Day 7 Wednesday I winned! I winned! I winned!

6am I wake up with some pain at the back of my head that I hope that will go away. I haven’t mentioned it before but I do hear a sound now and then that sounds like a door not quite shutting, it slams and then bounces. It does this twice and it is always the same but it only happens intermittently. I know it’s not real as there aren’t any doors behind me so it must be a type of hallucination. It’s very annoying.

Apparently one of the young men (very young) with a long-term back injury received no relief from the infusion so they are stopping his treatment.

My lovely nurse today has a two-year-old boy and she lives in a suburb fairly near where I used to live. She says I can have two Panadiene Forte for my headache. I have breakfast, shower (still sitting on the chair), get dressed and check my phone. Marie has texted asking if she can come and visit. 

How lucky I am! I have lovely people around me, why am I so lucky, how did I get to have everything that anyone needs in life? Beautiful friends, a wonderful partner, a gorgeous daughter, sufficient money to travel and enjoy life as long as we aren’t extravagant.

Marie and I have a lovely morning, we go for a little walk around the ward. Her lovely niece brought her up to visit me because Marie has been seriously ill for the past eighteen months and can’t drive.

After Marie and her niece leave I listen to music and read the newspaper. I have to read most articles a few times to understand them and I find them more interesting than I normally would. I am easily amused in this altered state.

Nurse Red Lips told me that I have won the ketamine race! The only other person left having the infusion (he was young with little life experience and having fun with the tripping) had his infusion stopped. He had watched something dark on the television and it had upset his head space and he had gone back to being a child and wouldn’t go to the bathroom on his own as he believed there was someone in there, so the doctor had stopped the infusion.

I messaged Martina, my neighbour who helps administers ketamine infusions. I sent her a picture of the mug she gave me that I had brought to the hospital with me and told her that I had winned. I hope she is proud of me, but I reckon she knew I was going to.

In the evening Nick and Khloe come to visit. I get braver in my walking as I am so unsteady on my feet and we leave the hospital and we visit Mr Garden Bench. Some person smarter than us had turned the bench around so he now faces the garden and not the cars. We sat there and talked and enjoyed the lovely evening as a family together. 

At about 8.30 we walked back before we got locked out of the building. The sunset was grey and pink, Khloe’s favourite colours. The nurse said she saw us through the window sitting out there and we looked like a lovely family. What a nice thing to say. Khloe went home and Nick and I had a cuddle on the bed and then he went home too. Malik didn’t arrive tonight but it wasn’t important, all is good.

Kay phoned, we talked for about 45 minutes, I was lying there with the phone on my chest with the loud speaker on with my eyes closed while we were chatting. When we finished I thought it would be stupid to wake myself up again by watching a show so for the first time in my life I would go to sleep at 9.30pm. 

I pushed the buzzer for the nurse and a new nurse came, I asked her to remove my clothes from the PICC line and to please get my pills. She said “I don’t know how to do it”, and asked me “do I need the key to turn the machine off”? I said I don’t know, don’t ask me, I am on ketamine, I said that normally they just disconnect it quickly and then reconnect it. I don’t think they use the key but I can’t be sure, she leaves to get help. 

I wait and I wait, I put the bed flat, I am so tired, so much for going to sleep early. At 10.30pm she comes back, she is obviously very frazzled, these girls are so overworked. Another nurse shows her how to disconnect and reconnect quickly, key not needed. I ask for my pills again but she is so stressed she asks me if I can tell her what I have. I say two Temazepam, she says is that all and I say yes. I am slightly concerned that the ketamine patient’s word is being relied on. I feel this is wrong but I feel sorry for her as she is under so much pressure and I know I am telling the truth. I say I have been waiting for an hour, she apologises and says they were doing a transfusion. She comes back with the pills and wishes me a good night’s sleep. She’s a nice girl under too much pressure.