Next Morning:
6:35 – me: I'm awake! I still have both legs! I now finally know that… YES! One CAN fill a whole 2l coke bottle with a single, uninterrupted stream of piss! And I've been wondering on the empirical outcome of that question since age 9 on Giachetti's farm! Things are looking good! 🙂 xx
6.40 – Little Sister: It's good when your goals are achieved. 2 litres, impressive. I still have a goofy smile on my face & can't wait to c him on Saturday. Woo hoo 🙂 Let me know when they let you out… if ever! Seems like that place is allowing you to discover great, great things! X X X
6.47 – me: Oh yes. Like the old guy next to me whose real name is James Fitzroy but likes to be called Tony. Or as I like think of him, Tony “The Squid”. Or just “Spitty”.
6.52 – Little Sister: Ha ha ha ha ha ha. This place sounds great! Can't wait 4 your next blog! X
6.56 – me: I'm taking copious notes…
9.31 – me: “Spitty” has kindly provided a truly incredible and rare “full phlegm experience” to breakfast, requiring his portable spitoon to be changed just before we started on…wait for it… Lumpy wet, milky porridge. I added butter for the yellow mucus look because fuck it, may as well go for the Deluxe experience!
9.31 – Little Sister: Ha ha ha ha ha ha you need to film this!
9.35 – me: Because I'm starving, I asked if I could ALSO have a yoghurt when they offered Spitty one to help him take his pills. The nurse brought me this:
Already opened (and not yet licked?) And said “from next door” with a smile.
Her surname is Moriartry (Sherlock Holmes' evil arch enemy is of course Prof. Moriartry. She must be his great-great-grand-daughter. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. Note the type of youghurt.
I ate it. Xxx
The doctors then came round and gave me the good news that the surgery had gone really well and they had performed a complete re-attachment of the tendon as it had been completely snapped through.
Slightly less good news was that I would probably be in a cast for 2 to 3 months with adjustments to it every 2 weeks as the foot needs to be held in position in specific ways over the period. I asked how long it would be before I would be able to run, kick and jump and they said for most people it could be 6 to 9 months but they reckoned for me it would be 6 months as I was (to use their words) "an athlete and very fit".
I asked about the blue placebo pill and if they had given it to me because of some safety over the drugs I had already taken. They all looked at me flabbergasted and eventually the doctor said:
"That was morphine in tablet form."
Which kind of made sense because I had initially refused morphine when I woke up after surgery. I'd had it before and it just made me more uncomfortable than the pain. When I have been given morphine it made me feel as if all the blood on one side of my body drained to the other side, depending on how I was lying down and then I would also get weird semi-dreams but not quite nightmares, sort of like bad quasi-hallucinations that wouldn't let you sleep. Then again…it could be a placebo and it was being administered with a double-blind test. Fact is the little blue pill did nothing to me. I can SEE the Matrix I tell you!
I then found out I could go home that afternoon and my sister was happy that “they were finished testing on me!”
11.50 – me: Tony washed, as did I. I think I figured out how they decide which ward they put you in. Cock size! U could see his 80+ yr old dick bounce even through the sunlit curtain as he washed his skinny ass. George Perkins – The Mule Ward!
11.55 – Little Sister: You are cracking me, why were you looking anyway… Oh ya for the cause. At this rate it's a book not a blog! 🙂
11.59 – me: wasn't looking. The flop-flop made me turn.
12.00 – Little Sister: I think I just pissed myself
Redhead Girl was now on her way to rescue me from the Congolese Nurse who was back on duty and who just wanted to buy a Tractor and go back to the Congo and farm vegetables, but she couldn't save enough money at the moment…and when I asked her for pee bottles she just continued talking about her tractor and left the ward. I
I think this woman wanted patients to fertilise her ward in the hope she could grow tomatoes in it or something.
I rang the bell and the Chinese nurse appeared again. I had never seen her other than on these occasions when I needed pee bottles. I was starting to suspect a deeply racist division of labour in this ward. The Congolese nurse after all was the one of what I now simply refer to as the “Diarreha Incident”. Which aside from spraying one quarter of the ward with the insides of that poor deaf old man, also involved much shouting and pleading from the nurse in question concerning the cleaning of said unfortunate gentleman. The Chinese nurse on the other hand seemingly only dealt with piss bottles. And I had to call her back because I filled on right to the brim and there was no way I could put it back down without spilling. One litre bottles are now what I refer to as “little boys toys”.
Pissing in one of these things is an art form. Especially since if you are generously endowed you have to worry about filling the thing too quickly and “dipping” in your own urine, which is undesirable…on the other hand, lowering the bottle too much puts you in a cramped, bent forward position in which even if your bladder is about to burst, you can't pee. If you manage to stand on one leg long enough to actually begin to urinate then the slippery thing begins to get heavy and if you try to relax too much you might let it slip. In the end I just placed the bottle on the bed which allowed me to stand on one leg and rest my wounded leg on the bed at the same time. The supporting bed would see to it I didn't have to hold the thing too hard either. It was a delicate operation and so as to make sure not to dribble anything other than in the bottle I had to be careful and concentrate. The whole thing took ten minutes and if there was too much going on, like a pretty red-headed doctor coming up behind me while I am bare assed trying to pee with my back to her, it kind of took longer.
Tony on the other hand could fill one in the middle of the night in 10 seconds flat. I still don't know how he did it, but I assume he just let the python out to find its own way to the bottle. I just hadn't mastered these independent processes yet, being a young buck only half his age. But I vowed to learn. If I am ever in a hospital in my eighties, I swear I will fill up a row of those bottles without getting out of bed at all, just like Tony the Squid.
When my sister heard Redhead Girl was coming to get me she sent me this:
12.34 – Little Sister: I told her you're making me laugh too much and she should leave you there 4 a bit longer 🙂
Luckily Redhead Girl is a loyal and sweet girl and she did come to rescue me.
As it turns out just before she did, I got talking to Tony and found out he was a famous movie editor that had worked in Hollywood for years though he was a Londoner born and bred. He had come to visit his family with his wife of 25 years and had fallen and broken his hip shortly before his flight back and then got pneumonia, which had taken longer than the hip to heal. But he was now on the mend.
He lived in Los Angeles and had done for years and his marriage was blissful, which I could tell from the way he spoke to his wife on the phone. Sadly I never got to meet her as I left before she arrived for visiting hours.
I told him about my own interest in film and asked if he had any advice for a blissful marriage of 25 years. He said:
“Oh don't take any advice from me on that front…I was married three times!”
I wished him well and a speedy recovery and safe journey back, and I am sure he will do all of the above. The whole time I was there Tony was unfailingly polite and dignified at all times with all the nurses and he'd obviously been there a long time as he knew his routine and when it didn't happen on time he reminded the nurses of the procedures he had to undergo.
I'm glad I got to meet him.
My cast needed adjusting and the pretty red-headed doctor woman came along with various implements and made a valiant effort, aided by my occasional brute force when the cast was too thick for her to cut, she eventually got it trimmed properly. She was pretty kind considering it was a thankless and grubby task to be cleaning out between my toes after the plaster had been chopped to suit.
The Moriartry girl was a little sad to see me leave with Redhead Girl I think, as she had expressed an interest in being hypnotised but worried that “I might make her do something she might not have otherwise done”. I told her in my condition she would have been pretty safe really even if I was of the Svengali persuasion, but she then never took up the request she had made that I hypnotise her that day.
And so, with my loyal Redhead Girl helping me along, I returned to my castle fortress on the banks of the River Thames.
Where I spent the week-end preparing a file for my solicitor who will be responding to the letter I had received from my landlord's lawyers. That's another blog for another day….but suffice it to say that a warrior's day is never done.
There is an endless supply of stupid, evil and irksome Orcs, and they delight in attacking the most when you are weakest, but that's life. I am readying boiling oil and sharpening my bastard sword even as Redhead Girl builds more sharp-pointed arrows.
A Martian in London 
That sounds beyond grim – epic blog telling though. I hope you recover quickly.
I know what you mean about doctors not believing you're in pain if you're calm. The mid-wife didn't believe I was in labour, despite telling her how frequenly the contractions were coming, until they hooked me up to the machine and she said, "Oh! You are in labour aren't you?". Yes. Now give me the drugs please.
Doctors are like mechanics. They think they know more than you, when often they don't, and it's hard to find a good one. And it seems to get harder every year!
Fuck that's hilarious. Your perspective on suffering is just priceless… not very many people can find the humorous side of being surrounded by stupid.
What can I say, they don't let you have guns in hospitals for a reason I guess!