In the Cupboard

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How long for the vancomycin to zap the MRSA? When will I be back home? The doctor, a kindly soul, strokes his chin. “Oh, just a few weeks?” I note the question in his voice and the way he’s looking into the far distance, and reckon on it being a fair number of weeks. So in that case, how amusing is it going to be in the cupboard?

Pluses: I feel reasonably ok; there is a bed, a wee chest of drawers, a washbasin, a commode, a window high up with a view of the sky; I might be able to open that window; I won’t need to practise putting on socks.

Minuses: intravenous medication for an hour twice daily; strictly no socialising with other patients (that might be a plus, of course, depending); boredom?

But surely there’s enough random rubbish in the head to keep the boredom at bay? And of course visitors can come and tell me what’s doing in the great outside world where there is weather and the owl at night, and my cats – I worry about the cats.

Mike and Margaret, my nearest neighbours, come regularly: the cats are fine, no need to worry, here are your clean clothes, give us your dirty ones, here’s a bacon sandwich from M&S, and some dark-chocolate-coated ginger biscuits. Oh yum yum. I keep the sandwich up on the high windowsill to eat at 5 a.m., before the day shift comes on with breakfast. What a drag it must be to come and visit, parking is a nightmare, but they do it week in, week out, bringing treats. My indebtedness is very soon far beyond any chance of repaying.

Other neighbours pop in from time to time, and even a neighbour's sister, visiting from South Africa because her father is somewhere in this hospital, comes for a chat.

Lesley, once a colleague in Stromness, comes all the way from Montrose, bringing news of Orkney, for she visits there regularly. Madeline, once a fellow student, comes all the way from Edinburgh, with a fat book about the depopulation of St Kilda.

Without the visitors the cupboard could have been a tad desolate. But even outside visiting hours there was some light entertainment. For instance, the battle of Getting Into Bed.

Getting out of bed was a doddle, necessary either to wash or to evacuate into the commode, or to access the bacon sandwich on the high windowsill. But getting back into bed was seriously difficult, because the bad leg was by now enormously swollen and so heavy that even heaving with both hands I couldn’t get it off the floor. I tried asking for help. We can’t lift that, they said, we aren’t allowed, it would hurt our backs. Health And Safety rules.

So I asked for a slip sheet (a piece of slippery material which makes sliding on to the bed possible – I’d been given one in Inverurie). No, too dangerous. Why? You could slide right across the bed and shoot off to the floor, Health And Safety.

Arrant rubbish, of course. No way could that happen. But I guessed what might be going on: perhaps they’d been told to make me try harder, because I was a lazy attention-seeker, unwilling to make an effort. (Which, of course, I was, only not in that particular context.)

Next I evolved a Cunning Plan. I kept a big plastic bag in which Mike and Margaret had brought my clean clothes. When no one was observing, I laid it on the edge of the bed, slid smoothly over it and safely into bed, then hid the plastic bag.

For quite some time no one knew, or if they knew they kept silent. And with practice it gradually became easier and quicker. But one day they said “We’ve been told to check how you get safely into bed.” “Oh, no need,” I said, “it’s no problem.” “Aye, but we’ve been told …” Gulp. I got out of bed, wondering how to get out of this, but no Cunning Plan B came to mind. So making an enormous effort and heaving with both hands I got my huge swollen leg with its attendant sorry carcass back into bed. Hah.

The weeks were passing, and it was getting steadily more difficult to find a vein. There came a time when only one nurse, the Chief Vampire, could get a cannula to work, and she was usually on night shift somewhere upstairs, available around midnight. So they decided to put in a Hickman line, a tube in my chest, straight into a major blood vessel. Under local anaesthetic I watched the x-ray movie as the tube went in – the most entertainment for ages. After that, getting the medicine aboard was easier.

The vancomycin course came to an end, but the MRSA was still there, unzapped. What next? Was it time to give up? No, they had another weapon that might be the answer, gentamicin. How long would that take? Oh, er, a few weeks? Hmm.

One day, a deputation came. I needed to be moved, not clear why. There was choice: Inverurie, Oldmeldrum or Elgin. The obvious place was Inverurie, only 10 miles from home (home – would I ever go home?)

Back again to Inverurie, but this time not a big ward, not a cupboard, but a spacious bedroom with attached bathroom - basin, proper flushing loo, and SHOWER – and a fridge and TV. All to myself. With many windows looking onto grass and trees and people walking about.

Ecstasy. Bacon sandwiches kept much better in the fridge. Mike and Margaret sometimes took me out in a wheelchair to watch the skateboarders doing their amazing thing.

The bad leg was less swollen now, getting into bed was a doddle, the morning shower bliss. Soon be home.

The weeks ground slowly past, I felt fine. One day the Hickman line had clogged up, and the medication wouldn’t travel in, so they sent me back to hospital, where the line was pulled out. By now the veins were once more adequate.

A day came when they said “You can go home tomorrow.” Home? HOME! Tomorrow? TOMORROW!

Next day, as I packed things and got ready, I suddenly felt a shivering tremor. The same shiver that had marked the onset of the MRSA months back? No. Absolutely not.

Mike came and took me home, and I found that he had got Charlie, the blacksmith down the road, to put in two strong rails at the steps between kitchen and livingroom. The Occupational Therapist fixed a rail beside the bath and a board across the bath so that I could shower sitting down.

And there were the cats, well looked after all this time, and we started going for walks again, a bit shakily at first, but soon into the woods, following our old tracks.

A joyous time.

Until one day I noticed that the scar was a bit red. A day or two later it was bulging; it looked as if a rat was trying to get out. I took it along to the GP. He gave it one look and phoned for an ambulance. And gave me half an hour to get home and find my things for going back to hospital.

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(Is Old’n’Idle doomed? Has the superbug won? Next instalment may reveal all, or possibly not.)