h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... I think they transported her to Birminhgam Selly Oak A&E about a month ago.

I spent a jolly six and a half hours (give or take) in casualty in agony and not being able to move as I'd put my back out and in the cubicle opposite me was a lady who kept on shouting out "I'M DYING" or "WHERE'S MY TEETH?!" every two minutes for the entire duration.

I hereby give a to the carer who was with her. Without ever losing her cool she continually reassured her that she wasn' dying and that her teeth were back home in Moundsley Hall (yes I'm *very* familiar with that name now! ).

She demonstrated a far higher level of patience than I can maintain.

Just the sort of thing you really need when you are in a horrid situation like that!

Your condition sounds awful, hope it's all better now Sounds pretty close to septicemia!

Thanks Orcus - all better now - though you can still just about see where I had the infection, especially when I get hot and sweaty. Bit lumpy there too.

I wonder if there's a mini army of these old ladies that they employ in hospitals to keep the number of other patients down? It's probably a new initiative to reduce hospital waiting lists...

One of the things that determined me never to get that ill again. That and the utterly vile food served to patients in Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport. (Oh, and the police investigation into nurses who were allegedly poisoning patients, but that's another story). I was moved onto a ward full of, shall we say, sanity-challenged elderly people. I remember asking the nurse in charge if there'd been an administrative blunder and I'd been moved into a psycho-geriatric ward in error. No, she said, this was a general male ward. Thus began two days and nights of feeling as if I'd blundered into a Brueghel print. Probably unavoidable and I do feel for those who have to deal with dementia and mental illness. It just was not the right environment for me to recover.