Morning, Lord, Morning I will arrange for you.

one hand typing - intravenous feed is for hydration.

It is 5:00 am. My eyes open in a hospital cubicle. I am attached via catheter to a bag filling with pink liquid. 24 hours ago it was red, the consequences of a distended bladder which for 8 weeks has been giving pain to the normal processes of life. I have slept now for 8 hours. Probably the first uninterrupted sleep in 15 years. But not unaided. A morphine suppository manages the pain and atavan controls the bladder spasms.

It is difficult to type in bed - not to mention when tired and drugged. But after more than a year of recovering from cancer treatment, I want to continue the saga of the difficulties that get in the way of recovery.  In some ways I had put up with the conflicting pains of rebuilding the lower bowel after radiation (see this post on treatment and my prior posts under the label cancer).

For convenience I even brought a wireless mouse. And though I can barely see the screen because of my cataracts, the little red lines tell me when the keyboard has shifted on my lap so I can correct the spelling. There is no WIFI here so I have hooked up my Blackberry as a hotspot. Works beautifully. I even have access to my office computer.

The nurse, whose grandfather at age 99 has just finished his memoirs,  has just taken my vital signs - blood-pressure, temperature, etc, and has brought me some apple juice. I have leftover raisins and a banana also to keep me going till breakfast. I am impressed with the hospital bed, the comfortable slippers (but I am not moving much) and the ultra-sheer briefs that assist with both privacy and ease of holding the catheter

So what happened? How did you get here when two nights ago you were watching tennis on TV and playing with an active 9-month-old. What got me was plummeting kidney function. Blood-work over the last 3 months has showed that the kidneys were failing. I think it should have been acted on with greater promptness. Apart from the painful lack of sleep, I had little in the way of symptoms. Eventually a nephrologist saw the ultrasound and phoned me with an order to get to emergency. She recognized the urgency of the situation.

Medical communications were not well managed until this last minute. I was blaming the increased difficulty of having to wake up every 2 hours or less on the original radiation treatment. My inferences should have been corrected. That's a long story. When one is ignorant, one does not want to listen to someone else's explanation of the 'facts'.  Time to pay attention and perhaps insist that others who are qualified should act as well as measure and coordinate.

And here I am. The triggering problem may have been inflammation in the prostate. We shall see. For now, a certain stability has been reached. Or so I hope.

Blessings to all - learn to listen to your body - and may the medical protocols work for you.