Willow the Wisp

“an atmospheric ghost light seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps”

I’m not in a bog or swamp, nor was I lit up, but I can sure appear at night......... I’m also quite sure the weather has a major impact on me.......apparently it rained all night. I can still hear the wind whistling round the building and  have been joking about The Wizard of Oz and expecting to see a cow fly past the window at any moment!

Last night I woke from a deep sleep to a huge amount of noise. There were alarms and people, shouts and cries. I became alarmed and I felt like I was surrounded by alarmed people. In my dreams, the hospital was being evacuated because of a fire........ 

Everything needed to calm down. So I did what I’d have done for myself, but I generously included the entire ward...... I put on an audio version of the first chapter of Wind in the Willows to take us all back to the Riverbank!! I turned it up full boot so everyone could hear it and settled down to sleep again. I turned it off when I heard a doctor welcoming a new visitor onto the ward. And then I started to wonder.......... had the noise just been her being brought in?? Was I doing a weird sleep thing?? I looked at the time to discover it was only half past midnight...... hmmm. 

Medical staff left again and I loudly asked the ward “Do you want the story back on? I’ll take three yes’s as a majority!” 

Silence

What have I done?? I’m affronted! Do the whole ward now think I’m completely crazy?? 

Then I realised they were all asleep. Quietest I’ve heard the ward since I arrived! No alarms, no shouts, no cries. I went back to sleep, safe in the knowledge that was either the best or the worst ward mate ever!! 

Everyone is still asleep now, after 9am. All the lights are on, nurses are doing obs and someone’s alarm played the radio for 10 mins. They’ve either relaxed and are enjoying a catch up on their sleep, or are totally exhausted after being woken in the middle of the night by a crazy ward mate........ Lets pretend the first.....!! The rest of the story may have been a dream too, but as vivid a dream as ever had.

In my defence, yesterday was yet another big day for family and I. Scan results were delivered to me in general terms by local doctors. They’re good! “ No further degeneration”....... the best result we could’ve got, short of miracle. 

I also met and chatted with a Macmillan expert and have a much better idea of what this whole thing actually means, one year after diagnosis. I’ll accept that this has probably largely been my own fault...... I heard the diagnosis but hadn’t moved far enough into ‘acceptance’ to be able to really consider how my life might change. I think it just all happened so quickly that I thought it would stop that way too.  I saw it as a ticking bomb that would just explode some day unexpectedly. It didn’t really dawn on me that it could move and be affected by other things, leading to symptoms I’d never had before.  I’m currently prone to being very dizzy and need a stick to prevent tumbles on the very short walks I can manage. But that’s this week........  next week I could be out for walks twice s day and out every day for lunch!

We’ve got a lot of thinking to do again. Questions to ask and answers to consider. In the short term I am being kept safe by the people who kept me safe from day one. Personal relationships are important to me and I’ve never been more grateful for decent people than I’ve been this last year, and am likely to be in future ones. My local hospital contains some of the finest examples.

There’s a lady across from me who spends much time shouting out, distressed. I swear earlier I heard her laughing and shouting “Ah oh!” ........ she’s the calmest I’ve seen her to date. Sometime we may find out, but I think her and I might share literary tastes. I hope so. Xxx