Monday, 21st September

This is the morning of Day 6 - Monday - of my sojourn in hospital.  I'm told I can go home when I've shown that I can cope with crutches.  I'm keen to display my expertise but I've only had one brief opportunity and that was on Saturday.  All of yesterday was spent staring at the ceiling thinking of what I could have achieved with a reasonable opportunity.

It's no wonder  that there are so many books written and movies made about hospitals: here is displayed every human emotion and there is an unlimited number of story lines for the most jaded scriptwriter.

If you want humour, or tragedy, human interest or pathos it's not hard to find a good example in a hospital. Opposite me is an elderly woman, born in 1929.  She's physically frail but mentally sharp as a task.  By the sound of her voice, she has not been well-educated but not much has passed her by.  She needs an MRI scan and the doctor has been asking her to recount her medical history: ninety years of it.  You can hear her making connections in her head to pinpoint when she had her hysterectomy,  using her son's age at the time to narrow it down. "He's 60 this year and I remember he had a bike for his 8th birthday so it must have been 52 years  ago.   Remarkable! 

The Physio test hasn't gone well and  I'll be here for at least one more day.