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Into hospital today to try and get to the bottom of my low white blood count. I had thought the fact that no one had been in touch with me after my bone marrow extraction was probably good news, but actually no one had had a look at the results.
Once prompted they suddenly seemed keen to give me a ring. And then suddenly decided to see me in person. So I had to drive to fucking Hertford to see a haematologist. Who'd want to specialise in blood?
Better than specialising in balls, I guess.
I was ready for bad news. It wasn't entirely good news.
Anyway, the doctor I spoke to was very nice and gave me all the updates and I need another specialist scan and before I can get that I needed to do another blood test.
I've done so many of these that I am pretty sure they're just collecting my blood in the hope that they can make a Frankingstein of me. They've already got one ball and loads of blood. They're practically finished.
When I've been giving blood at the Lister I have been seen so quickly that usually I am out in time to not even have to pay for the carpark. Today, even though I had allowed an extra hour for parking, the queue was a lot longer. And everyone has to wait in the corridor.
They said the wait would be about an hour, which had me a bit nervy as I was wondering if I'd have to go out and get another parking ticket and was pretty sure they'd call for me whilst I was doing that and then I'd have to start again. And then get trapped in a vortex where they'd call me every hour, but every hour I'd be getting another parking ticket. (I had tried to download the app, but that needed my credit card numbers and details and I no longer carry those with me).
An hour passed and my ticket had 5 minutes left on it. I was about to go up and let the woman on reception know, when I heard her tell someone else that as long as they had a ticket on the car, they wouldn't be fined. Obviously people don't know how long they are going to end up being and it would be pretty cruel to fine them for being ill or because the hospital wasn't working efficiently.
But the good news is, if you’re going to Hertford hospital then just pay for an hour and you’re golden.
It's a shame I didn't go up to check though, as I might have found out that they'd failed to print up my request. 75 minutes had passed and I was thinking of asking how long I'd have to wait. But other people had done that, some of them who'd only been waiting 35 minutes, and the lady on reception had said she wouldn't do it for everyone. She wasn't the lady who had checked me in, but was filling in for the first lady's lunch hour.
However at 90 minutes, some of those 35 minute people started getting called in and I suspected that I had fallen through the cracks in the system again.
The first lady had come back from her lunch hour now (must have been nice, having some lunch - I hadn't had any) and I asked her if I was in the system. She realised that she hadn't printed up my forms. And I got to go in next.
Always worth making a fuss. That's what you get for being polite. An extra half an hour sitting in a corridor, listening to all the other patients' birth dates and wondering if you look as old as the bloke born 3 years before you.
The lady who covered reception took my blood. Four little vials, the blood-hungry fool. Usually it's two. They're really ramping up the blood-filled testicle Frankingstein.
She hoped that the delay hadn't been her fault and it hadn't been. Except that her comment had made me too nervous to check I was on the system.
And in classic Warming Up: After Dark fashion, I have written a piece about what's going on for my paid subs. You can pay to read this if you want, but man I will judge you hard if you sub today, you ghoul. Though you can pretend you did it to read the poem. It's a fun one today.
