The foam on the chair isn’t all that thick, the paintings are fairly bland. A sign on the wall tells me that my ECG will be shared with my GP, unless I request otherwise.

I’m not here for an ECG.

I’ve been off work since the beginning of May. The pain in my shoulder and back has eased to a constant stiff ache. I flex and stretch the muscles around my scapula each day, just as my physio taught me.

I’m making progress, getting better, slowly. Silly wee things are a big deal. A month ago I struggled to carry a basket of laundry up and down stairs. Now I’m such a big tough guy I can carry laundry that’s wet.

Yeah.

Check me out.

I am not a small bloke, nor would I describe myself as a physically weak person. Working for theatre companies I took pride in carrying bigger, heavier loads than my colleagues during setting and striking for performances.

My strength defined me, it was part of my identity. When I struggled with my role in a group, I knew I could fall back on being the big lunk that lifted and carried more, further.

Today I sat in a consulting room while a doctor from Occupational Health gently quizzed me about the crash, my injuries, my physio.

“Do you feel ready to return to work?”

I talked to her about muscle stiffness when I woke up, explained that I was getting better, but slower than I’d hoped. I told her I wasn’t sure I could lift the weights I’d have to if I was to return to full duties at this time.

She made some notes, looked up from the desk and asked me…

“And how does that make you feel?”

I started to answer and found myself saying things out loud that, previously, I’d only thought about. I’d ignored the wee voice in my head, but now it poured out.

I’m scared of going back to work. I’m scared of lifting someone or something that’s heavier than I thought. I’m scared of ripping the muscles between my shoulder blades like the seam on a cheap jacket.

I think about the night I shoved my shoulder under the hip of a woman too fat to walk and too dying to help herself, pushing like a rugby prop to roll her onto the trolley.

I think about rolling and bumping an old man with a tombstoning M.I. down the stairs of his tenement, leaning back from the handle to slow the speed of his descent.

I think about shoving a piss-head scrote with a kitchen knife backwards, locking his arms up behind him, pinning him to the floor.

I think about chest compressions en route to hospital, hanging with one hand from the nylon straps in the roof.

Mostly I think about dropping patients. I think about spinal patients on long boards, I see my end of the board slipping out of my hands. I see overweight patients waiting for a second crew to come along and bail me out because I don’t trust myself to carry half their weight.

I tell the doctor this. She slides a box of tissues across the desk at me and tells me to take my time.

She asks if I worry about driving on blue lights again. If I have concerns about psychological stress from the crash.

I tell her no, I’m fine.

“So why the tears?”

Touché.

She lays out a plan for me, tells me to return to work, to talk to colleagues.

She is amazing.

I have a plan.

Away from the desk in Staffordshire at the moment, taking photos for a first aid event, will tell you more about it once I’m home. Am blogging on phone from below tree in nice camp site, lovely folk, nice weather, no media. Has anyone shut up about Michael Jackson yet?

My relationship with sleep has become…odd. I’m accustomed to sleep being an exhausted plummet into oblivion at the end of a shift. Sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep…four days off. I loved my perfectly broken circadian rhythms.

Now when I go to bed, I lack the devastating exhaustion of a twelve hour shift. I lie awake for an hour or so before drifting into an uneasy sleep for the night.

Things are not helped by the warm weather. I like my bedroom *cold*, I want my duvet to serve its purpose, to snuggle up under. There’s no point sleeping without covers, that’s just retarded.

So I have my window open, all the time. This has a number of problems, one of which is the air-conditioning unit that runs for the pub downstairs. Its breathy hum is always there, so much so that its absence disturbs me more than when it kicks in, a motor whine as the beast spins up.

The seagulls are another matter - nesting on the roofs of my building and the surrounding tenements, they’ve had babies. The babies whistle and whine at their parents, the parents call back to them to reassure them that Mum and Dad are nearby. The jackdaws that nest in the gardens in the centre of my block like to wind the seagulls up, the seagulls like to respond by screaming at them, swooping past my window and cackling at the top of their voices.

Last night one of my neighbours opened her window at 4am and shouted into the night.

“Would you fucking seagulls fucking shut the fuck up?”

They ignored her.
j

The Daily Mail is, for those of you outside the UK, the amongst the most horrendous “But we’re just being reasonable” right-wing trash that is propagated in the UK media.

They’re running a poll today “Should the NHS allow gipsies (sic) to jump the queue?”

Vote “yes” to fuck up their poll. I just did.