When I went to hospital, I was at death’s door. But a far, far worse fate awaited me

In all my adult life I’ve never been ill. Oh, I’m sure my children have found me in a white-faced heap on the kitchen floor from time to time, and they must have heard me calling for God on the porcelain telephone, but they’ve never seen me in bed, whimpering and pleading for soup.

I’ve led an idiotic life filled with smoking and danger and germs but, despite this, I’ve never taken a sick day. I’ve never had an antibiotic. I’ve never had food poisoning. I’ve never broken a bone, and I sure as hell have never spent a night in hospital.

I’d always hoped that when the luck ran out I’d catch something exotic, something that would cause a doctor to harrumph, reach for his textbooks and then pull together a panel of great medical minds from all over the world to discuss in wonderment what might be done. About the chap with a supernumerary penis growing out of his forehead.

But no. Instead I got a pneumonia, which is what my mum said I’d catch if I went outside without a vest. It’s pathetic.

I was on holiday in Mallorca when I started to feel ill. And after three nights spent spasming in my bed I thought I ought to go and see the doc.

He sent me for tests at the hospital, where I was put into a plastic dress with a slit up the back and told by a man in what looked like a swimming hat that I’d have to be admitted for at least a week.

‘Impossible,’ I snorted. ‘I have to go to New York on Tuesday and I’ve my columns to write; then on Friday …’

‘A healthy person’s CRP should be five,’ said Mark Spitz. ‘Yours is 337.’

I had no idea at the time what a CRP was – it turns out to be something your body makes more of when you have an infection – but 337 sounded a lot.

‘If you don’t do as I say,’ he added, ‘you will die.’

I did understand that.

I’m sure many of you will have found yourself in hospital, not having planned to be there. But for me it was a new experience. And a weird one. Because I was in a room with nothing on the walls except wallpaper, and most of that was coming off. And I was in there for an hour, on my own, with absolutely nothing to do. The boredom was so bad I thought often about killing myself.

But then an army of nurses arrived to wire me up to a drip, which meant for the following hour I was effectively fastened to the wall. If only I’d thought to be travelling with a baseball glove and a ball when I was captured, I could have managed more easily but, stupidly, I’d left them at the villa.

I pushed the help button on my emergency panel and a nurse arrived. ‘I’m very bored,’ I said. ‘And I can’t find the remote control for my television.’ It turned out that these had to be rented at €30, or £27, a day. I’d have paid €3,000. But luckily, I didn’t, because all there was to watch was golf. In Spanish. So I summoned the nurse again and asked if she could get me a rock hammer and a big poster of Raquel Welch.

Much, much later, the head honcho arrived. I knew he was the head honcho because I have seen Jed Mercurio’s medical dramas, so I know that head honchos in hospitals swoosh into the room followed by a team of fawning assistants.

‘Do you smoke?’ he asked.

I said yes.

‘Good,’ he replied. ‘That keeps me in work.’

He then stroked my knee tenderly and left. And that was that. Consultation over.

In the night I was shaken awake by a nurse, who was furious because I had been sleeping in such a way that the drip wasn’t working. Addressing me with the tone, accent and volume that a Vietnamese bar owner would have used on a GI who was attempting to leave without paying, she yelled for two minutes, hurt my elbow and then left.

I was grateful for these moments, because here’s the thing. My right lung was more than half full of mucus. I was running one hell of a fever. I had almost no breath at all and even less energy, but all I could think was: ‘I am dying of boredom here. Literally dying.’

Then my girlfriend arrived. To say she was going for lunch with friends on a superyacht. But very sweetly she did say she’d stop off in Palma to pick up some essentials for me. After I’d spent four more hours watching my wallpaper fall off, she came back with a beautifully soft black leather bomber jacket.

Normally, when I’m bored, I smoke. Or drink. But both those things were out of the question. I just had my drugs. Thousands of them. There was one that caused lightning bolts to ricochet around in my toes and one that would apparently ruin my stomach and loads more I didn’t understand, but there was one that was – and remains – the highlight of my day. I was hooked.

It’s called Fluimucil Forte, and its purpose is revolting. It’s designed to dislodge the phlegm and the gunk in my lung and bring it up in the sort of dark, meaty globules we haven’t seen since Mrs Thatcher shut down the mines. But holy sweet Jesus. It’s a taste sensation.

You can forget the joy of a cold Coke on a hot day, or an early-evening sip of Château Léoube. This was in a class of its own. And pretty soon I was telling the nurses I’d spilled it and could I have another?

Then my heart sang even more because my son arrived. After I’d spoken to him at some length about my new wonder drug, he got up and flew back to London.

This is the problem with hospitals. People who stay in them become institutionalized and incapable of speaking about anything other than what nurse brought what drug at what time. Boredom turns them into bores.

And when they get out, as I have, and there is nothing to do for two whole months apart from get better, things are even worse, because all I can talk about is my illness. And, as my dad used to say, ‘A bore is a person who, when asked how they are, tells you.’

13 August 2017