Warm Welcome

I lay in bed for the next few hours, slowly re-entering the space-time dimension of planet earth.

Two women, one clearly a nurse, came over and looked at me.

"Have you had a pee yet?"

I looked at the tubes in my arm and concentrated on the groggy feeling in my head. All I could remember was going into surgery. I had no need to pee and told them so.

"Ok, we'll be back. If you haven’t pee'd by then, we are going to catheterise you. That means sticking a tube in your…"

"I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS, thank you! I assume you are joking."
But they weren't.

I was astounded that, although not yet recovered from the anaesthetic, my first conversation involved being threatened by a nurse. I suspect the aim was to get me out of bed and moving but a short explanation would probably have sufficed. In the meantime a visiting friend bought me a bottle of mineral water. Unable to sit up, I drank it through a straw. When the nurse returned later I complained that she had not provided anything to drink, no wonder I didn't want to pee. Could she help?

"Water cooler is in the corridor," She said.

When I made the gargantuan effort to reach the water cooler, another frustrating discovery awaited me – they don't provide cups.