My uncharacteristically feisty end to yesterday's blog was soon brought down as, late last night, my body temperature went over 38 degrees, a sign of possible neutropenic sepsis and a sign that a visit to A&E is on the cards.

Having dug the car out of the 4 days of snow surrounding it we made a slow tentative drive over icy roads to the hospital. A&E was reasonably empty, populated by a handful of 'blokes' bleeding from various places getting mawfy wiv each uva.

Thankfully I get elevated to the top of the list and was in triage in minutes leaving the bloody, vomit ridden waiting room behind. Blood was taken and then I was found a bed in a cubical whilst waiting to be assessed. Eventually a gung ho doctor appeared whose ability to do anything involving the addition or removal of a needle was, quite literally, painfully flawed. He soon handed over these tasks to a far more competent nurse whilst concentrating his efforts on diagnosis and bossing others around.

It was a four or five hour process while blood results were waited for, x-rays were taken, in a bid to find the location of the infection. None could be found and once the blood results came back I was seen, thankfully, not to be neutropenic. That is to say I still had some immunity in my system. As a precaution is was given a paracetmol drip and a saline drip to bring the temperature down and help hydrate me. Meanwhile I sat, cubical curtain open, watching the frankly terrifying world of late night A&E cases drift past.

Alcohol induced injuries, illnesses and, in one case, psychosis all floated past my bed. At one point a teenage girl was being sectioned whilst, in front of me, a old woman who had slipped on the ice and broke her hip struggled through a haze of senility to understand why she was in pain and why her family weren't there to explain things. Doctors it would appear had been failing to get her to consent to an XRay and she'd fought them off as they tried to get her on the table.

I can see that I am now at the point in my treatment where, as expected, things are going to go downhill. It's going to be worrying and uncomfortable but for all the diffuclties I am going to enounter I'm aware that there are people out there living far more uncomfortable lives, some for all of their lives, and of all the people being treated last night I am glad I'm me.