Low life
Bad break
Jeffrey Bernard Breaking my hip has turned out to be the single biggest inconvenience in my life after sloth and an addiction to the low life and all its attendant wastes. Now almost totally immobile, for the time being any- way, I am like an injured racehorse, a mere handicapper, that has been scratched from all further engagements. I shall go home today and my nearby watering-holes, all of them within four blocks, will be out of the reach of my crutches, which I am discover- ing need more shoulder and arm muscle to propel them than I ever dreamt of. Life will now have to be lived on one level. Only the Coach and Horses has its lavatories on the ground floor and of the restaurants I go to in Soho the same only applies to the Amalfi. The word conve- nience is a misnomer. People confined to wheelchairs must have bladders and bowels of cast iron. It is also to be noticed that few people talk to those held prisoner in wheelchairs. I suppose they are hard to get away from decently. Shopping, of course, is out of the question. You can pocket a steak but a carrier bag will be an impossibility- My home help, the blessed Vera, will now come three times a week, but I want to see what I am buying. Yesterday, the physio- therapy department gave me an exam of sorts in a kitchen they have here in the hos- pital. Could I make some tea on crutches? Just. But, having done that, how do I take it from the kitchen into the sitting-room? They are giving me a trolley and I suppose I shall fall over that. I remember very little about the initial fall on to the sharp steps leading up to the door of Kettners and for two days after that I have no recollections, having been doped up with pain-killing drugs. I now a metal (titanium, I am told) plate In my hip which is held there by three pins which look more like Frankensteinian bolts on the X-ray pictures. Had I known it was to be put in I should have had it engraved first and left it to my daughter for her to use as a paperweight or an ashtray. And now I am sitting on the landing out- side my ward where we are allowedto smoke. I meet up with another nicotine addict and diabetic, an Irishman called Joe, four or five times a day. He has only half of his left leg left and whether he can hang on to that last reminder of an active life as a demolition worker is doubtful. His right leg was amputated six months ago and he has
been here ever since. Not surprisingly he talks about pain for most of the time.
University College Hospital is without doubt the coldest hospital I have ever been in and I suppose it must be government `Policy' not to switch the heating on until someone dies of hypothermia. The break- fast eggs have gone out of the window since the dreadful Edwina Currie pronounced and dawn breaks as it must in Somalia. The genial consultant stands at the foot of a bed beaming and tells a hapless patient, 'Very good. You can go home tomorrow.' What never occurs to him is that home is likely to be a park bench or a cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge. There is not only morphine dependency but bed and food dependency for some, whose illnesses may be a temporary blessing in disguise. But in the good hospital guide University College gets high marks. The nursing is very good indeed and better for being Informal. A certain Sister Sally almost makes me feel at home. Perhaps one of these days it will be, although I have no intention of cornering the titanium market. Last week Sally told me that I was PAFO. What dreaded complaint is that? I asked her. 'Pissed again, fell over,' she smiled. And now the dreaded physiotherapist has arrived to give me a lesson in climbing up and down stairs. Joe is exclaiming dis- gust at anybody with a clipboard and our Polish amputee is just beginning his third packet of fags for the day. I face another night of insomnia and the vodka in my locker remains unopened. Did Deborah, I wonder, know what she was doing when she gave me a hip flask for my birthday?
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