I wrote this a few days ago, first blog took a little longer to post than I had hoped:-)

Today is my 58th day in hospital. This is the longest admission I have ever had. It represents 2 months of my life, 2 months of my life on hold. I have missed most of July and August cocooned in my hospital room. For the most part I have been afforded a single room but have also endured the torture of sharing a room (another blog).

While I have called my blog the impatient patient, all the impatience is in my head (for the most part). As always there are no outward signs of aggression, no ‘Code Grey’s’ here. I say nothing and just focus on my breathing and take myself to my special place in Iceland. Standing between a massive split in the earth’s crust. Just breathe – focus on Iceland. These words have been on speed dial.

I meditate and listen to the bird sounds of the Northern Territory. One track from the album Birds of Australia’s National Parks (feat. Dr Eric Fassbender) resonated with me – Bitter Springs, Elsey National Park, Northern Territory. This track takes me back to our wonderful holidays to the Northern Territory. Back to Bitter Springs – floating down the stream, snorkel on, observing the other world that exists below the water; fish and turtles. It takes me back to floating care free looking at the trees and listening to the birds. But even these strategies are not helping the shakiness I am experiencing on the new medication I need to take to prevent me having another episode of the Atrial Fibrillation (that was last week’s drama).

So yesterday or maybe the day before, I asked my Facebook friends to send their ‘escape’ or ‘going home’ songs. A strategy to take up some time but also to give me hope. I will save discussions on hope for another day.

So thanks to all of you who sent in song suggestions and here is The Impatient Patient’s Hospital Escape Playlist

So why has this admission has been so difficult both medically and at times psychologically; losing the use of my foot due to a compression of the L5 nerve in my back and all of the serious medical complications pre and post-surgery. Post-surgery, all the plates that I keep spinning in a delicate balance started to wobble and someone out in the wings threw in a few more plates. But these plates had sharp blades on their rims making them painful and difficult to spin. I often use the plate or house of cards analogy when I think about managing chronic illness. Perhaps this time it’s even been like trying to rebuild the house of card and spinning the plates at the same time. Early on in my time living with multiple medical issues, I decided that you need just to let go of your expectations of what life was going to be like and sit back and resign yourself to the fact that you were going to be done to and just keep showing up for whatever new issues you had to cope with. A relative once said the I had everything you don’t die from and a few things that you do – there may be more truth in that than you may think. All of the trauma of this admission (four met calls, two respiratory distress episodes, 10 hour episode of rapid AF) has motivated me to write The Book. The book I’ve been thinking about for decades. They say everyone has a story: and I definitely have a story to tell. I’ve decided that I need to start telling it. Probably should have told it years ago.

I often wonder why I have kept my health story a secret one. I understand from a professional perspective why I may have kept it private. But on further reflection, what about the wider context of my world: was I embarrassed that I was somehow different and perhaps ‘less’ than ‘healthy people’. I think this was the case many years ago, but I have done a lots of psychological work on myself (it helps being a psychologist) and have seen a therapist myself on and off over the years to work through this stuff. It really does help, and I know an excellent therapist 😉

Now I know that my health issues have made me ‘more’. More able to cope, more able to empathise with others and more able to sit with suffering and bear witness to psychological pain and trauma. So perhaps I do not have to be better faster stronger, perhaps I just have to be. It’s very likely I go home today. I will go home with a plan to do things differently – I guess if you come back and read my blog again, you’ll see how I go!

Enjoy my playlist.