It wasn't a good night. For some reason, it took me until 3 a.m. to get to sleep, even though I'd had an active day without any daytime sleep. I simply couldn't get off, and when I finally did, one of the pump machines ran out of contents at 5.30 and started making its usual, terrible racket so that woke me up again.
However, once the new day - the first one of a new month - got underway, things went quite well. The physiotherapist arrived for a very brief visit, did a couple of breathing exercises with me and then told me that I could walk around on my own as much as I wanted today and over the weekend while she's off duty. I'm still pretty much cabled up, so I in any case have to take the rack with the pumps and drips everywhere with me. I can hang on to that if I start getting weak and/or giddy. The weather is grey and chilly, so I don't think I'll risk a walk in the park just yet, although it would do me good. Unfortunately, my voice is almost entirely non-existent today.
This afternoon, two further tubes are due to be taken out and then I'll have some kind of painkiller fed in through a vein. I'll apparently be able to regulate it myself, depending on whether I have any pain and how strong it is. So far, incredible though it may seem, I haven't had any pain at all.
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SOME THOUGHTS ON "QUALITY OF LIFE"
People have generally been kind and considerate and held off with criticism, but there have been the odd one or two who haven't been able to suppress a desire to tell me that this is the result of an adult lifetime of smoking and drinking. Perhaps they're right, although even if they are, they haven't really got any entitlement to pass comment.
I have always regarded smoking and drinking as elements of what I personally perceive to be "quality of life". I have never been visibly or perceptibly drunk except in my very early teens after a crazy Christmas party. I have never drunk so much that I lost my senses or saw pink elephants, and I have never taken any risks with drink driving, neither for myself nor for anyone else. I have always been a moderately heavy, controlled drinker and I don't make any excuses for it.
Smoking is a similar phenomenon. I have been smoking for 45 years or so and have always enjoyed it. These days, of course, the zealots who would be delighted if they could ban EVERYTHING have made life a misery for smokers. You feel like a leper now if you light up a cigarette, even outdoors, which is basically the only place you CAN light up.
So now, being unable to drink and/or smoke while I'm incarcerated in this hospital, I have to ask myself some very searching questions. I haven't experienced any significant withdrawal symptoms from either of the "bad habits". So there's no logical reason not to take this opportunity and to stop drinking and smoking forever. Great! There are lots of very good reasons to do so. But having said that, and although it might sound stupid, I will no longer have the same quality of life; a part of it will be missing.
I have, on the other hand, discovered other things that I enjoy now whereas I practically ignored them in the past. They're silly little things, but they add up to perhaps a revised way of living and enjoying. For example, I have discovered Starbucks coffee (possibly as one of the last humans on the planet!). I've found new freedom in being able to get into the car at any time and take myself off somewhere without first having to think about whether or not I've had a drink. I've regained my love of ice-cream which I lost sometime in my teens. Lots of little things like that, I suppose, represent quality of life because at the moment, stuck here in hospital, I can't enjoy any of them and can't wait to be able to get back to them.
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