My Annus Horribilis

 I’ve been in and out of hospital for much of this year. It has been an annus horribilis.
I don’t remember much about January 2025. It probably rained most days. We didn’t go anywhere. 
In February and March we rented a house in the Var, Provence. The house was cold. The two upstairs bedrooms had sloping ceilings. The friends we had invited to join us had to duck their heads. The house was about a mile up a steep, stony lane. We couldn’t ride our bicycles safely, so in order to go cycling – when it wasn’t raining, which wasn’t often – we had to attach our bike carrier to the car and drive to where we could cycle safely.
Cycling was good preparation for the knee replacement I was going to have at the end of April. I wasn’t doing enough. 
We left a week early and came home. I rode my bike and marched up and down the swimming pool at a leisure centre where I am a member. 
The knee replacement operation was on 24th April. I had hyponatraemia (low sodium) afterwards. I was told to restrict my fluid intake to 1.2 litres a day. 
My sodium level has remained low. I am still on fluid restriction (although I manage to include a glass of wine when I’m not taking an antibiotic which interacts badly with alcohol).  |
In early May, I got acute diverticulitis. I will spare you the details. My potassium level plunged. The GP sent me immediately to A&E. (Low potassium can damage the heart). I was admitted for the first of three week-long stays in hospital. One of them in a corridor bed. I ate a bland, boring, low residue diet. I mostly ate my usual Greek yoghurt, which my husband brought to the hospital and the nurses kept for me in the ward fridge.  
The nursing care was exemplary. And it was obvious the NHS would collapse without nurses from overseas. I met nurses from Kerala, Calcutta, The Philippines, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Zambia, and radiographers from Nigeria.
In one of the brief periods at home, I made some improvements to a play I’ve submited to the Ink Festival 2026. 
Towards the end of August, my diverticulitis cleared up. I was back to normal, back in the pool exercising my knee, enjoying home-cooked food for a couple of weeks…….. before I was once again an emergency admission to hospital. This time for a perforated bowel, resulting in a stoma and colostomy bag. Three and a half weeks later I got home. 
I’m determined to finish either one of the unfinished novels, or the play that’s been in my head for ages. 
In the meantime, I need to exercise my knee replacement so I can get upstairs to my desk without using a crutch. 
Fingers crossed. It’s been quite a year so far.