One night in A & E

I am not a fan of hospitals... Is anyone?
To have to spend the night in one is certainly not my idea of fun, but because of my own stupidity that is exactly what I had to do.

I've been in hospital once before to get a mole removed, but that was an arranged operation nothing compared to A and E, and I got toast!

So back to my tale of woe, it all started with a romantic gesture. I decided to cook pasta for the Irish Rouge and it all went a bit wrong, whilst draining the pasta I managed to pour all of the boiling water over my hand instead of down the sink... Mega ouch!!!!!!!!!

*I'd just like to point out that I lived in Italy for six weeks, I cooked pasta everyday, and not once did this happen... Not once!!!!

I held my hand under cold running water whilst The Boy dished up the tea, then I sat and ate with my burnt hand wrapped in a wet towel. Cue - Sad and embarrassed expression on my face.

At first it was fine and I couldn't really feel anything, but as the night went on my hand started to burn. It was an unbearable feeling and no amount of cold water was making it feel any better. After a lot of 'Um'ing and 'Ah'ing and a phone call to NHS direct I decided it was probably best to get myself to A and E.

The hospitals A and E department wasn't what I expected it to be like, I thought it would be really noisy and full of people with body parts falling off. In reality it was actually quite quiet, apart from the drunk man in the corner snoring! They had a television playing 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and a broken sweet machine... Very swish.

I felt like a little bit of a fraud sitting there holding my hand out like it was diseased. Everyone around me seemed to have much worse ailments, there was an old woman who appeared to have broken her arm, a man with a broken ankle, a girl with a broken nose and then there was this other girl who was limping but to be honest I think she was just there to get the strong painkillers... Her suspicious looking Dad seemed to want the painkillers more than she did.

After waiting for what seemed like hours and hours I was called in to be seen by a doctor. The girl with the fake limp sniggered at my second name... Bitch!

I was given special burn cream by the doctor and very strong pain killers, she told me I was lucky and if I hadn't have got water on it quicker it would have been much worse. She also said that if it blistered bad then I would have to return to get the blisters drained... Eww!

My night in A and E wasn't quite as dramatic as I thought it would have been, but it was a bad enough experience that I knew I didn't want to spend another night there.

The next few days saw me sleeping with a plastic bag on my hand to allow the cream to work, the same cream that turns your hands a dirty grey colour :s I took the pain killers for a few days, but stopped taking them when I was dribbling uncontrollably. How very glamorous!

xxx