HOSPITAL 2022
It’s 2022. I am 74. I am lying in a hospital bed in a general ward after spending six weeks in the Intensive Care Unit and being half an hour from death.
It was an 8 bed ward, 4 beds down each side, in a modern provincial hospital. I had an 8 inch operation wound in my abdomen and a stoma bag; I was so weak I lay on my back all day and had to be fed, I couldn’t even hold a spoon. It was very boring.
People came and went from the adjoining beds with surprising regularity - the average stay seemed to be three days; the average age about 65. Two patients had been admitted after falls in their home, both were suffering from severe dementia, one talked nonsense deceptively rationally and thought a young black nurse who had tried to have a conversation with him was his fiancee. Both were discharged when they were clearly completely gaga.
One afternoon a white haired 80? year old was installed in the bed next to me - shall we call him Mr Trefus. He had come from Accident and Emergency and had apparently been discovered unconscious by neighbours who had called an ambulance. He spoke with a eastern European accent. A black nurse approached him to do the usual admission procedures and he shouted “DON’T TOUCH ME!” and hit her. He refused to co-operate at all with any of the hospital staff, refused to have injections, blood taken, a cannula fitted on his arm, his temperature or blood pressure taken. Whenever anyone attempted to talk to him he would say “I’m deaf – you will have to write it down”. He hit another nurse. He had no visitors.
In A&E he had been fitted with a urine catheter (presumably while unconscious), he ignored this and acted as though it didn’t exist, insisting on fiercely walking to the ward toilet, dragging the catheter tube and collection bag behind him across the floor with every stride and shutting the tube in the toilet door; once the tube became detached from the bag, and dripped onto the floor for half an hour. So the staff were faced with complete non-cooperation, they couldn’t even diagnose what was wrong with him as they couldn’t touch him or take any samples for tests. He did however, consent to eat the NHS food with alacrity. He had been brought in wearing shoes, which, lying in bed, he refused to take off.
The worse thing was his continuous ranting, day and night - he seemed to be vocalising his thoughts. People have thoughts, expressed as words, in their heads, all the time - but imagine speaking these thoughts out loud, in a continuous stream. Night came, and the lights were turned out - he said he read the newspaper at night and had to have his light on. At random intervals of about 3 hours he would call out “Coffee - no milk no sugar”, and rather surprisingly it was brought him. At every change of shift a new nurse would come to take his blood, and she would say quite routinely “Can I take your blood” to which normally of course no one replied; but he would shout “NO!” and she would jump back astonished and try to reason with him, and he would say “Write it down” and she wouldn’t have anything to write on. There must have been fully 20 attempts to take his blood, by a succession of different seniorities; then they tried a young attractive student nurse at 3am, and to everyone’s astonishment he let her take it.
He ranted all night – it made sleep impossible for the other 7 beds; he didn’t seem to have any consideration for other people at all, they didn’t exist as far as he was concerned; it wasn’t that he he ignored us, he seemed not to see us. His basic complaint was that he had been ‘kidnapped’ by the NHS against his will and he wasn’t staying. He was a German national and was going to contact the German Embassy in the morning and was going to be repatriated to Germany; and he was going to sue the NHS and all the staff. He made several escape attempts. He asked a nurse to accompany him to buy a newspaper at the hospital shop, which was by the entrance, but insisted on carrying a bulky shoulder bag which he had been guarding; finding this suspicious she asked “What is in it”, “A book I am writing” he replied. She made him promise he would not leave the hospital, but when they got down to the entrance he started off down the street (in his hospital gown) - she had to call security to run after him and frog march him back to his bed.
Because he was an escape risk, he was watched all night by a relay of nurses – generally very young students. His rantings would get very vicious – “I’ll wrap that compute round your throat” “Your blood is going to flow” “I’ll see you in court” ; the poor girls were severely frightened. Needless to say, come the morning, he would not phone the German Embassy, and it was obvious he couldn’t afford a bus fare let alone a medical flight.
They did manage to diagnose kidney disease, and a consultant tried to persuade him that they had to insert drains into his kidneys - strangely whenever a consultant talked to him his deafness disappeared. The consultant told him in no uncertain terms that of course he could refuse treatment, but in that case he would certainly die within a month. The whole conversation was somewhat confused, at one point Mr Trefus said, out of the blue, “I’m not Jewish you know!” and I wasn’t sure he actually understood what was going on, he lived so much in his head; but there was some sort of permission obtained, and the operation was performed. But it was only a stop gap, he was going to need major surgery.
He got weaker - he found walking more difficult; but his will was still incredibly strong and he made another break for it. The big black male nurse stood in his way and refused to move (clearly he wasn’t allowed to touch him), Mr Trefus was too weak to push past him, and so an actual ‘stand-off’ developed. They stood facing each other for half an hour, Mr Trefus beginning to sway and tremble until it seemed certain he would fall, but still he hung on. Then dinner was served, and Mr Trefus was never one to miss his food, and he went back to bed.
Eventually we all complained that we couldn’t go on with no sleep, and he was moved to a single ‘observation’ room near the nurse’s station, which also had the advantage that no one had to watch him all night - so I never knew what happened to him, I suspect he never got out.
But he interested me, his behaviour was so extreme. I began to put two and two together. German national but eastern European accent, afraid of doctors and being kidnapped and especially injections, gobbling food, insistent he wasn’t Jewish and afraid to take off his shoes. Why that? - because he thought they would be stolen. Where would you be hungry and afraid your shoes would be stolen if you took them off? In a concentration camp.
I never saw the number tattooed on his arm.