Thank God I didn't go home.

Today I was supposed to be discharged from hospital, I was all packed and just waiting for my medication to be bought up from the pharmacy. Oh gosh I was beside myself with excitement.

When they did eventually bring it up it was discovered that the doctor hadn't written up one of my pain killers and as it had now gone 7pm there was no doctor to write it up.

I was so upset! I had a good cry. A really good cry. After 12 days in hospital (and knowing I am not actually going home well) I just wanted to be in my own house with my family. Surrounded by love not, well, hospital.

The lady in the bed opposite me had joked that she didn't want me to go, as had the lady next to me. We've got to know eachother over the week and had some good chats despite all feeling pants.

Tonight there was a screw up with Jane's (I'm not using her real name) methadone. After having a serious drug problem for years she has been clean for 10 years. What an achievement!

However the nurse was refusing to give her her methadone, saying that she was only allowed 15ml (whereas she normally has and is written up for 85ml) I still don't understand totally how this mammoth mistake happened but it did and it left Jane in agony and desperate.

In her mind that was the final straw and she wanted to go home, the nurse didn't help matters by being incredible rude to her and telling her that now saying she normally has 85ml she was 'changing her story' (not true)

Jane began trying to pull her cathetor out and when she couldn't shouted (amoung other things) that she just wanted to go home. This was not the woman I have gotten to know. This was her being forced to her breaking point by bad management of her illness (her addiction)

When she started to cry (after the nurses had left) I asked if she wanted me to come and sit with her and got an ear full myself. There is no way the lady I have gotten to know would have shouted at me. I want to be really clear about that.

In the end she left the ward cathetor in toe to go for a cigarette. I began to worry after she had been gone for a long time, visions of Jane in her dressing gown and slippers trying to hitch a lift home pee bag in hand danced through my head.

In the end a care assistant went looking for her and a few minutes
after the care assistant came back Jane appeared back too.

When she got into bed she dissolved into tears and disclosed to me that she had rung one of her old friends. 'It' wasn't much but enough just to take away the pain.

My goodness she was devastated. I got in my wheelchair and went over to her, she told me not to, that she was use to being alone but there are times when you just have to be there for someone whether they like it or not.

Sometimes when you least want to be around someone (anyone!!) is when you need them the most.

I asked questions about her son, about what made him happy, she told me about her life (which has been tragic) but I got her to talk about her brother who had visited earlier, they had had a wonderful time together! I played her some tracks off the album and explained about how the song Beautiful Man came to be.

I told her how brave she had been to tell the nurse she has used and when she told me people just looked at her like she was a scumbag junkie I told her scumbag junkies don't stay clean for over 10 years, scumbug junkies don't stay at their child's side through 17 operations, scumbag junkies don't put other people before themselves.
She is not a scumbag junkie I told her many times, she is an amazing strong woman who was put (unfairly) under an enormous amount of stress tonight and had a tiny blip in her recovery.

I told her tomorrow is a new day and she'll get up and chance her knickers and she will have achieved something (something my mother taught me) and before she knew it 10 years will have passed and she would have been clean for another 10 years.

When the nurses came in she kept telling them that she couldn't believe how awful she felt but I had managed to make her laugh.

So I guess, the point I am trying to make is that it is blatantly obvious to me now that I was never meant to go home today. As disappointed as I was earlier I am so grateful that I am here now to be here for Jane.

It's 12.45am now and we are still waiting for the on call doctor to come and clean up this mess for her. We've only been waiting since 8.30pm. I have said I will sit up with her until the doctor arrives, I suggested she finished her suduko and I am typing away. Thank God I didn't go home. Thank God.

Sometimes when things don't go our way we are crushed and frustrated, heart broken even but if we can just sit back and trust what is going on around us we might just see that actually there is something so much bigger then us, so much bigger then our individuality at play and what we have to do is build up the courage to wheel across the room, to hold out our hand, to sit up all night with someone whether you know them all that well or not. To be the person we wish we had in our hour of need.