Ah, Theme Hospital. Many hours of my youth wasted.Visiting my Dad in hospital this week has only confirmed in my mind something that I already knew. I am terrified of getting older. Not getting older as in becoming 30, 40 or even 50. But getting really old. Or, even worse, seeing my parents get really old.
I recently watched that Jo Brand/Vicki Pepperdine hospital-set comedy, 'Getting On'. If you didnt, I implore you to seek it out on iPlayer (if it's one of the few programmes the BBC has bothered to make available). I loved it. Really loved it. Poignant, terribly sad but full of gems of observational humour.
HOSPITAL IS JUST LIKE THAT.
There's a little old man on my Dad's ward at the moment. Albert his name is. But he thinks that someone else is Albert and keeps calling out for him all through the night. Oh, and a male nurse cathaterised him yesterday. Albert is under the impression that he needs to give the cathater and colostomy bag back to the male nurse, because he thinks it belongs to him. Cue Albert getting out of bed every twenty minutes and trying to force this bag of wee on the poor male nurse.
Then there was Jean. In her nineties. Jean had been admitted from the local psychiatric hospital. Jean liked to wander. When asked where she was going she'd shout obscenties and scream bloody murder that she wasn't going anywhere. My Dad was convinced that Jean was going to try and get into bed with him in the middle of the night. She didn't.
You have to laugh, don't you?
