Trying to get any sleep in A&E with a child is no mean feat
Iwas in hospital yet again at the weekend with my little lad (he suffers from a little breathing problem – not terribly serious, but enough to warrant a hospital stay every time it flares up). I feel sorry for him, obviously, but my sympathy would be greater if he didn’t insist on getting ill at the weekend.
Three times in the last eight weeks I’ve had to spend the night in hospital and it’s always been on a Saturday, which is bloody annoying as not only do I miss Match of the Day but, as everyone knows, the worst time to be in hospital A&E is a weekend evening.
It’s like entering a parallel universe.
The waiting room resembles the scene of a particularly gruesome zombie film and there’s always at least two or three highly inebriated individuals smashed out of their faces, stumbling around and banging on the vending machine screaming: ‘Why won’t my crisps come out?’ (‘Because sir,’ a nurse will say, ‘that’s the car park payment machine – the crisps machine is over there.’)
There’s always a woman in a wheelchair – not disabled, just likes being pushed around – who looks around 127-yearsold and is clutching a packet of Benson & Hedges like she’s clinging to a life raft.
Then – and this was the case on Saturday – there’ll be a man about seven feet tall with at least a dozen tattoos and muscles the size of a small country, blood oozing from a nasty facial injury, who will sit and stare menacingly at everyone in turn because it’s been 45 minutes since he had his last fist-fight and he’s itching for another.
Indeed before I enter A&E on a Saturday night, I always ring my immediate family and tell them – much like a soldier going into battle or a passenger on an airplane with engine failure – that I love them very much, lest I shouldn’t make it out.
Thankfully if you’re with a child, you get quickly ushered through to the children’s waiting area (actually that’s a good tip: should you ever find yourself in hospital on a Saturday night in future, just pick up someone else’s child, place it on your knee, and you’ll get seen a lot quicker. On the downside, you may be arrested for abduction).
Wilf was placed in a cot and I sat beside him on a blue plastic chair.
I was grumbling a bit inside because on my last overnighter in hospital (a different hospital) the staff had wheeled in a bed and I’d managed to get a couple of hours sleep.
This time, however, there was just this one highly uncomfortable chair.
‘Bloody NHS cutbacks,’ I thought. At 2am, with my back stiff and sore, I looked at the cot and decided if I folded my body in two, in a move a top contortionist would be proud of, I could probably get in it and lie alongside Wilf.
I carefully manoeuvred the chair to the side of the cot, and then taking great care not to wake my son – this was incredibly important as he had dropped off only half-anhour earlier after four straight hours of crying – I awkwardly got in.
I found that if I lay with my right knee touching the bottom of my chin, I could actually fit and despite getting serious cramp in both sides of my groin within minutes and there being absolutely no prospect of sleep, at least it was better than being sat on a plastic chair all night.
Then I heard the door open and a nurse – who must have wondered why a 45-year-old man was lying in a cot – said: ‘Erm, you do know there’s a pull-out bed on the wall don’t you?’
I glanced to my left – tricky, as I couldn’t move my neck – and saw a large wooden thing attached to the wall which I had, in my fatigued state, assumed was a wardrobe (on reflection, it’s unlikely you’d find a wardrobe in a hospital – Nurse: ‘And this, Mr Canavan is where you can hang up your trousers. And that’s draw down there is for your underpants and toiletries. Now make yourself comfortable and I’ll be back with complimentary snacks and cappuccino shortly.’)
As I extracted myself from the cot – this took 15 minutes and a lot of Vaseline – she kindly made the bed and at just before 3am, I finally slid into the sheets and shut my eyes.
It was at this very moment – and I kid you not here – that a different nurse came in and announced Wilf needed to go on a nebuliser.
I felt like saying: Is it absolutely necessary? I mean we could risk it till the morning.’
However, needs must and obviously he woke up, started screaming, and my chances of getting any sleep that night waltzed out of the window.
We were in hospital for 24 hours before being discharged, armed this time with an impressive array of inhalers, tablets, steroids and medicines to try and ward off a future flare-up.
I’m stocking up on sleep before, inevitably, next Saturday evening, he needs to go back in.
The worst time to be in A&E is a weekend evening