Too much of a good thing will give you flu

Applying for a Ghanaian visa has made me ill. Well, indirectly at least. The trouble is that they require me to travel all the way to London in order to submit a print out of the application form that I filled in on their website along with my passport. (There is an option to do this by post, but after seeing the level of organisation present in the Ugandan embassy I wanted to supervise the whereabouts of my important documents in person as much as possible). After travelling all the way to town, it would seem a bit rude to go home again and neglect the many wonderful people I happen to know are living there. Particularly considering that (by virtue of being granted a visa to Ghana) I know I won’t now be available to see them again for at least 3 months – that kind of ultimatum focuses the mind! As such, in the duration of 4 days I have been delighted to see old uni housemates, ex colleagues, current colleagues, a school friend, the sailing community, friends from Kenya, and Londoners from when I was a Londoner. It’s been intense!
Luckily for me (and my limited budget), I am now very easily pleased. Freshly returned from Uganda all I really want in life is to sit on a sofa with a cup of tea, talk to a friend and to go on walks. This begs the question though, how much of a good thing is too much? I have shin splints from all these relaxing walks! I veritably hobbled home from the station at the end of it all. I actually had to take a rest and sit down on someone’s garden wall. The trouble is that if you burn the candle at both ends, ever so occasionally the whole candle gets too hot and melts. Before I left London I sprawled on the sofa with the wonderful friends who hosted me, all of us wrapped in scarves, croaking, eating ice cream and oranges. If Ghana's high commissioner could see me now, he probably wouldn’t let me in!

Claude visits a Doctor

Although Claude stories have been a source of great amusement, he has actually been quite ill this week and so I took him to see a doctor so he could air his complaints of chest pain. (This is not a typical Ugandan experience because we're lucky enough to have access to private healthcare. Illness is no time for authenticity!)

We chatted in the waiting room for a bit (until I worked out that there are no queues, you just take your turn when you feel ready) and I was very alarmed when he told me that he derived much sexual pleasure from working with his entrepreneurs...it turns out that Claude has been reading the works of Freud (but not very critically!).

When we got into the examination room, Claude sat down, was asked what the problem was, and informed the doctor that he had a stone in his lung. The doctor took this information in his stride and despite Claude's best efforts, did manage to come up with a positive diagnosis: a chest infection and excess stomach acid. Claude was prescribed a rigorous schedule of drugs and syrups, which I was very concerned about him remembering to take. The doctor had different concerns, firstly he told Claude to stop smoking. Secondly he told Claude that if he ever had cause to cry in the night again then he (the doctor) should be notified. On hearing this Claude (who had no idea what was going on) assumed that the doctor was trying to treat him for homesickness and so refused.

It seems that the many medicines Claude has been prescribed have been doing the trick. Things have got better this week (although he did initially tell everyone that he had TB, so that wasn't a great start). Having said that, yesterday I found him smoking (an odd decision all things considered). I expressed my surprise but he assured me that in order to ensure he could smoke over the weekend he had stopped taking his medication so that it would be ok…I cannot even begin to imagine the logic that informed this decision! 

A glimpse inside St Helier Hospital this Christmastime

This weekend I went to see mum in hospital. She tells me that no one in her ward is really ill (something to do with their campaign to all get sent home in time for Christmas). As if to prove it, on the eve of my visit all the patients decided to have a pyjama party in which they wore their PJs, sat in their beds and collectively watched strictly come dancing while shouting at the screen. The beautiful (heart wrenching) irony is that they spend all day in pyjamas confined to beds anyway.

I was relieved to see that she looked relatively chirpy when I arrived and as we got chatting she told me that her biggest problem was the extremely uncomfortable stent* in her hand that was administering intravenous antibiotics (not ill are we? It’s not many people ill enough to receive intravenous antibiotics that consider a stent to be the most of their problems, bless her).

As if in perfect demonstration that she’d regained her usual character (even if not health) we did manage to talk non stop for several hours, only interrupted once by a lovely lady in the bed opposite who was exceptionally pleased to tell us that she’d just discovered that the sterilising wipes could be used as make up remover. I’m not 100% sure that disinfectant is something that should be put in one’s eye, but in the absence of certainty I didn’t want to bring her cheerful demeanour down by saying so. This lady has been in hospital for over a month and her muscles have wasted away. I assumed she was planning to go home for Christmas too but didn’t like to ask.

What really struck me was that at such a difficult juncture in their year, all the patients were so cheerful (staff too!) It made me think about all I had to be grateful for. It also made me want to come back on Christmas day to personally make sure that everyone had a friendly visitor! Before I left mum confided that she was planning to go home in 2 days time, but “the consultants don’t know yet”. However, I’m very happy to say that much to our surprise it didn't take that long and she was released the very next day.

That said, if anyone did ask me to go and do some St Helier Hospital cheer spreading on Christmas day, I wouldn’t need asking twice!

* For anyone happy enough to have no use for such vocabularly thus far, a stent is a little tube which in this case was sticking out of the back of mum's hand. It allows the doctors to attach a drip to it on a daily basis and saves them the trouble of having to pierce the poor patients anew every time they wish to do so.