43. Will You Be Like This Forever?

I got used to sleeping in a shared room pretty quickly. One other patient who snored VERY loudly came and went.  I found it very taxing when other patients in our bay were watching the TV (or falling asleep watching it) when it was time to sleep. It was even worse when the program was hospital releated. Everyone was put in bed by 7-8pm, and the final drugs round was at 9:30-10pm. I used to read or listen to music during that time, but I did want to sleep. Getting it dark was a constant battle. It was a struggle trying to suggest calmly that it could be dark now, whilst trying not to sound like the Warden from Dad's Army. I had a string of fairy lights dad always used to turn on in the evening, which I would then ask to be turned off later on. One nurse was particularly thrilled by them, and I woke up on Christmas morning to the lights glowing above me.

There was one night nurse who used to turn on the main light to do her early morning medication (as opposed to using bed top lights). It was probably the only time I snapped at anyone during my whole time in the hospital. We quickly developed a banter. She took her role of watching over us a little too seriously, in my opinion. Maybe she shared a spiritual connection to Florence Nightingale. It was poetic justice when she asked one of these other patients what she could do for her, and she said "turn off the lights." I just showed her my favourite Donald Trump videos, to express how I felt.

I started camping out (metaphor) in the corridor, next to the nurse's station and in front of the therapists' office. This was the one place devoid of screens. The TV in my bay was some patients' only form of entertainment. Yes, we had a dayroom, but no one sat there except one patient, who used to sit in there watching The Jeremy Kyle Show. No thank you. My spot in the corridor was rather central, and meant I would be tortured by the staff's often slow responses to the doorbell being rung. (There was limited access to the ward because brain injury = confusion or denial = tendancy for patients to try and run away.) However, as the ward's sentinel, I was right in the thick of it (that makes it sound busy. It mostly wasn't). Yes, for the most part it meant watching staff run around answering buzzers or writing notes, but it meant I was likely at least to be talked to. I got to know all the professionals I would never have met in my bay.

During the Christmas holidays, lots of my family came to visit, including a fair few of my under-10-year-old cousins. The boys loved having a go at my micro-stimulator. This was a machine with 2 electrode pads you put on your arm to make your wrist flex. It sends an electric current through the nerves and stimulates them to move the muscle. Kind of like making it remember how to move? This doesn't have any instant effect, but it is good to do regularly over time. Anyway, it was the kind of tool you wouldn't give a small boy. Of course, that's what we did, and my cousins could see how strange it is to watch your hand flick up in a small salute. It feels like an electric wire without the shock at the end. I think it amused dad more than anyone.

2 girls visited who competed over getting to push the wheelchair. They got to take it in turns pushing to the canteen and back, navigating some of the corridors' slopes. Talk about This Girl Can. They were barely taller than the wheelchair. Some of my cousins were quite shy, in such a clinical environment, and me being so physically changed. These girls were not, chatting away and drawing me pictures. One did go all shy for a bit, then whispered to her mum, who got her to whisper it to me.  She asked, "Will you be like this forever?" Well, not if I can help it.

We also had a Christmas raffle. I think every ward has one. It's the only way they can buy 'luxuries' for the ward. One of the prizes was a giant child-sized teddy bear. A nurse's son had brought it home from school as a prize. She had taken one look and promptly donated it to the ward raffle. Everyone was very divided over whether they wanted to win the bear or not. It made the raffle a kind of Russian Roulette. I was Team Bear. I didn't actually want it; I just found the idea of it quite amusing. In the end, Kerri, (suitably dismayed), won the bear. You know what? I won 1st prize.

That was my present to the parents sorted.