Last day in hospital

Goodbye Room 25, I have written you a poem....

Seagulls patrol like marine creatures

Standing sentinel on roof tops twitching like robots

Lifting their wings like fins in a sea of expectancy

To catch the breeze. I lay stranded, a beached balloon

In a shroud,  pinned down by tubes and bags.

Clock-watching is my new hobby, 'time' they say,

'take it'. Two weeks, six weeks, one year. 

Me here, waiting for time to heal, listening to

the rattle of cups moving faster than I can.

The sky today is dusted with the promise of home.

I can hear it in my thoughts now the morphine

drip of the past has slipped from my vein to

leave a purple kiss on my wrist. My body

covered in the surgeons fingerprints, a dot-dot- dot,

dash-dash-dash of morse code on my skin.

I whisper thanks for the blood, the veins it has come from

to meet me here in this bed, in room twenty-five.

---

My last day in hospital so I haul myself into the walk in shower and sit on a chair to cleanse my body as best I can. These things take so much longer than usual. I decided to stay another night as I need to be more mobile if I'm to get home, walk up and down stairs and get myself to the bathroom. So I walk out of the room I've been in for 5 days, feel completely knackered, come back, sit down, watch TV, get up, have more blood taken to see that I'm ok after the transfusion, empty my catheter bag, sit down.

My friend visits me in hospital and I try to explain to her all that has gone on, I feel really tired when she leaves which apparently is normal. Anyway, I motivate myself to walk to the day room and back which is quite a long way down the corridor, I feel really hungry today. I am better when lying flat as when I sit I can feel my insides pulling and aching.

I dream of a delicious platter of organic salad: tomatoes; cucumber; sprouted seeds; grated carrot; rocket; black and green olives; red pimento peppers; feta cheese cubes; chives and olive oil. Mmmmmmmmm!