Back from the gates of Hell.

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I survived my encouter with the NHS. They have filled me with morphine and other painkillers, rolled me through a machine that looked like Stargate and then X-rayed me. I dare not open this bottle of Aberlour in case it reacts with the fumes I’m giving off and causes an explosion. It’ll have to be a no-whisky night. No need anyway, I am drugged up to the eyes. The last time my brain met morphine was as a child – the old 1960s kaolin and morphine remedy for the squits. The concentration they gave me could bind me so tight my arse might heal over.

It was an interesting time. Apparently the best way to test for a cracked rib is to keep poking you in all your ribs, one by one, until you scream. I have not had so many young women demanding I take off my clothes in… well, ever.

The left kidney is bruised but healing, so they didn’t have to dismantle me. Two lower left back ribs are cracked – that’s where the real pain is. I didn’t think I’d cracked them this time but I have.

They prescribed no medication. No need, they filled me with more than I have taken in my lifetime, although it still hurts. No work for me tomorrow. The only prescription is ‘rest, and don’t do it again you daft old sod’.

It’s been about 20 years since I last had a day off sick and about 30 since I last spent a night in a hospital bed. Two long records shattered at once. Bah. Oh well, the bashed bits will grow back.

There is a silver lining. I am to spend at least the next week mostly sitting or lying down. Which will force me to concentrate on writing because I can’t do much else!

I have managed to extract the Bucko Computer from the box but assembling the monitor, keyboard etc will be a slow job with a lot of sitting down in between movements. No matter. It’s here and looking good. Very lightweight too, most fortunate under the circumstances. I’ll start it with a VGA monitor/TV and add the DV monitor later. Apparently it can run both at once. Oh, the geekery!

A horribly early night for me due to a horribly early hospital-style start to the day followed by enough drugs to make an elephant hallucinate.

Tomorrow, it’s back to perfectly normal whisky-fuelled ranting.

Tonight, I am far too mellow. And it’s time to feed the unicorn…

47 thoughts on “Back from the gates of Hell.”

  1. This probably won’t help, but I did something similar last Autumn. I gave in to it, hardly moved for a fortnight, and just kept on chucking hefty painkillers down my throat. No booze because I couldn’t drive to the shop. I thought I had it for life. And then suddenly it just went away.

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    • Unfortunately I lack such common sense. Last time I had a cracked rib I was back at work the next day and it took six weeks to heal up. This time I took time off – but this time I went to the doctors and they drugged me.

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  4. At least you can feel the pain. I have ‘peripheral neuropathy’ in my feet which basically means I am unable to feel my toes. It used to be worse and extended up the backs of my lower legs. They tested for MS and other nasty thing and then just told me it was old age and too much booze and that it would never get any better. They were wrong because most of it has recovered.

    However I recently stubbed two toes on my left foot badly when I caught the skirting in the bedroom in bare feet. Seems I broke one of the toes, but I never felt a thing and couldn’t tell. It now looks a bit crooked.

    Pain is there for a reason. So is whisky! Take care and get well soon, matey…

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    • I have learned not to move in ways the rib objects to. Imagine that – I am being behaviourally trained by my own rib!

      Then again, so was Adam, so I suppose it’s only to be expected.

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  7. Get wel soon – otherwise Local Shop will be a quagmire of free-range bacteria by the time you return. I had some morphine once but I can’t remember it.

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  9. Hope you get a good rest and can get Panoptica moving on. I’m gagging to read it.

    The most interesting thing about ribs (that I know of) is that they’re the only bones that can grow back. That’s why God took one of Adam’s to make Eve. There was no pain pre-Fall, so he could be stitched up and started the DIY jobs he would have been nagged into, like building a tree house for Cain.

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    • Aha, I have to take issue on technicalities here. The morphine has long since worn off so I’m not all hippified any more.

      All bones re-knit as long as they aren’t shattered and the ends fit together, and Adam would have had plenty of time to learn to cope with the pain in his side after she emerged. Cain wasn’t around until after Adam got his eviction notice… but I bet if you were to find Eden, there’d be amateur-DIY shelving everywhere.

      Thern again, I am currently being forced into compliance by my own lower ribs, can’t do anything they don’t want me to do, so to an extent I can understand how Adam must have felt 😉

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      • Aha…”All bones re-knit as long as they aren’t shattered and the ends fit together”

        Some major caveats there.

        “Cain wasn’t around until after Adam got his eviction notice”

        Yes, my attempt at humour was historically incorrect, as they probably had no idea what sex and children were. They didn’t have pain and death in those days. Animals were vegetarian. There were no thorns and thistles even.

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        • You’re going to set me off on that whole ‘age of Adam’ thing again. I still think that while he was immortal he would have had no concept of age. Eden probably didn’t have seasons – between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers would be ideal for a constant season – so he only started counting his age when he became mortal.

          But best not get into all that just now…

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          • No, I agree. He would only have started ageing after expulsion. Just thinking that Adam lived to be 930. 900+ was the lifespan back then because genetic entropy hadn’t kicked in much – and this was thousands of years before ‘health and safety’ was invented.

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  10. one could of course confuse one’s infrequent visitors and parents by ‘child proofing’ ones kitchen thus mitigating one’s propensity for inflicting very painful if relatively harmless injuries upon oneself…

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  11. XX rolled me through a machine that looked like Stargate and then X-rayed me XX

    I think you will find it was an MRT machine. Makes you feel like the sausage in a Sayers sausage roll. BASTARDS of things if you are claustrophobic.

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  14. Ahhh, Kaolin et Morph, the Kaolin used to settle at the bottom of the bottle, leaving clear Morphine at the top. There were drops used for nosebleeds using Cocaine, it used to dry around the top of the bottle leaving a powder. Didn’t we love the sixties!!!.

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  15. We have a bottle of kaolin and morphine under the sink, its been there since the early 80s, I had a glug of it when I had the runs last year, do you mean to tell me I can separate out the morphine from the clay ?

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