We are all individuals. At least that is what we like to think and there is no doubt that people come in all shapes and sizes, though perhaps not all shapes and sizes. You don’t get people weighing in at twenty tons with a penchant for wallowing about the ocean. Or for that matter you don’t find them sporting several ounces, flapping their wings and twittering, though perhaps there are those that remind us of such creatures. So I think I can say that there is a limited set of characteristics that enable us to pin point a human. Yet we still think we are individuals because as a rule, a millennium of genetic influences when combined with other things from the environment means our characters are like fingerprints, and thus we are all individual - until you go into hospital.

Illness turns one into a stereotype. Having recently had the bad luck of ending up in a hospital ward with the feeling that I was just one badly lit corridor from the morgue, I realised that to the nurses I was bed sixteen. Opposite me was another old geezer. He was ten years older. And next to him was another, ten years older than him, and then to my right another ten years older still. One sensed a time line and I was not sure which end of the ward it began on. Maybe bed 16 was the one turning into history and not bed 36?

I have always had a determination not to turn into a grumpy old man, especially not the grumpy old guy who could not remember why he was grumpy, or why he had to wear trousers, or where the ends of his feet were or what they were called. I could see how will power was no help in staving off the encroaching tsunami of confusion and distraction. And if the blood clots in my lungs had decided to be blood clots in my head, then I would be that man, that grumpy old git, that nuisance, though probably most likely dead which would indeed make me grumpier still.

As it was, I seemed to be the one old man that the nurses had to shake now and then just to see if I was alive. My oxygen levels were low and for some reason my heart monitor kept setting off alarms. Mine was not the only one doing so. The ward was a cacophony of alarms, so many that I am sure the nurses decided they’d ignore the most irritating persons and only tend to the less troublesome ones. I was intent on being less trouble. I suspected that being dead was a lot of bureaucratic trouble though strangely hurtling towards the white light at the end of the tunnel did not worry me in the least. The soles of my feet would no doubt be there to greet me, but I was concerned about how irritating it would be to my wife.

At seventy, one has that nagging sense that the biblical three score years and ten might have some validity, especially when one has the misfortune of being admitted to a ward resembling the old Bedlam lunatic asylum. Doubly so for this being the second time in less than six months, the earlier occasion being for an over ripe kidney stone. Note to self: never ever have one of those again and never ever ever end up with a catheter belching gobbets of blood!

Maybe one of those gobbets of blood travelled in the opposite direction and finally came to a rest in my lungs? This is not exactly a scientific diagnosis as my anatomy lessons were learnt from the film, “Fantastic Voyage”. The plot featured a miniature surgical department in a shrunken submarine with a laser. A miniaturised Raquel Welch got wrapped in anti-bodies that had to be clawed from her ample breasts in order to save her from being absorbed by the immune system of a clot infested Russian scientist. I recall thinking that a dose of Raquel was the very thing that needed to be injected into me, but I did not think the NHS indulged in such medicine and if I had suggested it, all I would get is a visit from the hospital mental health unit.

As I considered such things I did wonder if any minute now I would join the cast of The Living Dead and be roaming the corridors with my wrinkly arse hanging out of my regulation back to front NHS nightgown. Or perhaps I would be like that one guy screaming how he should not be in hospital and how he should be going home! If so, then someone should just give me a hefty dose of morphine or something. Or I could have become like the one the nurses were constantly asking to return to his bed to let them bring him a urine bottle. I suspect they feared he would lock the bathroom door and never be seen again. And then there was the one that constantly called for the nurse to bring them a drink of water, despite there being a jug of water beside them. They of course could not reach the water without falling out of bed, but when a fellow patient helped them to the water, ten minutes later they were crying out for a change of sheets. The reason why the nurses were reluctant to let that patient drink thus became clear. I felt I could become any one of these guys at any moment.

Despite it being obvious that I was not one of those people and that I was not a number but a name, the nurse asked me whether I could walk, dress myself, and what year it was. My answers lurched into the jokey. Of course I could walk, only not right now and no I did not usually use a cane or a zimmer frame. And yes I know how to dress myself but my wife has taken my clothes away, so I would have a job right now. And as for what year it was, it was… it was… IT WAS A NEW ONE! And I’ll have to check my phone to find out which – all the while I am reminding myself that I am not one of those - those - those grumpy old men!!! Though for some reason I was convinced it was 2022 and not 2023. Time was standing still for me.

Damn, I thought, have I had a stroke? I thought it was a heart attack. What did the doc say inconveniently as he took my blood pressure? Oh, yeah, it looks like either acute heart failure or a blood clot in the lungs or both... No wonder my blood pressure was on the high side. Though it was my racing pulse that really shocked me. Normally my pulse plods along in the sixties, occasionally dipping into the fifties, hence no doubt why my mind mangled various snippets of medical information with those gleaned from sixties films and TV shows, and here my pulse was pounding out 2023 as I considered how time for me appeared to have become a tad Slaughterhouse Fivish… Any minute now a crack unit of British Air Force Officers would be dressing as sexy nurses and singing The Gangs All Here!

And here they were: old geezers lapsing into the flirty old granddad pose calling nurses Young Darlings, who were plump middle aged Jamaicans who had heard it all before. I am resolutely not one of those guys, I told myself. At least not yet! They were relics of at least a generation ahead of mine. I was the youngster of the ward! The younger nurses started calling me Master Gray, which I assumed meant they recognised that. Bed Sixteen was obviously for the teenagers… Or perhaps I should have worn my leather thong and offered them a training session? The image of them on their knees wearing nothing but spiky dog collars crossed mind. Possibly in another ten years I would be giving voice to such fleeting considerations, and thus become one of those old men they put in bed number thirty six where they can be seen from the corridor by the male nurses lounging behind the desk with a bucket and mop ready from bathroom catastrophes. A miniaturised mental health unit was no doubt tooling up to delve deeper than my pallid complexion and cold hands as I graciously smiled and accepted whatever was coming my way.

As the anti-coagulants kicked in and my pulse slowed and my oxygen levels began to rise, the sensation of imminent death departed and I began to wonder what was for dinner. I could feel the patient retreating and my old self, or my new self, taking over. Bed thirty-six was at least twenty beds ahead of me and there madness reigned where we all just become impatient patients like everyone else. In the meantime banality is my convalescence and making plans for spicing things up when I find my mojo again. I am sure it is lurking there somewhere, perpetually 16 and itching for an adventure of some sort.

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