THE MORNING RITUAL

I stagger down the stairs in the dark, snap on the lights in the kitchen and fill the kettle to make myself a cup of tea. In a few minutes, the alarm will wake the beloved. I track down a cleanish mug and a tea bag, and start rummaging through the little boxes that have now, sadly, become part of my morning ritual.

A couple of years ago, like most people my age, I had to spend some time “under the knife” for some minor reason which isn’t worth going into here. It was one of those “go in for the day” affairs where you’re told to be there for 7.00 AM and “you can expect to be in the hospital for up to six hours”.

Now, as MAWH Towers lurks on the brink of the next county, and the regular bus and train services aren’t up to much out here at that time of the morning, I rang up and asked whether I would be okay to turn up a bit later getting the rather steely response that they wouldn’t advise it. Okay then, it’s a pretty minor operation - under local anaesthetic and all that – did they think I’d be okay to drive myself in…? That would be fine.

Great. Problem solved.

Come the much unanticipated day, I got myself and the beloved up at 5.00, drove up to the big city and parked up in the all day car park with its many signs and labels warning of the penalties of failing to follow its stringent instructions over parking times.

“No problem,” thunk innocent old me “at most I’m going to be seven hours!”

There wasn’t any real problem as we’d borrowed a day parking pass from a colleague of the beloved because it was her day off.

Anyway, I checked in on time, and I got parked in a bed and the nurses pulled the curtains around me and I read my book for a while. After I finished by book, which should have had enough pages to keep me occupied and distracted through plenty of the expected six hours I was due to spend in their clutches, I started to think they’d maybe forgotten about me, especially when I poked my head through the gap in the curtains and noticed that everyone else who had arrived with me had already been operated on and some were already on their way home. I did start to get twitchy, and tetchy. I stomped indignantly over to the desk and was quite probably rather rude to one of the nurses - despite all the “zero tolerance” notices plastered up all over the place – about whether this surgery - that I was actually quite intimidated by, by the way – was likely to be happening any time soon…?

Eventually, I was prepped and under the knife at about 3.00 PM, drifting into semi-slumber pondering on the fact that I could have quite happily strolled in at lunchtime… and an hour or so later, I was sitting up waiting to go home, mulling over the fact that it was getting towards the time for me to pick the beloved up from work, and what precisely the time limits were of a parking “day pass…”

“You can get dressed now, sir…”

Excellent… and only four hours late. I got up. There was blood everywhere. More alarmingly, it seemed to be my blood! Surely this couldn’t be right? I staggered over to the desk, a scarlet trail behind me looking for all the world like something from a pre-credits sequence in “House M.D.”.

Anyway, that got all sorted out. Thin blood. Family trait. The PTB (“Powers That Be”) decided that I was to be kept in overnight for observation (although that was probably an unpleasant prospect for them, having to look at my potato-like countenance for longer than necessary) and they kept taking my blood pressure which was hanging around at the high end of the stratosphere, having a nice time up there and refusing to come back down and be reprimanded. I tried to point out that I was generally a bit of a worrier anyway, that I was worried about the beloved and whether she managed to get home all right… I was worried my car getting clamped… the operation… that I was supposed to be back at work after my day off… basically I was worried. Now, I generally don’t sleep well at the best of times, and predictably, I didn’t sleep for most of that night, and every time I kind of  got to the point of dozing off they decided that they needed to take my blood pressure… which was still stubbornly choosing to lurk around at cloud level.

You see? I was still worrying…

And now I was worrying that if my blood pressure didn’t come down, they’d never let me go.

Reluctantly, at about ten o’clock the following morning they decided to let me leave, lugging a huge bag of surgical supplies with me in case my wound did its Vesuvius impression again. As long as I promised to go and see my G.P. at the earliest opportunity and get my blood pressure checked.

Six months and plenty of appointments later, Dougie Howser and I had managed to find a cocktail of pills that kept my high-spirited lifeblood in the general vicinity of something that might be considered “normal”, or as close as it was ever likely to get being part of me at any rate.

So now, every morning, it’s Amlodipine, 5mg; Ramipril 10mg; Bendroflumethiazide, 2.5mg and Bisoprolol Fumarate, 10mg - although not necessarily in that order. (That last one always makes me think of Ian Fleming, by the way, and his little pills of “gunpowder” he used to mention having to take in his later interviews. Must be the “fumar” part reminding me of all those signs on aircraft.) Then, every evening, it’s Simvastatin, 40mg. My God, it’s depressing. Couldn’t they just call them “Yellow Pill No.15” or “White Pill No. 27 (small)”?

Hmm… “Capsule number six, please.” Sounds like my last visit to the Building Society…

People ask me – yes, I have those kinds of conversations now – what they’ve got me on and I can never remember what they’re called. It’s probably just as well. It might all descend into a macabre variant of collecting those bubble gum cards when I was at school. “Got… Got… Not got… Wanna swap?”

I know that compared to a heck of a lot of people, I have it comparative easy when it comes to these things, and a mere concoction of only 5 chemicals sloshing around my system all the time is relatively nothing, but it still irks me. Yes, that’s the word. I’m irked.

When I was a young lad my father had to retire due to his health and I used to see my Dad taking all his pills every day, and now I see it with my Mum and I also used to see it with my Gran and I promised myself, absolutely swore, that I’d never turn into one of those people dependent on taking all those wretched little pills every single day… and yet, hear I am, stuck with a morning ritual I despise. Dr. Dougie tells me none of them are compulsory, and if I miss the odd day it shouldn’t do any real harm, but there’s got to be a good reason for me having had them prescribed to me, hasn’t there? It’s not just part of some massive game someone’s decided to play with my bloodstream playing its part as an unwitting participant? Surely not…? So, I suppose,  if I wanted to, I could abandon this routine, wing it, find another way.

But then… If I do stop taking them, there’s always that nagging worry, isn’t there...? If I stop, will I just… stop?