Jaimie's blog

Hello again.

Whilst I am not quite the posting machine that my fellow blogger Corrie is, I am making a concerted effort to update more and more. In what can only be described as a concerted bout of narcissism on my part I am even tempted to make a facebook page so I can collect lots of little fans; with any luck my head will grow so large that I will have a valid excuse to not get into the hospital. Goodness knows the revolving doors are dangerous enough as it is without a decapitation incident. I’m not entirely sure who thought such calamitous contraptions would be a good idea in a hospital. Generally speaking, most of the people coming in stagger their way through this Crystal Maze-esque challenge, desperately clinging on for dear life as a veritable torrent of glass and plastic hurtles towards them at near infinite speed; children are screaming, limbs fly across the foyer- and then some renegade maverick defies all social convention by diving through the ever-decreasing gap at the last minute only to send the doors into a dead stop. I assume they coat the glass with teflon, otherwise maintenance would be prising the remnants of faces off the windows all day.

So suffice to say, access and egress from my hospital hasn’t been a huge highlight of my week.

However, having managed to leave the hospital without any particular calamity, I decided it was time for me to go back home and visit the parents. I don’t actually life that far away from my “home home;”  Fulham is only about a 40 minute drive from where I live in South West London- but in the last few months my time has inexplicably disappeared between learning thyroid examinations, desperately trying to get dressed whilst having a shave because I have overslept, and the subsequent mopping up of the inevitable blood loss (and I use an electric shaver, so God knows how that happened). When this is coupled with the fact that a day seldom passes without a phone call from my dear Mother to check I haven’t been obliterated in a terrorist explosion/road traffic collision/end of time itself, returning to the warm bosom of my family has been difficult.

Nevertheless, I did make it home. I have to say, there is no greeting quite like then being attacked by two not-inconsiderabley sized dogs who knock you to the floor, panting and slobbering; one of whom then decides that the excitement is so much that he promptly urinates himself, me, the floor and every other surface in sight. It’s nice to be loved.

Despite that greeting having become de rigeur for my forays back home, it generally is an amazing respite. I can eat food which is fit for human consumption (as opposed to stealing my housemates occasionally ropey cooking), get to sleep on a “Space Matress,” which has apparently been developed by NASA for the sole purpose of retaining the exact imprint of my arse, and undulging in the casual negelect of my family by collapsing on said mattress, exhausted and urine soaked, face down and fully clothed. There really is nothing like it.

Thankfully, though, all is not lost. My Mother is reassured that I am not critically malnourished (and even goes to make various charming references to my having put on weight) whilst my brother can entertain the whole family with his recurrent failures in the world of self-tanning. It seems the world’s order has been restored.

Now, I fear I must leave you after this entirely brief update and return to the Acute Medical Unit; goodness knows what is waiting for me up there…