May 16

 Hospital day.

I didn't sleep really last night. I wasn't worried about the hospital appointment, but, apparently, my body decided that wasn't good enough, and kept me in a perpetual state of hover.

Interesting thing through the night. Dozing in and out of sleep. Increasingly tired. But felt ok.

And then. Suddenly. Around 4am. Wham. Brain fog. Felt absolutely awful. Sick. Super ill. I doubted I could attend my appointment feeling like that. But I dozed on through. And slowly it got a bit better. Not good. But a bit. Until I got up. And felt like death warmed up. But better than I had.

Interesting. A real nasty down spike.

Maybe something kicks in at that time that's really shit.

Or maybe I just stop breathing, sleep apnea.

Who knows.

So the appointment was different to last time.

Last time I was in the quiet bit of the hospital for surgery. This time I was in the hubbub of general bullshit. And it was packed.

Oh dear.

Checked in, took a seat. 2 minutes later the most overly loud public voice woman and her mom sit in front of me. You know those people. That don't have an indoors voice. That are continually just below shouting whilst talking to someone next to them. I had a friend like that. We would walk along the street and he would be shouting - without knowing. Occasionally I used to tell him to lower the volume.

Anyway. That was my treat. A packed waiting room. And a woman in front who did not stop talking at an annoying obnoxious level of volume. About anything and everything. Her inner monologue. What she did this morning. To add insult to injury she had the worst speaking voice too. A monotone. Like someone vaguely annoyed / bored. We got to hear it all in loud monotone. Her trip yesterday to London. This photo. That photo. The details of one of the guards, he was autistic, he went into the army and yada blah. The minutiea. A cupcake. Birthdays. A list of semi famous people at some Kings event. How it if wasn't for her ( and everyone else there ) they wouldn't have bothered putting anything on.  My god.

After some period of this, a couple sat behind me. Lucky me. Another pair of unceasing chatterers. This time in arabic. On. And on. Non stop. Whilst in front. London in monotone.

I honestly could hardly hear beyond them. Everyone else in the waiting room was mostly silent. Just my bit. Surrounded by loud chattering.

Sigh.

I played word games on my phone and did my best to ignore it, and try and keep an ear out for my name over the verbal diarrhea.

Fortunately I got in after only half an hour wait and saw a surgeon. All business. All information. Helpful. Polite. Knowledgable.

Wow. You've hit a seam of competence.

After a brief discussion, and, a question about what I did for a living ( mm k ), he stuck his finger up my bum, had a feel around and we were done.

He said the problem could well be back. But. He needed to understand what exactly was going on. So. A visit to the hospital for a camera up the ass. And. An MRI. And then... probably surgery.

Can't argue with that. 

So now we wait for an appointment for those things. I would guess that the MRI will be fairly quick. They have a bunch of MRIs in the car park at the hospital - extra capacity they've had for a few years now. And so they tend to get through MRI appointments pretty quick, albeit, you're usually seen in the back of a truck ! They're actually pretty cool. Just a big truck. Like a big shipping container truck. Except inside is nothing but an MRI. Turns out you can fit an MRI pretty neatly into a truck. And it has wheels, so, you know, you can move it around and add them and delete them as necessary. It does have the feel of the "temporary" classrooms we used to have at school though. The quickly erected shacks that turned out to be far from temporary.

The camera appointment. No idea. If it's anything like the usual surgery thing it could be years. I suspect it's probably better than that. But. I don't know.

Thankful for small mercies. At least I didn't have to wait too long at the hospital. It's something I struggle with now with my very fickle health. Leave me sitting anywhere for too long, unable to control my environment, and you run a good risk of me turning green and keeling over.

Ho well. Progress.