[Sundae]

Okay, this is not a Christmas story.
It is not uplifting and does not as yet have a happy ending.
Please do not read today if that is what you are hoping for.

So anyone who took an interest knows I got myself kicked out of rehab for a single drink.
It's policy, and a policy I signed so I am apportioning no blame, just making it clear I didn't go on a two day bender or something.
Gutted at the time, because despite minor grumbles (I will always have those and to be fair I think many people do, I just record mine for posterity) it is the happiest and most stable I have been in YEARS, except on Arran).
Hung drawn and quartered afterwards because I simply couldn't cope coming out, finding out Diz was dead, losing my meds, my routine, etc etc.

So yes, that's when the bender really started.
No apologies. I am not an unrepentant alcoholic, but an alcoholic I am.
I can actually control it when my life is stable. But you know me and stable. The Baby Jebus is better acquainted.
Put myself in hospital again.

Woke up in the early hours of the morning - I've never really written about rehab but while there I had night after night of uninterrupted, peaceful and beneficial sleep. So this was a shock to the system.
Anyway I had the shakes SO bad, despite only having had a drink hours beforehand. My heart was doing a tarantella, my breathing was shallow and my skin was so sensitive that even during my intermittent freezy periods I could not bear anything touching it. By the time it was light I could see I was once again bright yellow with the old goldeneye, and I don't mean the song by Tina Turner.

So this time I avoided the GP as they had been so very difficult while I was in rehab.
No, really.
If I had the energy and inclination (criminal) I'd have torched the place.
Luckily I have neither.
Or the bus fare.

So off to St James's Hospital A&E.
This time I knew it would be a longer stay, so I packed more useful stuff.
Like a bag to vomit in. That's about it.
Alcoholics + planning = shit, unless it's planning more alcohol.
I was expecting the usual interminable wait in A&E despite it being pretty much the first bus into Leeds and a weekday besides (do NOT go in at night or at the weekend, or during any amateur sporting event. Or at all) So I asked for one of the pretty cardboard hats to be sick into. Finally a good decision.
I was.
In my usual fashion - noisily and ridiculously dramatically. Have done since I was a tiny mini-me (Mum says, "Why can't you just be sick normally like your sister?) Nope. Always a drama. Nothing like the rest of my life at all.

Anyway, this bumped me up the list because I was polite, articulate, considerate, Southern (sorry, it's true, we get different treatment), yellow as a banana and could probably have Ebola or something. I spoke to a lovely treatment Doctor (himself a Southern emigree - Eltham, don't blame him) who was kind enough to compliment me on being the first drunk he'd ever treated who behaved in a civil fashion. Must have been my fashion sense, as puking in A&E, even in a cardboard hat, is hardly civil. Maybe he liked my purple coat.

Off again to SAU, where I went last time before they got me into rehab.
Where all the Nurses spend their time doing admin jobs, trying to get beds for everyone - which means pretty much everyone not bleeding or dying. Oh and fitting canulas and checking no-one has shrunk since they were last admitted. This hospital obsession with height, I swear...

I got a bed pretty quickly this time, only about 12? hours.
Shame it was on such a lacklustre ward. Still...

Long post already.
Will continue.