It’s magic! I can walk again

It is two years since my stay in Epsom Hospital, following an asthma attack. I was put in a ward full of patients with a variety of respiratory diseases, a few of them so unwell I felt a fraud for being there. I made friends with two elderly ladies: Joan, a serial resident with emphysema, and Muriel, who, Joan informed me, was ‘a bit in the head’.

On my first night, Muriel told me there was a man standing by my bed. On the second night, she informed me he was in my bed. She got very annoyed when I said I couldn’t see him. The phantom man caused much hilarity among the other

The Oldie patients: ‘Send him our way when you’ve finished with him, love!’ It was around the time of the Bataclan terrorist attack, and Joan had got it into her head that Isis could be on their way to our ward: ‘We’re sitting ducks in this place, sitting ducks, I tell you.’ Muriel was too preoccupied giving birth to her imaginary baby to worry about Isis. ‘When will this sodding thing come out?’ she’d holler.

After leaving hospital, my illness got progressively worse, to the extent that I used to mentally compile a list of songs to be played at my funeral. Like my Desert Island Discs, they changed on a daily basis, according to mood. One day, it could be a bit of uplifting pop, such as ELO’S ‘Mr Blue Sky’. The next, a sombre piece of Elgar, to make Mr Home Front regret not appreciating me more in life.

I also became really boring about my health. Whenever anyone asked how I was, I told them in too much detail. I quite forgot that what was spellbinding to me was crashingly dull to anyone else. So, rather than risk boring you too, I will cut a long story short (ish) and tell you I am pretty much in the pink these days.

Following many tests up at Guy’s Hospital, I eventually had a diagnosis of