On Friday 7th February 2014 I was dealt a minor curveball in my life.
Feeling slightly unwell and getting a lot of stick from both family and friends for being a pussy ( a name that has lived proudly in the McClean household since me and my brother were born), I trudged off to the local GP to try convince them that the medication previously prescribed to me wasn’t working and that I was in pain still. Firstly though I had to check the pain was still there myself, and I was proud to announce that it was. Get in, I finally have a valid reason to miss lectures.
The GP sympathetically let me go to the hospital to get an X-ray of my chest, so I wandered off down the road heading towards news large enough to turn my world upside down.
For me this blog isn’t about informing you of the details of my illness, it’s about trying to show you that this hospital life isn’t all that bad and in actual fact 3 meals a day is normal, as opposed to a bowl of cereal once a day, if I’m lucky! It will be written in the most upbeat fashion possible and it’s intended to make you guys laugh and certainly not cry. For those of you that have had first hand experience of my English skills, you know exactly who I’m talking about, you will also know that they ‘ain’t quality atall’, but I’ll try my best!
I reached the Western, the local hospital, and waited until my name was called. I got the standard checks you would get when you go to hospital and I remember thinking when the guy was taking my blood, ‘pah, ain’t gonna find anything in there wee man’. After these were completed, I went back to the waiting room where I got talking to a lovely elderly Glaswegian, a Rangers fan too! After a long wait I got taken into a ward where there were 3 other elderly men.
It was here I got a visit from my uncle. He sauntered in and proceeded to laugh! ‘Ya big fanny, so y’ar! There’s nothing wrong with you’. At the time I couldn’t agree more. I was sitting, right as rain, no pain, on an airplane. Okay so that doesn’t work but it was worth a try! I was tempted to discharge myself, go home and go to the pub- it sounded far more appealing! As he was leaving he, somehow had noticed that the hand sanitiser was facing perfectly towards my crotch. Alan has a knack for making an absolute tit out of you, out of nowhere! He then slammed his hand down on the squirty top and it created the most glorious arc of hand sanitiser heading directly for my crotch. May I add I was also wearing grey jogging bottoms… Fortunately he didn’t follow up on his threat of going to get the nurse to tell her I had got a bit excited!
Eventually I got word from the doctor that there was a small problem with my blood count and they wanted to move me to the Beatson institute, a cancer specialist unit at Gartnavel hospital. It was perhaps here that I should have clocked that something was up. I was transferred to the new hospital in a taxi ambulance, don’t get too excited, it was one of those without any sirens! During the ride I had flirted with the idea that something serious could be happening, and then proceeded to laugh it off. ‘What if it’s HIV? No chance. What if it’s cancer? Nah you canny get cancer in the blood I don’t think!’ These thoughts came and went and eventually I met my mum and Auntie Alison in the hospital. My mother was meant to be up spoiling me, taking my shopping and for dinner. Instead she sat in whilst I got told the news that would temporarily put my life on hold for a matter of months.
I’ll try to keep each blog to a reasonable length so as to prevent boredom, however this was one days worth! I promise the future ones will be more upbeat and a whole load funnier. This may even include a video of me on nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas, which is bloody brilliant stuff! I’m also going to end each blog with NSNO- for those of you who don’t know what this means, you will laugh but it’s short for ‘Nil Satis Nisi Optimum’. This is Evertons motto which is Latin for ‘Nothing but the best is good enough’. Sounds odd but I will beat this and get back to my normal life straight away. Plus, I needed to get some form of Everton shit in somewhere!
Peace,
NSNO x
Just a few photos too keep you all entertained too…
- High as a kite on gas and air!
Like a kid in a candy shop!
needlesdrugsandrockandroll 
What are you like? Anything to get out of going to lectures! I’ll bring you up some steak pie soon and keep taking the anti-pussy tablets – they might eventually work ;o) xxx
Nei – I’m going to find a QPR Latin quote to go alongside your Everton one. By the way would have expected a head on the ‘fruit’ juice !
Take care
Richard
Hi Neil.
Your dad’s posted a link to you blog so I thought I’d drop you a line. We hope the treatment/torture is going OK although the Chelski result yesterday would be enough to create a relapse.
Chris says hello although as that’s two syllables it might just have been “pint”. Are you allowed drink during treatment?
See you soon
Jim
Hi Neil,
FFS, you really are a one. Are you sure it’s not just too many of those Heavies and 80 Shillings?
Loved the blog – and thank you also for the learning opportunity – I’ve never read anyone’s blog before! Do you think Alex Young does one? Must go and look (but where do you find them…?)
Cheers
Chris
“Evertonians are born, not manufactured we do not choose, we are chosen. Those who understand need no explanation, those that don’t understand don’t matter.” Keep the faith.
Alex De Gier
PS love the blog.
Hi Neil,
For goodness sake, was cooking and having to wash your own clothes at Uni so bad that you had to end up in hospital? That’s just attention seeking really. Anyway with all this time off from studying we are expecting more blogs on a regular basis and ideally no bad jokes.
All joking aside though, stay strong and hang in there.
Much love & hugs,
B, P, Jake & Gelly xxxx
Hi Neil
We are keeping up with your blogs with interest and, of course, concern.
“Keeping busy” sounds an old fashioned cure but any way of stopping time dragging must help. In that aspect let me recommend you a web site I found recently, it’s called Gizmag Emerging Technology Machine and sends out a free newsletter about all the new technological advances and the way that these advances are being incorporated in new products. It’s fascinating. I would insert a link to the site but can’t quite fathom out how to do it in Word, so the newsletter hasn’t actually helped me improve my technical ability yet! Apparently advances in boat anti-fouling are on the way thereby allowing owners to concentrate more on sailing than maintenance. The next time you come over we may even get to take you out in it rather than asking you to work on it!
Spring is fast approaching here, and just a few degrees raise in temperature are doing wonders to our experimental vegetable patch. I say experimental because neither of us know much about gardening, so on infrequent visits to the local co-operative we buy whatever baby plants the guy has on sale. This has led to a forest of broad beans which have grown from two inches up to well over a metre. I think we planted them too densely because it looks like a thicket, there are lots of white flowers on them but as yet no sign of any beans! I suppose they set from the flowers! I told you we don’t know what we are doing! Broccoli and peas are also growing but not quite so exuberantly, and I think we have some very well fed snails, which was not on my wish list. (why they don’t like beans I don’t know!).
Of course all this is a diversion from the real nonsense that every pensioner indulges himself in, the art of growing tomatoes! The amount of work building the frame, watering, tying up, training, pinching out etc. etc. and finally picking them, cannot be economically sound as an activity, but the casual pride and superiority in offering a few to friends to take home with you (because we know you only eat supermarket ones at home! unsaid of course), the casual throwaway lines like “what do you think of the tomatoes nice aren’t they?, oh yes just picked them from the garden, quite easy really and of course the flavour is so much better, we much prefer the cherry ones, they are so much sweeter grown at home” , etc., I have lost track of the inverted commas but I guess you get the drift.
We are currently both waiting for the arrival of the next soccer tours. The very next one is for Clive, this time U15 girls from Calgary. I will be with them for 8 days. I suspect that this is a good time of the year weather wise for them as Calgary is currently at around zero Cº, whilst here we have had daytime temperatures in the mid-twenties. However on the day they arrive the temperatures are set to plummet again. We are then both employed over Easter but not again until early July. The pocket money is very welcome and so is the free time, but the bank interest has the last say so work it is!
Anyway by the time you are in recovery mode, there will be a bed for you (& one or two of your friends) here if you think you could put up with us! Think about it & we promise to have the hull of the boat painted before you arrive.
We look forward to the next instalment on your blog as we find it really entertaining (sorry, no sympathy from us after all) & we think you must be a budding journalist/author.
Un abrazo fuerte,
Mo & Clive