The first thing to note is, there’s no such thing as downtime any more. Not if you can work on a mobile device. So here I am, waiting in an emergency room to be seen by cardiology for reasons that are almost certainly stress-related, and what do I find myself doing?
Actually drawing cartoons. Uploading news and pictures to the Galway Cartoon Festival page. Getting shit done.
Well it’s better than just sitting around, recovering. But in truth I can think of few things more stressful than being forced to do nothing. So this here is my compromise – blogging again. Meaningful activity, but not something I really have to do. So it feels like letting go, taking mental fresh air and exercise. We’ll see how long that lasts…
Yeah, I have taken it all a bit too far. Again. The Galway Cartoon Festival is one of the largest projects I’ve attempted in my life, and it feels like it. But on the bright side, it isn’t certain that I’ve blown my heart up. I think I’ve probably just got a bad ulcer or something. But the chest pain is ambiguous and they want to keep me in to make sure.
So what does “keeping me in” entail, a night on a trolley in a corridor?
I should be so lucky. At the moment it’s nearly 2am, and I’m still in a queue for a trolley. This is a statistic you don’t see published much – the national trolley shortfall.
As the title suggests, I am not seeing a lot of people here who look conspicuously well off. I wonder where they go when they are knocked down or have heart attacks? Perhaps here first, it can actually be very efficient – as a suspected heart patient I was was having an ECG in minutes. But I doubt they stay long.
Here where there is masking tape over cracks in the wall to keep the mold in. Where a man suffering from psoriasis asks for hours to get medication for the itching. Where a woman with epilepsy being held for “observation” has a seizure while no one is looking. These are just the things that happened right in front of me.
In the background meanwhile we have the groaning, the constant bleeping of alarms, the merry sound of vomit as the first alcohol victims arrive. And my God the coughing, everywhere. I’m here just in case I’m seriously ill. By morning I guess there will be no question.