A slight case of overkill

Sunday morning – 4 a.m.   

A slight case of overkill

At this unearthly time on a Sunday morning, I have two gripes. One of them is that my voice is still practically non-existent – I can only communicate in a hoarse whisper. The other one is that the pain-killers don’t seem to be having any effect on the sharp pain in my shoulder-blade. I would be feeling generally okay if it wasn’t for those annoyances. And since I’m annoyed about them, my irritation is radiating out to encompass some of the other things that are happening here.

I thought I’d settle down for an early night at about 10 o’clock while the pain was fairly mild. At 11.45, one of the nurses marched in to take my blood pressure. Why on earth at that time? It hasn’t happened after 10 p.m. before. She then proceeded to tell me off for lying too flat. The top part of my body must be higher than the lower part to help the wounds to heal. Trouble is, I ALWAYS lie flat in bed (I don’t even think my bed at home is adjustable) and doing what I was told tonight just caused additional pain. Earlier on, Mrs. Blöchlinger annoyed me too. She doesn’t want me to drink anything fizzy, even though I’m only allowed 2 dl a day anyway. Water she wants to me drink – water! I told her water was for fish, not for human beings, but she wasn’t to be dissuaded. She tippled in a few drops of syrup to give the yucky stuff some taste and poured my Sinalco away.

I get a steady queue of people dropping by whenever they feel like it during the day. I’ve lost count of them, never mind remembering all their names. I wrongly believed that a hospital was a place where you could get some rest after a sickness or an accident. I didn’t realise that it’s actually pretty much like Victoria Station in the rush hour most of the time.

I know I shouldn’t complain really. Things until now have gone better than expected and the people here have all been doing their best to get the job done. But I still have this feeling of “overkill”. In my personal case, less care would be better.