Monday 19 January

It has been an interesting past seven days. Some of my more regular readers may have been wondering what has become of me! Quite a lot of time has been spent exploring parts of my local hospital – St Thomas’s in London - where I had the opportunity to observe some bits in closer action than I would have wished!

I was recently put on some new medication in order to try to maintain what little residual sight I have. The hospital warned me that I might experience some side effects, the most common being chronic fatigue and sickness and very loose bowels.

The fatigue soon became apparent - and is still with me - but nothing prepared me for the horrors that were to come. After a couple of days, I began to feel rather strange. Then, one afternoon, I suddenly became semi-comatose and then felt as though I was on a trip induced by LSD – or what I imagine that to be like!

First of all, I felt very light headed and then very heavy and confused. Suddenly, it became very dark followed quickly by as though I was viewing everything through rose-tinted spectacles: everything was red! I began to panic - thinking that I was having some sort of bleed in my eyes! Wondering what I should do, I decided to have a short rest.

When I woke up, I was having wild hallucinations with lots of flashing lights and scenes from fairgrounds and a feeling as though I was going up and down in some form of roller coaster. And then there were the children … I found myself surrounded by a small group of children: all white, aged between about three to five years of age, all jumping up and down in the room with me, holding knifes and waving them at me. I phoned the hospital and was told to come around immediately to A&E to get myself checked out!

Anyone who has ever attended an A&E department - especially as a non-emergency case - will know there is an awful lot of sitting around to go through; that the surroundings will be less than inspiring and that your company will include a rich variety of citizens drawn from the modern day equivalent of Hogarth and Dickens. The mad and sad and the hard and bad were all there in abundance, along with assortments of relatives, drunks, homeless, and security staff.

Fortunately, the place was relatively quiet and after taking my numbered ticket I was seen by a triage nurse within the statutory 15 minutes. My blood pressure was exceptionally high (230/190) and my eyes appeared very bloodshot, although heart and temperature readings seemed normal. And thus it was that I waited for several hours to be seen by a doctor - whilst still experiencing psychedelic visions - and putting up with the strange people around me in a very hot environment.

After a long delay, I asked one of the nurses what was happening. He investigated and found that I had been put in the queue for major incidents rather than minor incidents. He was able to fish me out of one system and into another, which meant that after another twenty minutes or so I was taken to a cubicle and made to undress for a full physical examination. A lovely doctor soon appeared and did a full examination. It turned out that I was one of the one in 1,000 who experienced some of these bad side effects and that they would go away, but I should immediately stop taking any more of that medication and return to the clinic the following day to be seen as an urgent case for review.

I was also given some drugs to help lower my blood pressure and reduce hypertension and advised to see my GP about this as soon as possible.

So, some five hours after arriving at the hospital I was home and had something to eat. And I have to say that a bit of food and something to drink made an enormous difference! I spent a disturbed night experiencing minor hallucinations but things had improved by the following day so I was able to present myself at the clinic where they listened with great interest, care and concern and immediately switched me to an alternative drug regime … which I am happy to report has few side effects and hopefully will be effective.

But as for A & E! How I would just love to get my organisational hands on them as the whole process seems so slow and disorganized … but then it is a busy London hospital and I know that away from major cities the systems are very much better.