A Week Of Firsts

Well. What a week of firsts it has been for your’s truly.

It’s the first time I’ve gone without anything resembling sleep for about five consecutive nights, food of any sort for three days, the first time I’ve actually felt quite close to carking it and my first time in the new hospital. Oh and the first time I’ve had swine flu, did I mention that?

The new digs are very nice by the way; a vast improvement on the old, but the same old design flaws make this modern day version the biggest mastabatorium since Dougal Macs time at boy’s school.

Like all the sinks which are still delicate poised at crutch height with hairline triggers for taps and which pick up the slightest change in air pressure anytime your hand goes near them, thus dumping a pulsating stream of water into the sink, the wall and your crutch.

It would be all a little bit erotic if it didn’t leave you looking like you had been playing with yourself rather than doing whatever it was that you were supposed to be doing. Incidentally that’s one first I haven’t yet rattled off in the new ward, a wank, but yet, the stay is still young…

I have however had two, yes two, up close and personal space contact moments with nurses which included some accidental boob touching. Unfortunately they were both of the morbidly obese build so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the pleasure was all theirs.

And please let the record show that as far as the two aforementioned incidents go, I was more concerned - as is usually the case with such encounters - of the weight shifting ability of the said nurses were gravity to get involved. How many incidents of death by accidental smothering by obese nurses go unreported in hospitals I have since thought.

It doesn’t seem right does it, that nurses are allowed to be obese? How is that supposed to inspire anyone to get back to full fitness? Now topless nurses on the other hand..

The one thing they don’t tell you about swine flu is that it is the biggest trip you can have legally and for good reason too because imagine if that news got out?!

Young people would stop trying to look like they’ve got hepatitis (as most of them seem to do) and start trying to cultivate the pale, emaciated, dead behind the eyes look of the H1N1. Now that really would be a trip.

So it has indeed been a week of firsts. Although what with the blood, sweat, hallucinations, Filipino nurses and choppers landing on the roof it’s all been very much like my time in the evac hospital at Hanoi in 1970.

Only without obese nurses.

The movement has begun...