Today’s post comes to you from Leftwing Idiot:

I was at home working on some IT stuff with my dad this afternoon when I got a call from Fran saying Touretteshero, back at work for the first day after recovering from her tonsillectomy, was having one of her long and painful ‘ticcing fits’. She was already an hour and a half into it and I knew the pain she was in from the sounds she was making, which I could hear in the background.

I asked Fran to ask Touretteshero a series of yes/no questions to establish what to do next and we agreed we should call an ambulance in a quarter of an hour if there was no improvement before then. I rushed through the rest of the IT stuff and started rearranging the evening ahead in my mind.

Fifteen minutes later Fran called again. There’d been no change so Fran called the ambulance and I made my way down the road to King’s. I’d asked Fran to make sure the ambulance went there rather than any other hospital because, after two previous trips for the same reason, they’re more familiar than anyone with Touretteshero and her super-fits.

I forced down a bag of chips and a double gherkin on the way to the hospital, and then waited for the ambulance to arrive. It’s been a chilly old evening and lurking about in the A&E ambulance bay felt a bit weird. Fortunately they were there pretty quickly and inside they’d got a bed waiting for Touretteshero on the Resuscitation Ward. Later, I saw from the paperwork that she’d come in on ‘The red phone,’ which sounded suitably dramatic and important.

One of the nurses asked Fran and me to wait outside while they got Touretteshero set up in her bed. We were both uncomfortable with this especially as we could hear from the tone of the ‘Howwing’ noise she was making that she was in distress. After a couple of minutes I marched over and asked to be let in.

Touretteshero was on the bed, locked up with her neck twisted backwards, evidently in a lot of pain. I helped one of the nurses reposition her and stopped another from cutting her jumper off to get some heart monitoring pads on. It was a new jumper and I knew Touretteshero would’ve been upset to lose it just for the sake of a fit, so I helped them get it off without the use of scissors.

Earlier, when it was looking as though a trip to hospital would be essential, Touretteshero had indicated to Fran that she really didn’t want to have the emergency medication they use to make the super-fits stop. I called Fat Sister to check if there were any medical reasons for this and she reassured me there weren’t. Touretteshero and I had a brief blinked conversation in the ward about it and it turned out she didn’t want to take the medication because she doesn’t like the effect it has on her, and because tomorrow will be a write-off. We quickly agreed this wasn’t a good enough reason not to take it, and they syringed it in.

When things had settled down, they let Fran in and the three of us chatted and mucked about (as much as you can in a hospital) until they were happy for us to leave. At one point, Fran and I who were standing either side of the bed moved the raised the sides backwards and forwards pretending to be on a boat. Touretteshero clearly didn’t like this and told us to stop. She didn’t enjoy any part of the evening really, and as passionate as she is about the NHS, this was certainly one trip to hospital too many for this month.

King’s is excellent and we’re very lucky to have it as our local hospital. As ever, all the staff were great and they let us out as quickly as they could, knowing that Touretteshero was itching to leave.

One of the nurses has been there every time we’ve come in and she popped her head round the curtain a few times to say hello and make sure everything was alright. It’s reassuring to know you’re in safe (publicly-funded) hands, that aren’t trying to take cash out of your wallet while you’re vulnerable.

We got back to the castle after a swift trip up the icy road in the wheelchair, and Touretteshero’s gone straight to bed.

Please feel free to leave her a message in the comments section, or on Facebook, to wish her well. I know she’ll appreciate reading them when she finally surfaces.

Leftwing Idiot.