The Gene of an Idea.

This week has been a rough one. Indeed, the past two weeks have been rough in general. After making a surprise return to hospital, I've since suffered a rather brutal dental proceedure, a scary turn for the worst invoving an infected IV line, three changes of anti-biotics and technical difficulties that for the time being have brought my laptop to its knees. My laptop that happened to contain the freshly finished draft of my Cover to Cover blog of The Fountain Society.

So yes, in all this hasn't been a fun ride and unsurprisingly this page has suffered. Ideas are flowing like dry mud and the energy to write them up just hasn't been there. I suppose a break wouldn't be the worst thing in the world considering everything I laid out above, but it seems a shame to let this fall by the wayside when I managed to keep on top of it the last six weeks I was in here, and also there's the future to consider. If I let it drop now, when do I pick it back up? When I'm out? When I'm fully recovered? No, I don't want to present myself with the excuse to fall into laziness once I get home, and with that in mind a stroke of inspiration hit me the other day.

While I've been in here I've been picking up copies of Warhammer Visions from the newsagents downstairs. For those who don't know, it's a new coffee table style magazine that is packed from cover to cover with pretty pictures of Games Workshop products. I wouldn't usually touch it, I'm out of the Warhammer game and the magazine itself is as expensive as the figures, but I'm in hospital. I get bored. It breaks the day up. Inside last month's issue they ran a feature on a Tyranid army painted in gloss black with yellow highlights. It was so simple but so gorgeous. I'd never seen solid black Nids before, which is baffling when you consider the entire army is just the alien from Alien wearing various different exoskeletons. But it looked so right, so blindingly obvious, that I knew I had to try it.

I knew I had some genestealers from an old Space Hulk set lying around at home, so when I was on day release yesterday I dug them out. I was kind of dismayed to see I'd already put most of them together, and teenage me had made an utter mess of most of them, but I did find a good couple to experiment on. I knew I couldn't really start yesterday, being the victim of Count Cannula and all, but I also knew I wanted to make sure that when I was ready - I was going to do this. So I undercoated him.

And now he lives with me in the hospital, and everytime I'm feeling low, out of energy or like I'll never recover and this will never end, I can look over and be reminded that when I do get out - I have stuff to do. I have a life to live. And even though it doesn't always seem it now, there's more to life than these four walls and the people within them. One day I'll be out and painting. I'll be out and writing. I'll be out, getting on with my life and pursuing the things I love and care about like everyone else. It's funny what can motivate us, what can inspire us and I already expect most of the nurses to see my little friend and make faces at him, wonder what kind of stupid things I'm into and why I'd bring such a horrible thing onto the ward. But for me, he's important, and as long as I remember what he represents, the world can go swing.

Plus, y'know, he does kinda brighten up the place in his own way...

Life in the slow lane.

So I've decided to open this up again and get a little personal, if only because I think what I'm going through now is fairly interesting and not an experience I'm likely to forget in a hurry.  A few blogs back you might remember I noted that I was currently in hospital for a rather lengthy period and had a little rant on how depressing it is for an able bodied person to be penned up in such an instituion. Well, if I wanted too I could come at it from the other side as I'm no longer an able bodied person. But I think it would be far more interesting to talk about the circumstances that led to me becoming less able bodied than I was.

As you may remember I noted that I had a pacing device with an infection clinging to the leads. As the unit and the leads are forgien bodies, the natural defences of the body that travel through the blood are useless in fighting anything on them because they don't have their own bloodstream. After much debating, ruminating, beard scratching and other phrases denoting 'We're very conflicted and confused and need to talk and think long and hard about this' the doctors decided there was only one option. It had to come out.

Easy enough, right? They put it in there no problem, so they can take it out the same. Well, in ordinary circumstances I'm sure the answer to that question is yes, no problem whatsoever. But there was a unique little complication in my case. While they installed the pacemaker itself in November, the leads? They'd been inside me for a good twenty years. Meaning they were freaking old, and deeply embedded.

The operation to get them out is fairly fascinating to hear about. I can tell you it wasn't a particularly fun ride to go through, and I'm sure the surgeons would have liked to do something far less complicated, but it was fascinating to hear about before and afterwards nonetheless. What they eventually decided on doing was going in via the site they'd installed the pacing unit before. Then they took out the pacing box itself and followed the path of the wires, covering them in little tubes as they went. From there they used a laser scalpel to cut into the areas where the wires were, rather literally, screwed into the skin and pulled the entire wire back along the tubes.

Yes. You read that right. Laser scalpels! I may have lost all claim to being a cyborg for a little while, having had my mechanical bits removed, but at the very least I can say I was operated on using lasers!

From here on out, it's just a matter of recovery and infection control. But during that period I'm living with the biggest change of my life. For the first time in over twenty years, I'm without any kind of pacing unit whatsoever, and by God does it feel like it! I've gone from longing for somewhere, anywhere to roam and wander that's not hospital or university, to just being glad I can shuffle across to the bathroom in the morning and have a shower. I am slowed down. Significantly. And the idea of taking it easy has taken on a whole new level.

It's a really curious and disconcerting thing, when you have to think about every little thing you're doing and weigh up the potential gain of doing it against how much it's going to drain what little energy you have. Even writing this blog, I find myself pausing, tilting my head to the side and collecting my thoughts before carrying on. It's not that I'm finding it exhausting, but it seems like even my thought processes have slowed a little bit, and of course my fingers on the keyboard only know one speed - And it's not terribly slow.

Apparently they want to wait at least a couple of weeks before they reinsert any kind of device, and it's going to be an interesting and I imagine very frustrating time for me. On the one hand it's going to be very hard for me to have to keep conciously weighing every single action I do against some potential discomfort and extra strain, but on the other, considering what they did to me I'm very lucky to be in the condition I am. I'm off intensive care, back on a normal human ward, and feel generally better than when they turned my pacemaker down for a trial run at this. Back then all I wanted was for them to turn it back on, to save me from the pit of misery they'd thrown me in. Right now, though? As uncomfortable as this is, I think I can stick it out for as long as I need too. Providing it all stays as fine and dandy as it has this weekend.

It's a trudge, make no mistake, but it's all just that one little step closer to going home, and let me tell you, I can't wait.

Dispatches from the Ward

For the past three weeks I've been penned up in hospital, and for the foreseeable future at least, it looks like I shall remain penned up in hospital. It's nothing overly serious, just something that requires an awful lot of anti-biotics and an operation that carries a very minor risk of death and a much more overt risk of letting whatever is crawling around inside of me spread to other parts of the body. I don't usually like to get overly personal in this blog (a decision that I'm not sure is to its merit or detriment) but it's been a curious thing, life on the ward. I've fallen into a steady, completely rigid and entirely predictable routine. Observations at half six. Cup of tea at seven. Medication and breakfast at around eight.  IV line at ten. Observations. Dinner. More observations. Medication. And so on and so forth until it becomes hammered into your brain and you become somewhat agitated if these things arrive more than half an hour outside their usual, allotted time. You know that no matter what time you fall asleep at night, a nurse will be around somewhere in the region of half six-seven o'clock to take your blood pressure. You know if you wander off the ward, you must be back by five or you'll miss food and drugs and then by God! Will you be in trouble. It's an environment that I'm sure is designed in the best interest of the body, but I can't say it's been working wonders on the state of my mind.

Many of my friends have said that, if nothing else, at least I can get some rest. Some have even expressed how they'd like to be the ones lying around, getting time to read, not having to do the cleaning, being fed two free meals a day, etc. And I'm sure it sounds lovely from the outside, but I have to admit I'm not finding it terribly restful. At the end of the day, this isn't a hotel. It's not a private sanctuary where you can close the door, put your head down and snooze the time away. You're staying in the workplace of dozens of people, and their job? To observe and make sure that you and every other patient on their ward is stable and in the best health they can be. Even as I'm typing this I can hear drifting yet clear conversation, nurses walking backwards and forwards, trolleys rattling, doors slamming, and even if you manage to drift off amidst all this - I assure you it will only be for a quick cat nap as they will wake you up. Wake you up to do observations. Wake you up for medication. For food. I saw one poor chap being woken up to take a cup of tea. Now I love tea, in fact free and constant tea (seven times a day, no less!) is one of the big perks of being here. But sleep is more important than tea here, and there are times I don't think it would hurt for the staff to step back and leave people be.

Of course, there's more ways to rest than sleep. But unless you enjoy staring out of the window (assuming you're in a single ward as the four beds have no view at all) or make a friend on your ward, the only recreation to be had is that you bring yourself. Unless, of course, you're willing to pay. I may sound like I'm whinging and groaning, but I can fully understand the need for constant checks and observations, for making sure people are eating and getting the treatment they need in a timely manner in a way that isn't doing more harm. The above paragraph has it's roots in doctors and nurses doing their jobs, and it's hard to begrudge them but at the same time, it's hard not to yearn for just a single night and morning of peace to recover properly. However, the lack of recreational facilities truly is vile and the reasons those facilities are lacking comes straight from the minds who'd like to privatise the whole NHS and have done with it.

You see, there's a little machine by my bed. An innocuous little screen that glows brightly, day and night, and even has another screen emblazoned on it! A happy, smiling cartoon screen with it's arms thrown wide as if to give you a hug. Do not trust this screen! This screen is Lucifer in electronic form! You see, this screen provides certain services. You can watch television, surf the internet or even rent movies. Providing you're willing to pay. The price for the internet is two pounds for twenty-four hours, which actually doesn't sound too bad, until you realise that the hospital filters block most sites you might wish to visit (something there was no warning of in advance of you spending the money on it) and I'm not talking about anything naughty or obscene. I'm talking about Youtube. Or any kind of video service. It also seems to be incapable of loading any site more complicated than Google or Facebook properly. I attempted to visit Cracked to give my phone a rest and was presented with a plain white screen with dozens of blue hyper links on it, and somewhere, if you squinted really hard, was the article you were looking for.

The movie rental is perhaps the least of the offenders. The selection is pretty shallow, containing sequels to movies but not the originals they followed from, but it's two fifty for twelve hours and you'll no doubt find something you want to watch. The television though, the television... More than eleven whole English pounds for three days of television. Three pounds for two hours, and somewhere over five for a day. You might be willing to swallow this cost if you're in for a week or less, but having been here for three, that would be almost seventy pounds for the privilege of watching mostly terrestrial television and it amounts to the NHS letting whoever makes these stupid bedside machines hold their patients ransom. And if you, understandably, have better things to do with your money I guess it's books and newspapers for you! Assuming you can get them yourself, or have family who can bring them to you.

Of course, even if you can are mobile, like I am, there's nowhere to go regardless. There's a Costa, a Smiths and a canteen. Outside the grounds are mostly dedicated to the hospital and its sister buildings, and there are few places to go where you don't just find yourself wandering the same paths to nowhere day in, day out. As you can imagine, this lack of sleep, combined with a general restlessness and a feeling that every day is the same is an environment that's rather counter productive to writing these blogs. Most of my inspiration comes from fleeting thoughts based on things I've absorbed around me, some dismissed out of hand, others ruminated on. I often take the dog for a walk in the forest beside our home, and while I stroll down the pavement I build my points in my head and refine how I'm going to present them. Sometimes those blog ideas dismissed out of hand pop back into my head and start to form a life of their own, and I suddenly find that yes, yes I do have something to say on that issue and it is most definitely worth writing about.

Naturally, none of that structure exists here and without the seeds, not even tiny saplings will grow. So I've decided that perhaps a different approach is needed. A new structure. The one thing I can do here, above all else, is read. I've read upwards of seven books while I've been here, which is nice in its own way, but also puts a rather sharp focus on one kind of entertainment and there are days I do just shrug whatever I'm reading aside and become a little sick of it. Too much of a good thing, I suppose! But one thing my mind has latched onto lately is fiction set in the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and of late my brain has especially latched onto reading quasi-sequels to War of the Worlds. I'm not sure why, perhaps in such a structured environment my brain is seeking a structure, a common thread of it's own. I find them a pretty odd phenomenon, so as such I'll be sharing my thoughts on them with you in some kind of splinter segment of Cover to Cover I think. I've also been musing, lately, on the use of historical figures as fictional characters and where the line between respectful homage and plain disrespect lies. So perhaps they'll be something on that in the future. I suppose what I'm trying to say in a long winded manner is, I hope you like books because by God there's going to be a lot of talk about them in the future.

Now before I close off, I just want to say that despite this blog perhaps having a dour aspect,I mean no disrespect to the staff who work so hard here, or the institution itself. The nurses that work the ward are, for the most part, a lively and jovial lot who are happy to talk to you and take jokes well. That alleviates a lot of the more depressing aspects of being here, but they're also extremely busy, so there are days when you will only see them in passing. All I'm trying to put across is that hospital is a pretty restless and far from ideal experience no matter how well the staff take care of you. There's a lack of freedom, a lack of control of your own personal affairs, a lack of privacy for the most part that can weigh very heavy on a person's mind. I salute the work the staff of the NHS do, and I don't think I could be in a better place for the procedures I need, but at the same time, I hope that others reading this never have to have more than a fleeting experience with that good work.