I made it!

I'm home!!! Yippeeee! (I actually got home on Monday as planned, but just haven’t got around to updating my blog – sorry). Although it was a bit like BA and not all my bags arrived back with me :o( I had job's-worth ambulance driver who came up to the ward with a wheelchair and when told that I had my own got stroppy and sulked to the nurse, 'I'll take this all the way back downstairs then, shall I?' When he came back up he walked into my room, looked at my 6 bags and grumped, 'I can't take all them. Which one do you want to take? I can take one bag of clothes and one bag of medications.' Now I've been going backwards and forwards to this ward for 14 years and never have I come across this 'health and safety rule that's been in force for ten years.' Hmmm *narrows eyes with suspicion of porkies being told* I asked how I was supposed to get my bags home then if he wouldn't take them. 'Get someone to come and pick them up.' Now, the flaw in this is if I had someone to come and pick up my bags then I'd have someone to come and pick up me too. Grumpy Old Sod (GOS) didn't see this logic and insisted that he couldn't take my bags and wouldn't take my bags. I was getting a bit sick of his grumpiness, after all I hadn't done anything wrong, so I asked him if he could be less grumpy and a bit more pleasant. He stropped that he wasn't being grumpy, and my reply was, 'You may not be meaning to be, but that's how you're coming across. I'd really appreciate it if you could be less aggressive.' I don't think he was used to be spoken to quite so directly, because he seemed slightly taken aback. He did continue to say that I'd have to choose just one bag to take with me, but he was a little less obstreperous :o) I decided that I'd have to take my laptop home with me, because it wouldn't be very sensible to leave that in the hospital, even though the rest of my stuff was going to be put in the Charge Nurse's office for the time being. So I took that and I 1 bag (containing 4 smaller bags, but I didn’t tell him that ;oP ) of medication ... and through the art of manipulation I managed to persuade him to allow me one other bag. I kept saying, 'Oh, that bag's got my phone in it. I'll just take my phone out.' 'Oh, it's got my diary in it too. I'll get that from it.' 'Hang on, my keys are in there and so's my purse. I need them.' 'My reading glasses - they're in there as well.' I was ending up with the contents of my rucksack being balanced on my knee, but no bag to hold them in, so he relented and I was allowed to bring the bag too :oD However, the rest of my stuff had to stay at the hospital :o( I had to try to get a friend to get them for me after they’d finished work. And the really annoying thing? When we got downstairs I had a whole Patient Transport Ambulance with about 10 seats and loads of floor space all to myself, so it's not as though we were exactly pushed for space! Grrrr. GOS!

However, I was cheery :o) I’d got home. I had Psychokitty (currently Velcro Psychokitty) purring in my ear. I had my laptop so I could communicate with all of my online friends. I had the satisfaction of knowing that I manipulated a GOS *cackle*

I’ve been enjoying being at home, although it took some time to get the remnants of the ward noise out of my head – you know how it is when you’ve spent a while in a constantly active environment: it can take a while to get used to peace and quiet again. The trauma of the early crisis is raising its ugly head a little more frequently than it was, but I’ve been pushing it away as much as possible while I’ve been getting used to being home. I know I’m going to have to face it head-on soon or it’ll cause more problems in the end ... I don’t want to though.

One of the big distractions I’ve had since coming home has been the wait for my OU course results. They were due out by 7th and in the past results have always come out at least a week before the due date so I’d been anticipating them since before I left hospital. I spent rather a lot of last week obsessively checking my OU student homepage and course results page, and then taking part in a collective panic in the online OU community with others waiting for the same course results. Anyway, we finally got the results through on Thursday (6th) ... I got a distinction (a first)!!! I’m sooooo pleased, and really rather surprised given the hospital admissions I’ve had throughout the course and the fact that I had pneumonia during the whole of the independent study period that was for writing our examinable piece of work. I got 86% for the examinable piece! Yes, it has to be said that I’m surprised and rather proud of myself :oD I now have one more level 3 course to do – Children’s Literature, which I begin in October – and then the level 1 humanities foundation course. After that I’ll have my degree! I know it seems a bit odd to finish my degree with a foundation course, but I need it to get the named degree that I want (BA (hons) Hums Eng Lit), and so far the only foundation course I’ve done is the science one, although I have done other short level 1 courses. Level 1 courses only have a pass or fail, rather than a division of class for a pass, so all I’ll have to do is pass that course and it won’t affect my overall classification of degree. In fact I’ll know what my degree classification is going to be by the end of the Children’s Literature course, but I think that I’m heading for a first unless I severely screw up in Kid’s Lit, because to date I’ve had firsts in all the level 2 and 3 courses that I’ve done :o) Still, there aren’t any guarantees so I’m not counting my chickens just yet. For now though I’m enjoying my current success ... and still not quite believing it ;o)