A day to remember and take stock

On this day one year ago I became ill and ended up in hospital. A week before I had been discharged after a seemingly successful total hip replacement. I suddenly felt very ill, high temperature, confused - signs of an infection. After what felt an eternity in Accident and Emergence at Leicester Royal Infirmary I was eventually allocated to an orthopaedic trauma ward. Although I was put in a side room I was able to observe the male part of the ward but was spared the worst excesses of the all men together culture.

Apart from routine observations, little seemed to be being done to me or for me. I was repeatedly told that this was the week when junior doctors changed jobs. I endlessly explained that I knew this and all I wanted was to get back to the orthopaedic ward and staff from which I had been discharged some days before. I was not told the ward was temporarily closed nor that the surgeon was on holiday. It took some days for this to be made clear to me and then there was a wait of some days before I was transferred back for what turned out to be a five months stay.

The memories of the holding stay in the trauma ward are still vivid. The old woman who screamed most of the night, much to the annoyance of some other patients. After some days it became clear (to me, at least) was that she had recently been widowed and wanted to wear her late husband's pyjamas but the staff did not consider this proper. Of the group of men who sat round in circle together outdoing one another as to who had the most gruesome injuries - this was quite a battle as the ward collected casualities from several motorways and from a large part of rural, and therefore farming, England. Or when the weekend trauma on call consultant sailed into the ward (an imperial lady) how the men's group's bravado simply drained away. Of the fear I experienced as I imagined that the observation machine morphed into a face which was watching me and when I told a night staffer this was immediately offered a major tranquilizer without further probing.

Although the stay on that ward lasted just over a week, it has left its mark.

I am asked if having heart failure and then having no memories surround the event and the following days has had any impact? The short answer is YES it certainly has. Apart from having "lost" some days through amnesia I also feel that something has changed. I am not sure what it is but something has changed. Something like having a reprieve granted unexpectedly - but this does not quite capture the sense. It is work in progress.