On Thursday evening, when I ought to have been hungry, I prepared a small meal - for decorum's sake as much as for anything - but found myself strangely repulsed by the sight of it, and could only bring myself to swallow a couple of mouthfuls.
That night, around 1am, I started throwing up. Reader, much as I would like to be able to vouchsafe that I had chundered every whar, I was in fact quite fastidious, and directed my chundering very much in the direction of the usual receptacle. This phase lasted until Saturday morning.
Even though I was beginning to get better, I still thought it would be a good idea to ring the NHS on 111. Based on my answers to a series of questions, the woman at the other end very suddenly announced that she was going to despatch an ambulance which would arrive in 18 minutes time. This was really quite surprising to me, since as far as I was concerned I was beginning to feel much better. I acquiesced, however; a consultation with some paramedics certainly wouldn't do any harm. I actually spent the intervening time in doing what I could to rectify some of the more egregiously squalid evidence of my deficiencies as a homekeeper.
When I let in Jessie and her colleague, whose name I'm ashamed to say eludes me, they remarked that they hadn't expected me to be walking so readily up the stairs. In my bedroom, they took my blood pressure which was high and hooked me up to various monitors which showed my heart to be slightly arrythmic. They said this was on the borderline of insignificance, but offered to take me to hospital for further tests anyway. They were very equable when I declined, and said it was a good thing I was keeping liquids down, and very helpfully added that the home remedy version of taking glucose tablets etc was to add sugar and a pinch of salt to the water that I was already drinking.
After that, they and I quite naturally got down to talking about philosophy, and it turned out that one of them had been friends with my old MA supervisor before I knew him.
When they left, I don't think I thanked them fulsomely enough, which I very much regret. So thank Jessie and her colleague, and thank also to the operator who despatched of you. You embodied the NHS at its finest.
The improvement in my condition accelerated after they left. I vomited no more, and was able to swallow a mouthful or two of toast now and then, and to drink quite a lot of water. Unfortunately I was prevented from sleeping on Saturday night by the older teens in the local party house shouting mindlessly in their back garden from 11.30 until 4am.
So that by this by this morning I had not slept or had a square meal for three days. It's Sunday evening now, and I'm more or less back to normal. I even drank a half-litre bottle of beer - 250 more calories can't do any harm! But I'm left to reflect on the events of the last 72 hours, and it really was bit traumatic in some ways. I haven't weighed myself, but one or two people have remarked that I have lost weight. This is actually the first time I've been genuinely ill since my appendectomy as a 17 year old. It's been a chastening experience, however I'm a dickhead and won't learn anything from it.
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