the poisoned pincushion speaks

This time it really is me, your faithful correspondent, part of the Hackney blogger extreme fieldwork campaign, typing directly to my readers on the slowest (but miraculous!) WiFi connection in the developed world. (Last time I had a secret assistant, who faithfully used my scribbled words, and to whom I owe great thanks for the fab pic! I'll have those stones, please.)

"We're very pleased with these results," the doctor said yesterday, looking at my charts, "but your blood is still very septic."

Charming!

And indeed, aside from the galling little stones themselves (and the inflamed buts of duct in my liver, and the inflammation of the gall bladder itself, and the urinary infection I also developed), it is the baroque blood which has been causing the most problems. It turns out that my veins are extremely (I can see my mother rolling her eyes here) delicate and skittish. Instead of each cannula lasting me a day, or two, or even three, for my intravenous antibiotics (two kinds), I got through five in four days and that was only thanks to luck and a skillful senior surgeon who had to come to the last one. One in my left arm went infected, and one in my right arm tissued, which means went into the tissue not the vein, which means bruises, hard lumps, hard knocks, lumping it and general unpleasantness. Since I have refused no one who wanted to have a stab at Pin the Cannula on the Yellow Girl, I am now shot through like a pincushion, but the infection is subsiding ("oh, all the antibiotics you're on will take care of that," enthused the surgeon) and I am now in a position to inform you that the antibiotics I'm on are the foulest-tasting things I ever hope to get caught in my throat.

It looks as if the hospital sojourn will last until at least Saturday or - what feels more likely - Monday. Which means it could be Tuesday, I suppose.

And it is a revelation. The chaos! The people! The food! This morning I actually gagged on my tea. You expect NHS food to be no fun but the surprise is that they can't cater for sick people. Come in vomiting bile, having had nothing for two days; when you do get offered something - ticked off their menu - you'll get a choice of curried this, Cajun that, mushroom tart, you get the idea.

I asked for maybe some chicken soup? "There's tomato soup," said the nurse. (Nurse, remember.)

"Tomato! That'll do me in, it's so acidic!" I said.

"Acidic? It's not acidic."

"Of course it is, it's made of tomatoes."

"Tomatoes aren't acidic," said the nurse.

Patiently, for I am nothing if not a patient, I explained. "Tomatoes are rich in Vitamin C," I told her, "and vitamin C is ascorbic acid. So tomato soup is acidic: I'm afraid that's just how it is."

She looked at me blankly. In the end it was one scoop of vile hospital mashed potatoes, which made me nauseous so I didn't eat them.