Since today has been made a bank holiday in honour of the 75th anniversary of VE Day, it seems like a good time to pimp the VE Day story that I wrote a few years ago for the Agent Carter exchange, SSR Confidential.
A Brief Period of Rejoicing (3431 words) by Willibald Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel (Comics) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Peggy Carter & Howling Commandos Characters: Peggy Carter, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, James Montgomery Falsworth, Gabe Jones, Jim Morita, Jacques Dernier, Jacqueline Falsworth, Chester Phillips Additional Tags: Weird War II Summary:
With the war in Europe coming to an end Peggy Carter and the Howling Commandos get to have some well earned R&R with an old friend and some new ones.
No not my preferred clothes for staying at home but some short films with fan appeal made to show that writers and actors have nothing better to in these times either.
Tim Brooke-Tailor, comedian, Goodie, panelist and (as far as I can tell) all round nice guy, has died after gallently battling Covid19. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52262490?#_=_
He was always a hero of mine and probably my favourite of the Goodies. Rest well sir.
“My friends. We have come together to remember a man who could easily be called the greatest of us all. I did not know him when I first took up this shield, he had no part in project rebirth although he served his country just the same, but he was instrumental in finding my frozen body and reviving me. Over the years we came to know each other very well even became friends and no matter how dark things became he was there for us all. I would now like to ask some of his friends to share some of their memories of him. Dr. Richards.”
“Where do I start? He was there at the beginning with the space flight. He didn't shy away from us after the accident but rather saw the potential in us when Earth needed heroes. He treated us all fairly, this was why I turned to him to tell our story rather than any of the others. In time he introduced me to others who shared his integrity and although he took a back seat we knew that he was always there rejoicing in our victories and sharing in our failures. He was a part of our family and we mourn his loss.”
“When I was a young man I lost my father, now it feels like I have lost a father all over again. He saw me through the hard times, the depression, the drinking...but he still had faith in me and in the Avengers to be there when Earth needed us. And when he needed us? I'd give all my wealth, all my technology if it meant we could raise another glass together (water for me). But time is cruel and we wash only have so much of it and no amount of powers or armour or gadgets or even magic can postpone the inevitable”
“Hulk...sad.”
“I'm sorry that we could not be in New York to share in this occasion. He did more than perhaps any other man to promote the cause of Mutants. You can be sure that he and his loved ones are in our thoughts”
“Hello. Er I'm at a loss for words which is odd for me. Mr Stark said he was like a father. Well to me he was a surrogate uncle and above all a friend. He didn't have flashy powers but he gave hope to those who knew him, that things could be better.”
“ “ “Blackbolt expresses the grief of the entire Inhuman people.”
“The flags in my country fly at half mast. After all it was as much him as me that made Latervia what it is today.”
“In my country also. He helped us realise that The world had grown enough to welcome Wakanda as brothers.”
“I, am, Groot.” “You said it big guy”
“If ever a mortal deserved to feast in the halls of Valhalla, it is he.”
“He was OK for a hairless ape.”
“I'd like to ask another captain to sum up, Lord Braddock.”
“Thank you. A wise man from my county wrote “No man is truly dead while his name is spoken.” So I would ask you to join me in a toast, to Stan Lee. Excelsior!”
Elsewhere.
“So when do I get to go back? There's so much more to tell.”
“Hush now and enjoy your rest. You of all people should know no story ever truly ends. But sometimes new characters need to come to the fore, but those who were there from the beginning are never forgotten.”
So they've decided I've done enough rehab and can go home. I'm all packed up and waiting for the ambulance which could be here anywhen between now and five o'clock
This won't be the end, I still have to find out why my diabetes control has improved so much (I'm taking nearly half the insulin that I was before I had the op) and what they lump is on my adrenal gland. Then in October, when my chest should be fully healed, I will get fast tracked for a hip replacement.
For the moment I'm going home which is all that matters.
Yesterday they got the news that a room was free in Romsey Hospital for me to have rehab. This is less than ideal as there are no public transport links between here and home (a problem I had while at school when most of my friends lived this side of Eastleigh making it impossible to see them out of school hours) It would take a minimum of three and a half hours and three changes of buses and trains for D and C to get here, all for about half an hour with me. Considering a bus journey of three quarters of an hour is really too much for D I shan't be seeing them again before I get out. We did manage to get a few minutes together yesterday, D had an outpatient appointment at Southampton and snuck off after it to come and see me just before they took me away.
The hospital is light and airy and the staff pleasant and polite. There are eight beds in the ward but the layout is not designed to make things easy for the patients. Worst is the fact that the bedframes are too low for the table to slide under which means that you cannot sit up in bed to eat (or in my case comfortably watch Netflix on my tablet). There is free Freeview TV but they all have the same remote so changing channel can change everybody else's as well! This is why most people leave them turned off at the wall although the man who watches most is supposed to be going home today so I might be able to watch Gotham on a larger screen this week, particularly if I wait for the+1 showing at 10:00.
There is free internet but it censors what you can access. It considers a lot of sites'naughty' and won't give me access to many of the webcomics I follow or things like D's LJ because they are obviously pornographic! (No I wasn't trying to read Oglaf.) Also, this morning it won't accept the password it gave me last night. (Usual problems with that too- we will send you a password so you can log in, we will send it by email, we will not let you access your emails until you log into the internet, to log in you need a password, we will send...) Looks like I'm back to using data for the foreseeable future, good job my tablet thinks it's a smartphone.
The food is good, supposedly better than the General, but they have no idea of the carb contents of the meals. As my blood sugars are frequently low having to guess how much insulin to take is not ideal. Even when I get food that I know that value of (a slice of buttered toast has a carb value of between 15 and 20) they don't provide enough for my minimum dose of insulin to work on. Last night I was given fish fingers and beans - practically no carbs. A handful of chips (which other patients had with theirs) would have made for a more balanced meal. There was also a cup of grey liquid which the staff thought might have been vegetable soup (although noone would hazard a guess as to what vegetables) but as I only found this when I was halfway through my jelly and ice-cream I gave it a miss. I can order meals for myself now so hopefully this side of things will be improving.
My biggest concern is the shower room. This has a toilet,sink and large shower that can take a seated patient and helper. Like every other disabled/hospital washroom I have used it has an emergency pull cord by the toilet in case help is needed. It does not have one within reach of the shower! If you were to fall in the shower you would need to crawl to the screen and open it (not the easiest of jobs when standing) then crawl the length of the room to raise the alarm.
The doctor I saw last night was concerned that I might have a mild infection starting in the wounds on my legs and has prescribed antibiotics. The scars are very tight and a bit red and quite painful when I move. Other than this the higher chairs/toilets etc make it a lot easier to stand up providing that I haven't been sat too long so that my hip seizes up.
On the plus side there is a Pokémon Go gym in range of the ward although Pokémon themselves are fewer than at the General. That said I want to go home but still have no idea how long they intend to keep me.
So this evening two guys from Hospital Radio come on the ward to see if we wanted any requests played. Apparently the E wards are always on the Sunday show. The mail in the bed next to me asked for Blondie and the Sex Pistols. The older man at the end of the ward wanted bagpipe music as he plays himself. Not surprisingly they played Amazing Grace. Then they got to me.
"Do you have anything by Yoko Kanno or Joe Hisaishi?" I ask.
Silence and two of the blankest faces I have ever seen.
"Let's try something closer to home, do you have any Barry Gray?"
There's a flicker of what might have been recognition from one of the volunteers, so I push further. "Do you remember Thunderbirds?"
The penny dropped and they said they could probably play me the Thunderbirds March.
I was hoping for a Y shaped'autopsey' scar but ended up with a straight one. Still I think it and especially the matching ones on my legs have cosplay potential, maybe Klaus Wolfenbach.
All the tubes and wires have been taken out of me and the support vest I have to wear until my sternum heals no longer looks like a suicide jacket and more like a police hazvest or, more correctly a haz crop top. I ache all over, particularly the legs where they took the veins for the grafts and the hip joint. Not being allowed to lift anything or push with my arms makes things difficult but the staff are wonderful and helping me all the time.
I had to move to a different part of the ward because they needed another man closer to the door where they could keep an eye on him. His medication was leaving him confused and he kept trying to go for walks forgetting that he was connected to several drips and monitors. During the move my bed stopped working. We could raise and lower the head but not the feet or change the height of the bed. So, when I went for an x-ray, they found me a new bed and I got on it after lunch and a visit from the physios. I needed to lie flat after they removed the last drain from my chest and the drug line from my neck. All was well until it was time to sit back up when the bed started closing itself up with me in it! The nurses managed to stop it before I could be hurt me but after it had tried to do it twice more before they could unplug it, they got me off of it and I now have a third bed. The staff nurse said that if I anything goes wrong with this one I'll have to sleep on the floor.
During the night I had a migraine. The night staff? didn't seem to appreciate how bad this is and didn't give me any extra pain relief even though I was due some. If it had been pain related to my surgery or to the arthritis in my hip it might have been a different story but this was just a headache, wasn't it. I managed to get to sleep before it got too bad and when I woke up the day staff had taken over. The staff nurse is a fellow sufferer and quickly got me meds, an eyeshade and earplugs. Aftero a few hours more sleep I was feeling better again.
Still nothing definite about when I can go home. The cardiac team saw me this morning and said I should be ready for discharge on Monday. But the physios want me to have several days of rehab because at the moment it takes two people to help me stand up and need to regain my abdominal strength before I can be trusted to go home. Rehab could be here, Southampton's other hospital or Winchester. Good news is that once I've had the rehab the physios won't need to see me until I have my hip op.
Hopefully I'll be able to get to my appointment with the endocrine team on Friday and the one for my eyes the following week. Meanwhile I will try to get in touch with the orthopaedic team to see when they can offer me my hip replacement.
Apologies to my Facebook friends for not fixing the link sooner, but you should be able to see my other posts from hospital by following the links from this one.
on the radiologist's screen as I'm wheeled off to the the anesthnatist's room for pre-op.
The operation went well and I am healing well. I'm very sore with all the tubes and wires sticking in me but they have started taking them put now. I'm very tired all the time. I'm not allowed to use my arms because of the chance of opening the wound and the risk of infection. This makes life particularly difficult as I have needed to use elbow crutches since the arthritis set in. They stood me up and sat may in a chair today but it was very painful and needed three people to do it. Hopefully this will improve before they want to send me home.
I have plenty to entertain me when I am awake, I have my tablet (when I can get online) on which I have downloaded a variety of films and TV for when I can't. C has also lent me her old DS and I have a couple of games I can play.
D and C are due to visit tomorrow, I'm worried that they are going to wear themselves out but the lack of buses over the weekend will keep them at home and hopefully they will be able to get some rest.
My feet have been caused some confusion among the staff with some of them thinking that they are bruised or have a strange rash but most recognise the pattern of brown dots as "Oh you wear crocks".
Well I need to rest again. I'll try to post if there are any developments.
So today I am having coronary bypass surgery. It should be between 12 and 2 this afternoon and I should be out of the anaesthetic in the evening. It's complicated by my having a non standard vascular system, I only have one coronary artery instead of two. They plan to open up my chest and graft in pieces of artery taken from either my chest (unlikely) or my leg. Then it should be about six weeks for the ribs to heal fully. The biggest problem will be that I will have limited use of my arms while they heal and will not be able to use the crutches that I need to get around because of the arthritis. The biggest plus, aside from not having the risk of a heart attack somewhen in the next few years is that I will go straight on the list for hip replacement and restored mobility.
Anyway, yesterday C accompanied me to the hospital to get me settled in. The ambulance didn't arrive until the time I was due to be there (Patient Transport was running late all over the region and the driver's satnav had sent her to what used to be the other end of the lane forty years ago but which is now impassable). Then it was an hour's wait to have bloods taken which was further delayed by my uncooperative veins. Then more tests and a chat with the anesthnatist after which C had to go to catch the last bus. I finally got to the ward about 5:30 just in time for one of the spare dinners ( a quiet nice vegetable lasagna) which will be the last I can eat until after the operation. One of the surgeons then talked me through what they were going to do and I was left to rest.
This morning I have to have my chest shaved ready for the op. I will let you know how things go either tonight or tomorrow morning.
For most of my life I have lived at Palace View, Bishops Waltham. The name is carved into a stone set just below the roof line and which isn't obvious from the road. This adds to the confusion of delivery drivers (or my hospital transport) as out of the fourteen houses down our lane, there are three number 1s and three number 2s!
Now wiwab you could see the Bishop's palace (albeit only from the upstairs window) if you looked across the coalyard. So here is the view that you could have seen if they hadn't built flats on the old coalyard site.
Yesterday they opened ward F1 which has just been refurbished. Last night I was moved into Trauma 1. The room is light and airy but has no windows. It does, however, have pictures of Southampton landmarks on the walls (I have the Bargate in my bay and the Tudor House Museum and some beach huts opposite).
We also get the à la carte menu here so I have to get used to a new set of meals to balance my insulin against.
No news from the doctors this morning hope to hear something about using the left leg again tomorrow.
Just waiting for it to calm down a bit so that I can have a shower. I really need to shampoo my beard
I think that's all for now, I'll try to post again if there's any changes.
Things are moving so fast that when I think I should make a post I'm usually too knackered to actually do it.
I had the standing x-ray on my back as soon as physio allowed it. The next day someone from the spinal unit came round and said that my vertebrae were healing well and as such they were discharging me. This means I no longer need the brace that I had to wear if I wanted to sit up at a greater than 30 degree angle and which I needed if I was to move myself in the bed. It also means that I can get out of bed without the use of a lifting device (an Ar-Jo walker) which could be quite painful to use. I now get out of bed by sitting on the edge and pushing up into a Zimmer frame. From this I can transfer to a chair, commode or, as we discovered today, walk to the toilet/washroom.
I still haven't been cleared to put any weight on my left leg. The pelvis and knee can be quite painful at times and the foot feels constantly swollen. Fortunately I am allowed extra painkiller if this gets too bad although I try to keep this to a minimum.
I have just about got through a bladder/kidney infection, once it was discovered that I was in the small percentage that the regular antibiotic did not work for. Only now I have a mild cold as well. This latter, along with not having the support of the brace for my upper body, means that all the muscles of my abdomen and chest ache constantly.
Minor grumbles, the ward staff keep leaving things, the light, TV unit, table with drink and tissues, just out of reach. Secondly, my fingernails need cutting but the nurses are not allowed to do it. They can give someone a shave but not cut nails. Hopefully Dawn will be able to do them when she can next come in.
So on the whole, I'm on the mend but with no real idea as to when I shall be going home.
I've been having some trouble changing the charging lead between my phone and tablet. It was too short for me to be able to reach the wall socket. Today the man who had been in the bed next to me was discharged. Knowing the problems I had been having,he gave me one of his spare leads before he left. This is long enough that I can charge the tablet while it is still in reach, and charge the phone at the same time.
Then one of the staff told me that someone had phoned to say that they had bought some TV credit for me. This was very naughty of them as the service is not cheap, but is very greatfully received. I can only say a big thank you to my mystery benefactor. I really don't believe that I deserve such kindness.
Ironically,apart from the broken back, I'm probably healthier now than I've ever been! I've lost 14kg and my blood pressure is down to a more normal level. I am trying to control my blood sugar by basic carb counting (the dietitian managed to get me a special menu for this) to fit the insulin that they are giving me, and hope that I can start adjusting the insulin to fit the meals.
On 17th Sept I was involved in a car crash that wrote off the car but amazingly I survived with only a broken back, dislocated and crushed pelvis,a broken sternum and many broken ribs, lacerations etc.
I'm currently in Southampton Hospital.
Edit no one else was hurt in the crash.
Dawn and Catherine have been very supportive, but I will probably be in here for the next ten weeks or so.
relieved
frustrated
satisfied
contemplative
sore
amused
tired