On My Way

I discovered that while it hadn't been all that easy to find my way into a hospital bed it was actually quite difficult to get out of it.

In order to be discharged:

• the consultant had to say it was ok
• the physios had to say it was ok
• I had to have all the correct equipment in place at home
• my take-home drugs had to be ordered from pharmacy
• an ambulance had to be arranged to get me home

Let's just say that these didn't all quite synchronise together smoothly and I think that actually resulted in me spending two extra days in hospital. Especially tricky was sourcing a wheelchair leg-support which we'd hoped the hospital would provide but they didn't and eventually P managed to find one.

We were told the transport would pick me up at 11am on the Thursday and P arrived to take home the wheelchair, raised toilet seat and walking frame. We packed up my stuff. We gave the sister some chocolates for the staff. We sat and waited. I overheard the sister ask if my high-strength painkiller had actually been ordered from pharmacy. This was followed by a rather discouraging silence.

"Can you ask them to do it urgently?"

"Think it will be 1 o'clock when they pick you up, these things happen with transport," said a nurse to us.

At 1.30pm P felt he needed to go.

Finally at 3.15 two wonderful people in green appeared and loaded me onto a trolley. I waved goodbye to everyone and I was off.

Back home.

Back to P and J.

Back to normal life.

Except it wasn't.