“Gerard, you’re full of it!”
“Gerard, you’re full of it!”
After my 7 weeks in hospital I returned to Clarendon Street refreshed. The next 5 weeks, however, saw me back in hospital 7 times again!
I had been back at VASS (Clarendon Street) only 4 days when I went back to hospital with a suspected urinary tract infection. Then there was a merry-go-round of trips back and forth. I had issues with uncontrollable high blood pressure, followed by unresponsive low blood pressure, more high blood pressure and finished off with a distended stomach.
The distressing part is that each time I was admitted to hospital I was required to go through the Emergency Department. We had a couple of sessions in ED that lasted 15 hours before I was admitted. The record, though, was 18 hours!
This was bad enough for me lying on a trolley but all my wife had was a plastic chair to sit on through the night and into the next day before heading off to work.
All this time I couldn’t help thinking that the Federal Government was spending $122 million on a non-compulsory, non-binding postal vote! Can you imagine the couch we could have had with that sort of money?
On my second visit with high blood pressure. A senior doctor in the hospital, a man I admire greatly, came to see me. He immediately organised a CT scan. A few hours later he came back with an image of my intestines. He showed me that there had been a buildup of material on the intestine walls.
The other doctor and nurses that accompanied him could hardly contain their laughter when he said to me “Gerard, you’re full of shit!”
Well, I was left in no doubt about what the problem was! I did point out to him, though, that a scan was not necessary to arrive at that conclusion. People who know me well had been saying that for years!!
