Hospitals. Places of recovery and rest, where the sick can recuperate through somnolent slumber.

Yeah, right.

It is very hard to get a good night’s sleep in hospital. There are constant emergencies going on around the ward. (Worse for those having the emergencies, for sure.) There are the constant beeps on pumps and blood-pressure monitors and saturation-level meters crashing and call bells and emergency alarms.

Then there’s the Fresenius Agilia IV Pump. This thing does, of course, kick out the usual horrible screeches when something goes wrong (air bubble, occlusion etc.).

But the problem with this unit is the noise it makes when everything else is quiet. It emits a background low level tune that plays 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and has completely got inside my head.

It’s like trying to sleep through some part of the Doctor Who theme every night. And the other day, when the pump was stopped, I could still hear it! It is getting into the psychological torture phase now, having listened to it all day, all night, every day, for a month…

Further health updates soon, anyway.