They do say, whoever ‘they’ are, that every cloud has a silver lining and so it has turned out with Jayne’s little stay in hospital.  Overall it is not a good thing; she has pain, people sticking needles in her all the time, and all the other discomforts of hospital, while I have to drive every day, and miss having her around, but there is an unexpected upside to it all.A couple of days after she was admitted I remembered something about the medical cover I have at work where you get some sort of cash for staying in an NHS hospital instead of making the insurers fork out for expensive private medicine.  I could vaguely remember a colleague telling me about it years ago when he had his appendix out.  I checked the policy booklet and it was there in black and white.   For A&E admissions you get nothing for the first three nights, but after that you get something for each night.
This has a real benefit apart from the obvious one.   I told Jayne about this when I found out about it.  She has been complaining about her PC for a while now and wants something with a better processor, better operating system and better graphics card and I said that when I claimed this money I would use it to get her a new computer.  The simple maths is that the longer she stays in the better computer she can have.   This will not make her prolong the stay unnecessarily because she really doesn’t like it in there, but it should stop her discharging herself prematurely.

I know what she is like.   If she thinks she can fake being well enough she would say anything to get out, and if they let her out on the understanding that she takes it easy she would agree to all that and then come home and start over-exerting herself.  It’s just the way she is.  The doctors say she needs to stay for 10 days until she doesn’t need intravenous injections any more, so if all goes to plan she should come home on Wednesday.  If, however, the doctors then say they need a day or so to be sure she is fit to leave at least the carrot being dangled will stop her insisting on coming out against advice.

I just hope she hasn’t heard of the Dell Alienware Area-51 or I won’t see her here until next month!