things do), a perching stool so I could wash, and a plate of toast for breakfast.

A short while later, the usual gaggle of doctors came round. The senior one confirmed that my pain was better and that I had been referred to a specialist in Portsmouth. “Err… that’s a different person,” said another one of the doctors. The senior doctor waved this away, told me I was cleared to go home, and off they all went again.

The charge nurse came in, found me crying with pain and frustration – that was twice in a week I had been brushed off and just sent home with painkillers – and nodded wearily. Apparently this is not uncommon for people with gallbladder issues: they are repeatedly admitted and discharged, with each admission moving them closer to the top of the waiting list for surgery, until finally it’s easier for the surgery to just take place.

That this is a ridiculous waste of NHS time and resources, not to mention a cause of much avoidable suffering, seems obvious to everyone. But somehow this is ‘the system’, and so I was discharged.

Or, at least, put on the list for discharge. Which is a long and slow process, giving me time for lunch.

I don’t know what it’s like at other hospitals, but at St Mary’s the process is that food orders are taken in the afternoon, for delivery the next day. Which means that, when you get moved into a room overnight, you get the meal choices of whoever was in your bed before you.

That meant I was served a corned beef sandwich and ice cream, both of which I love but neither of which I’m supposed to eat as I’m meant to be on a very low-fat diet. With hindsight, I should have just kept quiet and eaten it, but I didn’t and so the sandwich and ice cream were taken away.

I was offered the only low fat option on the menu, vegetarian moussaka, but this is one of very few items on the St Mary’s menu that I don’t like. I wasn’t very hungry, loss of appetite being a common effect of gallbladder issues, so was more than happy to go without lunch. That wasn’t allowable, though, so instead I got chicken and ham pie (“pick out the chicken, scrape off the sauce, don’t eat much of the pastry”), mash (which is heavily buttered and thus delicious but not something I should be eating), and cauliflower (which I will never, under any circumstances, eat).

Then I had a little pot of fruit – nice but very boring – and then I cried. And cried, and cried, because if I was reduced to a lunch of three pieces of chicken and some processed fruit in a hospital, what was I meant to eat out in the real world? And if I was to lose pretty much my sole remaining hobby, cooking, what is left of me? What’s the point of being alive at all?

Lots of tears and one mental health referral later, I received my tablets and was cleared to go home. Just in time to receive my supper to take home with me: “egg mayo sandwich… oh no, you can’t have that; cheese and crackers… well, you can have the crackers?” I didn’t really want a supper of two dry cream crackers, so politely declined.

I came home in one of scariest car rides of my life: nothing to do with the driver, or even other drivers, but with the sun shining at the precise angle that, for large parts of the journey, the road was invisible behind the dazzle. I’m seriously impressed with the driver for not driving us straight into an unseen tree.

Then home, to a tearful reunion (on mum’s part) befitting a separation of years instead of just a single day. Then I worked out why the broadband wasn’t working (the extension cable has died and the router needed to be plugged into the main socket until I can get a new one.

I wasn’t hungry, but made myself a fancy stacked dessert, of two meringue nests, a honey and ginger yoghurt (full fat, because that’s what we had, and the one I ate yesterday didn’t hurt me), a chopped banana, and a cube of preserved ginger in syrup (which I chopped up before eating). It was delicious in a very sweet sort of way.

Then it was Suki snuggles, until the carers came and she fled back into hiding, The Repair Shop, and soon bed, where I will hopefully get more than the four hours of sleep I got last night, or the two hours I got the night before. Hopefully I will get there before I start crying again, out of sheer exhaustion and frustration.