Blog – Hospital August 2026
My abiding memory of a recent five night stay in hospital was of George wanting to die. I lost count of the times he said as much, nearly always while speaking with a member of the hospital staff, out of sight behind the ineffective and far from silencing discretion of a bed curtain. If anything drawing the curtain served to enhance and clarify with great detail the often dismal conversations therein.
“At 95 I’ve had enough,” he exclaimed breathlessly, a nasal tube taped to his face. Clear polythene bags attached to his bed signs of other intimate and doubtless uncomfortable tubes elsewhere.
“I don’t know what I am doing. I can’t feel anything. I’ve been like this for two years. It’s why, if you operate, I’ve signed a don’t resuscitate form.”
Attempting to remain cheerful the doctor(s) persisted with their forecast of a complicated and difficult operation.
But George had heard it all before. “I just want to go. Give me a gun and I’ll shoot myself.”
He was asleep for much of the time we shared a ward. His family, whom I don’t think knew of his desire to call it a day, cheerfully struggled communicating with him. Despite this George twice managed to look up and for no apparent reason, we’d never spoken, throw me two hearty thumbs-ups. It looked from across the ward that the nonagenarian had dyed his white beard a salt and pepper grey and in rare fleeting moments displayed glimpses of an inherent cheekiness.
How I came to be opposite George remains something of a mystery. Discharged and now some weeks later I remain non the wiser due in part to conflicting medical opinions of my condition. There may have been clues with swollen left ribs two months prior, an enlarged tummy that I mistook for a beer gut, and finally a pain in my stomach best described as quite intense. Indeed so intense, and it being a bank holiday weekend and scant chance of seeing my local physician, I bowed to pressure and dialled 111. An MRI scan at another hospital revealed a ‘perforated small intestine’ causing the young, proactive and evidently alarmed A&E doctor to ship me in an ambulance to another hospital better surgically equipped,.
The ward I was allocated was a sort of pre-surgery one where I and five other patients, all older than I, were closely monitored to assess urgency. One had fallen heavily and was badly cut and bruised, two had gallbladder issues and another was suffering the pain and indignity of a major internal blockage. And then there was George.
So many patients at varying stages of illnesses understandably presents a challenge to consultants on their whistle-stop morning rounds. This may go some way to explaining why during my initial assessment the consultant, looking at me and remarking how well I looked, read another patient’s
medical details. With the correct ones handed to him I repeated the mantra I’d said to the consultant in Truro some seven years earlier – no knives!
Once the looks of surprise had subsided I was prescribed a thrice daily course of intravenous antibiotics and omeprazole an acid inhibitor, in between litres of compound sodium lactate to replace lost body fluids and salts ; fingers crossed. The situation deteriorated before it improved. The blood CRP (C reactive protein measure of inflammation) count climbing to the mid 300s threw the medical staff into an apparent panic culminating with a tete a tete with the surgeon who despite my ‘no knives’ plea would be opening me up. He advised me of all the things beyond his control that could go wrong leaving me to stare at the ceiling as I mentally reassigned my most treasured possessions. I apologised to the head nurse for being unnecessarily emotional. She squeezed my arm and promised not to crash into the foot of my bed any more with her work station trolley, insisting repeatedly that she is a very VERY good driver.
I’ll have to take her word for her driving abilities yet there can be no doubt whatsoever as to her and her fellow nursing managers’ medical, one-on-one and cheery public relations abilities. These young committed, hard working, gifted, gregarious and witty young women spend their days quite literally at the arse end of medical care cheerfully addressing and cleaning patients apparently unable or unwilling to attend to personal hygiene themselves. Their twelve hour shifts are full on from the word go and I have nothing but the strongest admiration for them and their equally attentive juniors who they tutor to be similarly professional, assiduous and devoted.
One by one the other patients of my ward were either discharged or dispatched to surgery here or elsewhere. Their replacements were each and every one much younger than I. One spent most of his initial hours defecating and vomiting while another two played music or watched some kind of AI social media slop at inconsiderate volumes on their phones. I inquired if there was a bed elsewhere and to my eternal regret accepted one two wards along where in the dusk half light the patients, gaunt, almost naked their eyes shut and mouths wide open I mistook for cadavers. Had I mistakenly stepped into somewhere out-of-bounds?
The anaesthetist also commented that I looked well before detailing the pre-surgery procedure. All of a sudden my keyhole operation was called off. The blood inflammation numbers had dropped significantly with nobody I suspect happier than the surgeon.
After five nights away and six days without food of any kind I headed for the exit not knowing how the perforation had occurred or how to prevent something similar happening in the future but grateful to the doctors and nurses for getting me back on my feet without the need for knives.
I never got to know what happened to George. His bed was empty when I was discharged. Just the echo of his rasping voice calling out“…if you people don’t do anything drastic – I will. When I get out I’ll walk infront of a lorry.
“I just don’t want to be here anymore.”
Shortly after George he’d given me a second thumbs-up.
