Adventures in A&E

I turned 26 recently. As I’ve mentioned previously my birthday is on New Year’s Eve and so I spent the night at my friends’ house party, wandering around and thanking bemused strangers for coming to my birthday party. At midnight someone let off some fireworks they’d bought from a garage, which produced no light whatsoever but enough noise to shatter nearby glassware. And so I started 2016 as I mean to go on: cowering in fear in someone else’s garden.

It’s surprising that these friends still let me attend their annual New Year parties after the fiasco of 2014. At the time I was living in Bedminster and they were living in Filton and I foolishly decided to walk from my house to theirs, a walk that I soon discovered takes an hour and 45 minutes. As I left my house I sent them a text saying “I’m on my way”. What I didn’t realise was that they’d kindly decided to turn their New Year’s Eve Party into a surprise birthday party for me, and when I sent the text they all got into position. Waiting in the dark for an hour and 45 minutes, cake in hand, is not an ideal way to start a party. Somehow the candles were still burning when I arrived. They must have had spares.

Before this year’s party I’d had a birthday lunch with my parents where my Mum had solemnly presented me with some vouchers and told me to “buy some proper shoes”. This is a running joke we have dating back to 2009 when I started wearing Vans trainers. I’ve been buying the same pair of shoes for 8 years now and their flimsiness is a constant source of worry to my mum. To be fair to her she has a point. The pair I’m sporting at the moment have worn so thin they’re basically glorified carrier bags. Actually that’s unfair to carrier bags. Carrier bags are waterproof at least.

Now that I’ve entered a new year of my life, and a new age category on drop-down menus, my body has decided that it’s high time it completely fell apart. I’ve never been a beacon of good health anyway. I haven’t exercised since 2007 and my diet can best be described as a child’s birthday party crossed with the first day of Home Alone. In the past I’ve managed to keep this in check through a combination of Tesco multivitamins and positive thinking, but it seems that in 2016 my luck might finally be running out. First of all my right ear got blocked. “No problem”, I thought, “I’ll just stand on the right of things that interest me.” I plodded along happily in my new monophonic world for a week or so, and then my left ear became blocked as well. This happened while I was staying in Liverpool, and being rendered mostly deaf put a bit of a damper on The Beatles museum. Without the music it’s basically just the story of four men becoming gradually scruffier, and then three men becoming gradually neater again.

When I got back to Bristol I called my doctor’s surgery to book a syringing appointment. They told me that they had to conduct a preliminary phone interview to see if I was eligible. This made me incredibly nervous. What if they thought I was faking it? What if they weren’t impressed by my CV? Surely in the age of Skype interviews I could just shove a webcam down my ear and let them see the problem for themselves? I received the phone call early on a Wednesday morning.

“Hello”, said the doctor, “I’m calling about your ears.”

“What?”, I replied, feeling incredibly witty.

She was not impressed.

I got an appointment booked for the following week and coped with my limited hearing as best as I could in the meantime, safe in the knowledge that it would be sorted out soon. Then my body betrayed me again. On the morning of the appointment I awoke with a terrible pain in my right foot. Walking on it was agony and I had to get from Easton to Southville for my syringing. (Not as far as Bedminster to Filton admittedly, but this time there was no cake waiting for me.) I triple-bagged my foot with three socks (I’d just had a birthday so I was well-stocked), squeezed it into my flimsy trainers, and commenced my hobble to the doctor’s. After about five minutes I was overcome with pain and had to get a bus the rest of the way. This didn’t seem fair. I’d always been careful to avoid all types of physical activity, yet somehow I’d ended up with the kind of complicated sporting injury that turns premier league footballers into after-dinner speakers.

My syringing went off without a hitch, apart from the embarrassing moment when the nurse informed me gravely that she’d “got some of it in my beard”. She stuffed my ears with cotton wool and then I asked her if she’d mind having a look at my foot too.

“Two for the price of one?” I joked.

She didn’t laugh. My jokes really aren’t landing with medical professionals lately.

She complimented me on my triple-bagging job and then told me to go to the hospital.

I hobbled to the BRI. and checked myself into A&E. The staff were brilliant as always, even politely ignoring the cotton wool that I’d forgotten to remove from my ears. Within ten minutes I’d been x-rayed and sent back to the waiting room. While I was there I befriended a man who’d broken his leg, by which I mean I picked up his E-cigarette when he dropped it. It felt good to be able to help someone. In the land of the broken-legged man, the broken-footed man with newly unblocked ears is king. The man was sitting in a wheelchair and hanging from the back of the chair was a flat-screen TV in a bin bag. I never quite got to the bottom of this. Was it an extreme attempt to beat the 5p bag charge? Had he dropped the TV on his leg in the first place? The bag was clearly not strong enough to hold the TV for much longer and the man kept glancing at it worriedly.

“Should’ve triple bagged it”, I said, gesturing to my foot, at which point I realised that I was wearing shoes and so this made no sense at all. Before I could explain myself I was called in for the results of my x-ray. It was good news. Nothing broken but possibly a small fracture. I asked if there was anything I could do to speed up the healing process.

“Do you do a lot of walking?” the doctor asked.

“I once walked from Bedminster to Filton to attend my own birthday party,”  I replied.

The doctor laughed, mistaking this for a joke. At least I’d finally made a medical professional laugh, even if it was unintentional.

“Just try and keep off it as much as you can,” he said.

“Oh, and get some proper shoes”.

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