The Parisian Bus Warden and a visit from the RSPCA

So my darling husband has been on a European road trip with a friend (not me) for the last 10 days, leaving me at home with the kids, a job, a disease, a pissy shihtsu and the cat - who actually cause the most problems of all those listed above, as in his desperation of dreadfully missing Paul, the cat had taken to biting the children at night as they slept. 

You know, like cats do.

Sick of spending my late-nights exhausted, sleep-deprived and covered in the limbs of my children while warding off our bastard cat I booked a quick weekend trip away to meet Paul and his friend in Paris - single parenting be damned.

And so commenced my first, and ONLY, experience with the international Mega Bus - London to Paris for £30 on an overnight bus that left London at 8:30pm and arrived in Paris at 7:00am. 

No big deal. The kids are pretty resilient travelers and hey, this would be fun, surely! An adventure was due!

Aaaaaaaaand that's when things went downhill fast.

First, there was the whole 'getting everything and everyone on the tube and to the bus station' thing. So we pulled out the old super-mega-twin-double-buggy-pushchair from the back of the garden, where it had spent the last year completely uncovered and having been taken over by giant spiders and a rather large snail-army. My cousin Shandi, who was coming with us to Paris, was tasked with 'de-crittering' the buggy while I was at work, which she did with the hose until a large white spider jumped out at her, said 'Hi Shandi!' and scuttled off into the rose bushes. 

She was done, and ran screaming into the house.

The buggy was then dried off and packed up with the twins, their backpacks, our backpacks and, as we would be driving home with Paul later on, two oversized Batman Car seats. And spiders. Many, many spiders and snails crossed international borders with us. I just told the kids that if they saw a hole or a rip in the buggy 'don't be sticking your fingers in there'. 

Just in case.

That thing was pretty well loaded - and I'm sure everyone remembers the last time I took the double buggy on an escalator and how that ended. So I made the children get out this time.

I figured that the bus wouldn't be so bad, we would just sleep on it all night - like an airplane. Only 9.5 hours, not that bad.

Yeah.... that's not what happened.

We got on the bus, everything was fine - I sent Shandi on ahead to grab four seats together and she did great... for herself and Kaitie. For Lochie and I she grabbed the smallest two seats on the entire bus, wedged between a window divider and a 'break glass' hammer glued to the wall. I could practically taste the seat in front of me. She had ONE job. One.

We were then woken two spine-compressing hours later at Dover to gently wake the children, disembark with our passports and line up for customs. The kids weren't budging. I prodded them. Nothing. I poked them - a snarl was emitted from each. I lovingly stroked their foreheads, telling them we had to get off the bus for a minute... still nothing.

So I unceremoniously manhandled them up each onto a shoulder and hauled their snoring arses off the bus and into line, my mouth full of passports and Shandi beside me convulsing from hypothermia.

Okay. Okay. Back on the bus. Back to sleep babies, and back to sleep they went. Until five minutes later we had boarded the ferry and were being kicked off the bus again. Oh goddammit. Kids up, coats on, backpacks wrangled onto my sleeping-noodle toddlers and onto the Ferry we went, up six flights of stairs (Remember! The bus is one of six huge white buses on blue deck! WTF is blue deck??? The floor is freaking yellow!) and into the only open area of the boat - the bar.

Okay, okay. This was fine. I just had to make a quick bed for the children and I would totally be back to 'mother of the year'.

And this was absolutely fine as we cruised along the English Channel in the dead of night.. until the Guns & Roses MTV special was started over the boat's loudspeakers. 

Paradise City and Sweet Child of Mine have whole new meanings to me now. Whole new meanings.

Exhausted and ears ringing, we made our way down to God only knows what deck, somehow chose the right bus using my preferred eenie meenie miney mo tactic and settled back in for a nice 5 hour ride to Paris - so we could at least get a good long shot of uninterrupted sleep.

Oh hell no. God no. 

At exactly 4am the lights were switched on, the bus was parked and we were shouted at to 'WAKE UP AND GET OFF THE BUS PLEASE!!!'

Wait, what? I looked around. Only one passenger was up and getting her coat on. Maybe this was just her stop. The other passengers were not moving, squinting up at the driver with confused expressions. She shouted again for us to all wake up and get off the bus. 

Oh. I get it. This is like, the stop before Paris or something. Still nobody was moving - and the driver was looking very angry. So I spoke up:

"Oh. No, sorry. We're going to Paris. We still have another 3 hours to go."

Oh no. No no no no no. This was Paris. We were just 3 hours early.

Mass sudden scramble of people grabbing coats and bags, fleeing the bus like it was on fire. The driver's assistant yelled over to me that she had already taken out our pushchair and left it on the street for us. Wait, what? Go babies go! We don't know what kind of weird French early morning scavenger might scavenge our buggy! Or worse! Run it over or something! Or worse - animals could steal it! I've seen Ratatouille. I know what happens in Paris! GO GO GO!!!

And so this is how I saw Paris at 4am. Not being able to check into our hotel until noon, having NO Euros, no food and no water with no stores open we wandered the streets of Paris, pushing my comatose toddlers in the overloaded buggy to see the sights, as we had nothing better to do.

Six hours of walking through Paris, which in the very early morning was slightly underwhelming.

We saw the Arc De Triumph.

We didn't get mugged in the park surrounding the Eiffel Tower.

We saw the Eiffel tower.

We walked away from the Eiffel Tower.

We walked two hours uphill to the Moulin Rouge, which was a big deal for me to see but rather underwhelming in the morning.

And then when we met up with my husband and his friend in the evening we walked the entire thing again until 1:30am - with the kids. 

So what did we want to do the next day? Relax? See more of Paris? Walk the streets yet again? 

Hell no. We went to Disneyland.

We rounded off the trip arriving home, exhausted but happy. The dog was thrilled the see us and the cat has now stopped biting the children (for the most part). We even had a visit from an officer of the RSPCA, as our old lady neighbour had reported us to them - us having left a violent 'Akita' in the house for days without food or water.

To which Paul responded 

"Oh, you mean this violent Akita? That a friend of ours came by to look after while we were gone?"

The officer apologized for wasting Paul's time and left, probably to put us down in some sort of file. 

On the bright side, at least we now know where to dump all of the slugs, spiders and snails from our stroller. Right through that old lady's window!

Like the bedpan incident, but with a bed.

Wednesday night nearly destroyed me - to the point that on my way home from work I got off the tube at the first outdoor station to lie on a bench in the rain to try to reign in my overloading immune system. I then got back onto the next train and called my husband - he would need to pick me up at the station, I was clearly dying. 

It got much worse as the night wore on, but I didn't want to seem a hypochondriac. You know how it is. When I awoke at 3am without the use of my right arm I felt that maybe I should call 111, the non-emergency healthcare line in the UK, for some advice. 

Their advice, given my medical history and all, was to get to the nearest hospital A&E within the hour, or she would send me an ambulance. 

Feeling that she was just being unreasonably alarmist I went back to bed until around 5, when feeling returned to my arm with a vengeance. I woke Paul - yeah, we would have to go to the hospital.

Sorry.

Getting to the hospital and triage itself was an adventure worth writing about, but perhaps for another day - I'm bagged already and just had to share this part of my very bizarre last two days. I was seen extraordinarily quickly, brought into a small cubicle in A&E and was visited by a parade of doctors and specialists until my Rheumatologist was called down, who immediately drugged me up and made arrangements while I promptly fell asleep. Narcolepsy certainly has its' perks at times.

You know when you're sleeping, and then suddenly you wake up because things are horribly wrong? First off, the A&E had become eerily quiet. Also the room was somewhat different. Secondly, I had to pee like a race horse and thirdly, the blood in my IV line was going up the wrong way... a long way up the wrong way.

I sat up in a panic, seeing the air bubbles that had also formed in the IV line. This was not good. Murky memories of junior high science class and learning how spies can kill people by stabbing an air filled needle into a vein, any vein. Clearly I was going to die. Whether or not that was at all accurate was completely beside the point, the last  thing a person ever wants to see when they take a glance at their IV line is the whole thing full of bloody air bubbles. Something was clearly not right. 

And I really had to pee. 

I looked around frantically for the nurse buzzer but couldn't find one. In fact, I seemed to be in a different room, though I could still hear the buzz of the A&E a little way down the hall behind my closed curtain. I was in a larger room, the bed was placed directly in the middle and nowhere near any kind of buzzer. Or anything else for that matter. The side rails of the bed had been raised and I was sat there in my flimsy hospital gown, kind of wondering where I was and what the hell time it was. 

Okay, maybe Narcolepsy does suck.

I needed help, and I needed it now. So I did the Canadian thing and waited patiently for someone to come help me. Except that for about 10 minutes of siting up nicely and attentively in bed, nobody came to check on me. Nobody even walked past my curtained room with cement walls. Okay, this was a bit weird.

So I had to commit the ultimate rudeness, and call out. 

"Nurse?"

Nothing.

"Hello?"

Still nothing.

A little louder now. "HELLO? Excuse me? Is anybody out there?"

I swear to God the lights gave an involuntary flicker and I had a mega flashback to the first episode of the Walking Dead, emitted an 'eep!' and started hyperventilating, still very concerned about the blood filling my IV tube.

Okay, this was ridiculous. I would just have to get up out of bed and go find a nurse to help me. No big deal. Except for these stupid rails - how do you get them to go down?? I gripped the rail with both hands and peered down the side, looking for some kind of lever, but finding none. The other side - still nothing. I shook them. I tried pushing them back and then flipping them outward. No movement. I kicked one. Still nothing. 

I debated skooching down to the bottom of the bed and just getting out there, but was worried that if I did the imbalance would tip the whole bed up like a teeter-totter and I would be found days later face down on the floor and having been crushed by my bed-contraption.

I gripped the rails and tried skooching forward rather violently to jerk the entire bed forward with the momentum. Nope, the breaks were on tightly. It might tip, but it wouldn't roll. Damn.

Okay then. The blood kept going up the line and the bubbles kept creeping closer to my vein - I had to get out of this bed! There was no other way, I was going to have to climb out over the side. 

Despite what it sounds, this is not an easy task whatsoever. First off, I was already tangled up by my bloody IV line and the loose strings of my flimsy hospital dress-gown that was really just getting in the way. I was sitting up, but couldn't get over the side from that position for fear, again, of flipping the bed completely. So with all of the careful precision of a beached whale I flailed and flopped and rocked and turned until I was eventually on all fours facing the back of the bed, now very well tangled within my dark red IV line.

I took a moment to catch my breath before again peering down the side, trying to figure out how I would do this. The bed was surprisingly high off the ground. Surely much higher than it should be. Also there were no decent looking footholds. Spurred on by the slow flowing bubbles of certain death I lifted my left leg up into the air and behind me as though I was in some sort of downward facing dog yoga pose, trembling the entire bed with my effort and carefully raised it up and over the rail, gripping the opposite rail for fear of tipping the entire thing over. I had visions of a flying hospital bed and my IV being yanked out and exploding - like a scene from Carrie.

OMGOMGOMG I just needed to get out of this stupid bed. Thank God I'm so freakishly tall, as I was able to lower my left leg completely over the rail and down toward the floor - nearly reaching the cold cement with my toes but alas, not quite there. The bed was still shaking violently from my twisted balancing effort (how could nobody hear all that squeaking?)  and I made a leaning-jump for it - my left foot now planted firmly on the ground and the rest of me now riding and gripping the bed rail like a Quidditch broomstick, expecting the whole bed to take off at any moment.

Okay! Whew! I was out of the bed and stood straight to untangle myself, getting a good look at the now really red IV line and wishing I was back in the bed as a new wave of nausea washed over me. Alright, alright. Keep going. I was out of the bed, I just had to walk over to the curtain, stick my head out and call for help. No big deal. 

Except that my IV line wouldn't reach that far. I was literally tied to the bed. If I stretched I could get a good three feet from the flimsy blue curtain separating me from the rest of the world. I tried calling for help again. Still nothing. A little louder and more forcefully this time - still nothing at all. Maybe something visual would help? If I could move or pull back the curtain maybe? Okay. I can do this. Not a big deal, I usually have excellent balance. Well, for the most part. I crept toward the curtain to the very end of my IV line's allowance of distance, stretching out my IV arm toward the bed to give me that little bit more distance. I couldn't reach the curtain with my other arm, but I could do it with my foot, surely. So, like a freaking ninja yoga master I stood there in a position of one arm stretched out toward the bed and leaned, raising my right leg perpendicular to my body and Chun-Li kicked at the blue curtain, pulling it away from the wall and to the side. I had an opening!

I kicked at the curtain some more, calling out a strained "Nurse! Excuse me!" to nobody. 

Alright fine, this wasn't going to work. I stared out the curtain but still nobody came by. How could this be? The A&E department had been hopping for the last six hours! Where the hell was I?

This was dire. I was about to bleed to death, have some sort of bubble-heart aneurysm and pee myself. There was nothing to it, I had to go get help. And I would have to take the bed with me. 

I pushed. I pulled. I heaved. That bed wasn't moving and I would have to figure out where the brake release was. The first lever wasn't it - I pressed it with my foot and the bed shot down to just above the floor. The second lever wasn't it either, but I could lift the bed back up to an unnatural and nearly comical height). I walked around it again, careful to hold my IV line like some sort of leash. the next lever I tried wasn't it, but at least I could now get the bed rail down. Finally I hit the right lever and the brake released, shooting the bed I was leaning on into the wall with a bang.  

Still nobody came. 

And so there I was, slowly pushing a large hospital bed with a bloody bed sheet (was that my blood?) across the room and slowly peeking it out into the hall, not sure if I was going to encounter medical staff or zombies, but tied to this beast on wheels by my IV pole. I pushed it out further into the hall, still nothing. I pushed it through the blue curtain and all the way into the flickering, darkened hall and looked around, my first foray into a world of other people in what seemed like hours. 

I was at the far end of the busy A&E, in what seemed like a fairly empty and disused 'wing' of sorts. Down the hall I could see the busy nursing station and medical staff darting from room to room in their blue scrubs, attending to the wailing and yelling of patients and their families. There was a set of police in one open cubicle, barring an irate woman from leaving, and a grown man crying over an IV in another. Crying babies and a drunk guy yelling - no wonder nobody had been able to hear me. 

But they could clearly all see me, as they all turned to stare in shocked silence as I calmly and slowly pushed my empty bed down the hall and to the nurses station, my open gown flapping in the breeze behind me and clutching my bloody IV line. I pulled up and parked my bed in front of the nursing station, to the staring silence of about eight doctors and nurses, held up my bloody IV line and asked if this was something I should be worried about. Before anyone could answer I then declared that I had to pee quite badly and would someone be able to unhook me or should I just take the bed with me to the loo as well?

Everyone then came rushing around the desk to help me at once, someone fastening my gown, another person clearing my IV line, someone making the bed that I had pushed there with clean sheets and another person unhooking to guide me to the washroom - all asking why I hadn't just used my buzzer.

WHAT BUZZER?

It turns out that I was being admitted, but until a private room was ready for me on the ward I had been moved, while I was sleeping, into an isolation cubicle down at the far end of the hall. So no zombie apocalypse, nobody had forgotten me. I was just being quarantined. Like the guy upstairs with Ebola but without the armed guards.

Wait, what?

Yeah. And to think that was just the start of my two day hospital stay of weirdness this time. 

Granted, the isolation and quarantine was to protect me but still. I hate private rooms.

Chemo, Sunshine and the Cackling Hyena

It’s nice that so many people want to genuinely be helpful – just not when you are trying your best to remain inconspicuous.

You see, there has been a change at the Royal Free Hospital and now, in addition to the world’s most amazing noodle bar in the basement there is now a Marks & Spencer’s on the ground floor – and they have an in-store bakery with fan-ovens. This is fine, except that when you walk past it on your way to the main elevators in the early morning the soft yet rich aroma of warm chocolate and sweet bread reaches out into the hall like the welcoming embrace of a warm friend on a dark day.

Oh my, they have chocolate croissants.

I resolutely continued past the Marks & Spencer’s to the elevators and went up to start my day, forgetting completely about this new delight for a time.

My first visitor was, I think, a fan.

A lovely woman with her daughter, she had heard online that I was going to be at the Royal Free today for an infusion and, being there for a 3 minute appointment with Dr Beynon herself and having greatly enjoyed my book, she came to the PITU unit to seek me out – commenting to me how surprised she was that all of the nursing staff seemed to know me by my first name and were so pleased to direct her right to me.

We then sat for a while, laughing about Sarc and the content of my book like old friends – which was, when I think back on it, extremely cool. A fan! AMAZING!!

It must have looked cool too, because as soon as she left the patients around me, spurred on by the American woman sat beside me, asked me who I was and if I had really just met that woman. I told them about my book and for the very first time in my life when they all asked for its’ title with pens in hand I handed them my book’s business cards – which somehow made me look infinitely cooler than they already thought I was.

Or like a shameless attention whore.

One of the two.

Things calmed down and my impromptu fans dropped off as their drugs kicked in, and in walked Helen and her son Marvin – here for a much welcome chat and distraction. They even sat and had a laugh with one of my doctors that had come by to check on me, crying with laughter at his story of trying to give me an IV nearly three years ago in which there was blood everywhere (he was new at that then) and I was begging for a pediatric team to come do it with their magic freezing cream. He was then howling with us remembering how I would lie to them about how many days my cannula’s had been in to avoid getting new ones, and how far I’ve now come. (only two stabbings today!)

Helen joined me to the noodle bar of awesomeness in the basement, leaving intuitively once she saw me start to nod off.

“Were they fans too??” queried a passing nurse – apparently I was the talk of the ward today, lol.

“No, better. Good friends.”

The drugs kicked in and so did my narcolepsy – and I woke 2 hours later having dreamed about chocolate croissants.

I couldn’t do it. My dietician would slap me. They are sooooo bad for you. It’s not worth it. They are probably cold now anyway. So not worth it.

But everyone else on the ward was eating treats. Nice, chocolaty treats.

Alright look. If you can’t treat yourself on a damn chemo day, when can you?

So I unplugged myself from the wall, took hold of my IV pole and told the nurses I was just going for a walk around the ward, I’ll be right back.

And as soon as someone buzzed open the security door for a delivery I booked it out of there.

People are always surprised to see you hooked up to an IV pole in an elevator, like it’s pretty obvious that you’re not supposed to be up and about. People are even more freaked out to see you standing in line at a Marks & Spencer’s holding a big bottle of water and a fresh, warm chocolate croissant… and an IV pole with a pink bag labelled CHEMO on it. Especially since otherwise I look fine, it’s not like I was limping or grimacing in pain or anything.

Like you’re not supposed to be there or something.

You know the whole ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ thing? What would be the point of taking my warm chocolate croissant back upstairs to eat it in the sad chemo ward with Crazy McMental Pants the ASBO wardmate when I could, in fact, eat it outside in the sunshine instead? I was already down on the ground floor – may as well make an afternoon out of it, no?

And so I rolled my IV pole outside, lifted it over the bumps and myself a little sunny bench outside the ambulance loading area to drink in some fresh air, cyclophosphamide and a chocolate croissant.

Like a boss.

I ended up getting really comfortable and sat out there for a good 20 minutes (the nurses had started freaking out a bit upstairs by then) having pulled my feet up under me in comfortable defiance. Deciding it was probably time to go back to the ward, I stood up without a problem, took a swig of water and slowly rolled my IV pole back into the hospital foyer –

Where I stopped dead in my tracks, pins and needles having suddenly taken over my entire right leg. I couldn’t move, not even an inch. I was stood there just inside the doorway, far enough to be inside but too close to the door for the sensors to allow the door to close. I was directly in the way of people trying to get into or out of those doors (although they could have used the other doors!)

Now when a person is hooked up to an IV pole labelled CHEMO is standing motionless in a hospital doorway looking like a deer in headlights people are not just surprised but they feel the need to intervene.

“Are you alright dear?”

“Oh! Yes, I’m fine, thanks. My leg is asleep.”

Cue shock and side-eye from everyone around as they scurry out the door and away from the crazy person.

“Do you need some help Love?”

“Nope. Leg’s asleep. I’ll be fine in a moment.”

“You’re blocking the door.”

“Yeah. I tried to move, but I can’t. I’ll just be a minute.”

“Do you need a wheelchair?”

“I’m good, thanks. Just enjoying the view.”

“Would you like us to call someone?”

“Oh goodness no, I’ll be able to move in a minute.”

When I saw the security guys start toward me from the far end of the hall I knew that was time to move it, pins-and-needles leg or not. This was going to have to happen. I took a step forward and my dead-leg nearly buckled, causing me to grab my IV pole with both hands and laugh out in pain and at the absurdity of it all. I had to continue - lurching forward gripping the IV pole like I was paddling a canoe, dragging my dead-leg behind me and cackling madly away.

So when I initially went outside for some sunshine and fresh air I had stood tall and walked out, pulling along my IV pole like a normal person.

Yet when I made my way back through the hospital to my ward I was pulling my IV pole, limping, grimacing, crying and yip-laughing like a cackling hyena.

Like The Usual Suspects, but in reverse. I’m starting to wonder if I can buy my collective footage from the Royal Free’s security cameras. I could make a lot of money on youtube with this. 

The Night of the Laxative Curry - with twins.

Well, the day started out nicely. It was just the last 30 minutes or so that descended into complete and utter parenting bathroom chaos. 

Once more, again, Katy and Anna we are SO SORRY!

WARNING: If poop and children is 'not your thing' just stop reading now. It gets BAD.

So our kids turned 4 a week or so ago - you would think that we could have moved on from this stuff already. But alas, they've got my genetics. 

We had gone over to our friends' place for dinner and to hang out... pretty much all day...and had a great time watching movies, drinking in the sunshine at a pub with live music and eating the most delicious homemade curry that Katy and Anna had just 'thrown together'. It was heavenly - with a mix of chickpeas, cinnamon, garam masala, sweet potatoes and apparently Exlax.

We had finished dinner, enjoying the chat and rare freedom from the kids as they quietly played upstairs when my stomach gave an involuntary rumble. I was doing okay, but then the cold sweats started and I knew it would be best to make my way upstairs to deal with that.

I could also check on the kids while I was up there.

I started up the stairs and was welcomed by the sight of Lochie sat on the loo, bare legs dangling in the air, calling me in her sing-song voice;

"Mummy! I need your help! I've had an accident."

What do you mean you've had an accident? And why are your underwear bulging over there on the floor?

Sigh. Okay, Lochs had an accident. It happens. I closed and locked the door to help her to finish up and deal with the mess, having a talk with her about maybe next time heading to the loo a bit earlier and just bringing a book with her. Or an iPad.

I'll admit, once she was all cleaned up I used the opportunity to go myself - then came a desperate banging on the door. Kaitie needed to get in there too. 

Awful parent that I am I told her that she needed to wait (she always does this to Paul), assuming that she just wanted to come join the party. The knocking persisted, getting a bit more frantic but I couldn't reach the door from where I...erm... was.

Lochie and I both finished the effects of Katy's laxative curry, I finally opened the door but Kaitie was nowhere to be seen. I peered around the corner, straining to hear a muffled "okay now you wipe my bum".

Wait, what?

And then the smell hit me like a wall of music festival outhouses, having permeated throughout the entirety of our friends' second floor. Kaitie came around the corner completely naked from the waist down and holding a poo covered wet-wipe, looking for a bin to put it in.

They... they don't have another bathroom upstairs.

"PAUUUULLLL!!!!" Helppppp!!!!

I was laughing far too hard to deal with this on my own.

He and Katy came up, their eyes tearing from the smell and realization of what had been happening upstairs. Kaitie turned around and was absolutely covered in smeared poo. There was no wet-wiping this away, so I picked her up and popped her into the bathtub, getting on my knees to shower her off, trying to see through my tears of laughter at the whole situation.

But it got so much worse.

I could hear Katy laughing now as the full scenario unfolded, Paul rushing into the bathroom holding two COMPLETELY FULL potties of poo. It had been nearly two years since dealing with this type of thing but he still handled it like a total pro. We could tell which one was Kaitie's - as one potty looked like it had been dominated by a grizzly bear that had eaten a porcupine whole and, well, of the two kids she had the bigger smile of relief on her face.

While Lochie and I were in the loo, Kaitie and our friend's daughter were dominating the twin potties - together. Like some sort of bonding thing, I guess. 

Too bad the tandem wiping wasn't as effective as they thought it was.

So in the span of only 30 minutes or so we went from perfectly normal friends and house guests to having not only completely dominated their bathroom but also their children's bedroom and the more or less the entirety of their upstairs.

We are terrible, terrible people. But even worse than that?

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

And after tonight? Just further proof that our kids are doomed.

Sorry guys. If you don't want to invite us over again we won't take it personally. 

We're used to it.