St. Tommy's in London
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Yesterday afternoon after finishing at Hillingdon Hospital and familiarizing ourselves with our new neighbourhood near Victoria Station, we finished up the day visiting the British Museum for the second time on this vacation (we visited the day before leaving for Nairobi).
Alas this time, as I wandered through wondrous artefacts and the stolen treasures of the place that is with good reason sometimes called the Attic of the World , I felt so under the weather and slightly nauseous I couldn't really appreciate the things I was looking at. Feeling like quite the party-pooper, I asked Jeff and his mom if they'd mind returning to the B&B.
Aside from another venture to the local supermarket called Sainsbury's for some groceries for dinner, that was it for me today.
The first photo on this page is the view from our room at the Luna & Simone B&B , a really nice place to stay. We were on the second floor. Jeff's mom had considerably more stairs to climb as her room was on the top floor, two flights up from us.
This morning Jeff's mom chanched the oozing dressing on my arm. I was rather glad I was travelling with a trained nurse as the job was almost impossible with just one arm. She noted that my arm was getting red and swollen above the burn and worried about the red line creeping above it towards my shoulder.
I decided that there was nothing for it but to seek out some antibiotics somehow and I went down to consult with the two friendly desk clerks about the best pharmacy to visit. Their names were Mark and Peter and I believe they were brothers who owned the hotel.
Their very helpful advice included:
*Don't go to the pharmacy without a prescription--antibiotics would be very expensive for a traveller. Instead go to the hospital. Especially as they noticed the ominous creeping red marks on my arm.
*They also recommended St. Thomas Hospital and gave me directions (take the #24 bus to Westminster Square area), starting from a very convenient bus-stop directly across from the Luna simone .
So, on a big red London double-decker bus I rode to yet another British hospital. This was the one where Heather's friend Muriel worked for years apparently, Jeff's mom told me excitedly.
St. Tommy's was directly across the river from Big Ben and the Parliament buildings so while I checked myself into Emergency, Jeff went for a walk to see the nearby sights.
After a short wait I was seen by the very noble-looking Dr. Abdul Said. He was a very thoughtful and soft-spoken doctor from Eritrea who observed that even though he was African he'd never get something like henna done in Africa. Sigh. Yes, in hindsight it seems rather dodgy.
Yesterday afternoon after finishing at Hillingdon Hospital and familiarizing ourselves with our new neighbourhood near Victoria Station, we finished up the day visiting the British Museum for the second time on this vacation (we visited the day before leaving for Nairobi).
Alas this time, as I wandered through wondrous artefacts and the stolen treasures of the place that is with good reason sometimes called the Attic of the World , I felt so under the weather and slightly nauseous I couldn't really appreciate the things I was looking at. Feeling like quite the party-pooper, I asked Jeff and his mom if they'd mind returning to the B&B.
Aside from another venture to the local supermarket called Sainsbury's for some groceries for dinner, that was it for me today.
The first photo on this page is the view from our room at the Luna & Simone B&B , a really nice place to stay. We were on the second floor. Jeff's mom had considerably more stairs to climb as her room was on the top floor, two flights up from us.
This morning Jeff's mom chanched the oozing dressing on my arm. I was rather glad I was travelling with a trained nurse as the job was almost impossible with just one arm. She noted that my arm was getting red and swollen above the burn and worried about the red line creeping above it towards my shoulder.
I decided that there was nothing for it but to seek out some antibiotics somehow and I went down to consult with the two friendly desk clerks about the best pharmacy to visit. Their names were Mark and Peter and I believe they were brothers who owned the hotel.
Their very helpful advice included:
*Don't go to the pharmacy without a prescription--antibiotics would be very expensive for a traveller. Instead go to the hospital. Especially as they noticed the ominous creeping red marks on my arm.
*They also recommended St. Thomas Hospital and gave me directions (take the #24 bus to Westminster Square area), starting from a very convenient bus-stop directly across from the Luna simone .
So, on a big red London double-decker bus I rode to yet another British hospital. This was the one where Heather's friend Muriel worked for years apparently, Jeff's mom told me excitedly.
St. Tommy's was directly across the river from Big Ben and the Parliament buildings so while I checked myself into Emergency, Jeff went for a walk to see the nearby sights.
After a short wait I was seen by the very noble-looking Dr. Abdul Said. He was a very thoughtful and soft-spoken doctor from Eritrea who observed that even though he was African he'd never get something like henna done in Africa. Sigh. Yes, in hindsight it seems rather dodgy.
It turns out as well as the second-degree burn, the henna had also given me a case of cellulitis/blood-poisoning. It was a good thing I returned to a hospital.
He was extraordinarily helpful and gave me an amazingly light plastic material to lay over the burn. It felt about a million times better than the rubber dressing.
Like the other hospital, he gave me a generous bag of medical supplies free of charge, as well as a antibiotic prescription that I got filled at a futuristic ph
armacy downstairs with a complicated-looking robotic dispensing-arm that was displayed behind a plexiglass wall in the lobby. The sign said something about it being one of the few of its kind in the world. It reminded me of one of those perpetual motion machines at Science World.
armacy downstairs with a complicated-looking robotic dispensing-arm that was displayed behind a plexiglass wall in the lobby. The sign said something about it being one of the few of its kind in the world. It reminded me of one of those perpetual motion machines at Science World.The antibiotics cost me six pounds fifty--very inexpensive. Everything else was free. And they hadn't even seen my passport or my insurance or anything. I felt very grateful. From here on in, although my stupid arm continued to annoy me, I was no longer worried that it would become more serious.
Just for interest's sake I'll mention that a BBC film crew happened to be filming in the emergency room where I was, so who knows maybe one day I'll see myself in some obscure medical documentary. The photo here shows St. Tommy's with a double-decker bus crossing on the bridge in front of it.
Jeff and I left the hospital by noon (after a quick lunch in the hospital cafe called "Tom's") and ventured out into London. We could see five or more helicopters hovering in the skies over London from our vantage point near the London Eye.
Apparently we are here just in time for a major media event! There are 75,00 people gathered in Trafalgar Square today...after eighteen years England has finally won "The Ashes" trophy back from Australia! They get really excited about cricket around here. The British people we travelled with in Africa kept us quite up to date about the state of the matches the last two weeks.
posted by Spider Girl | 9:08 PM
1 Comments:
It's amazing hearing about the world I pass through every day - my office is two minutes from Victoria and my train comes into Waterloo - I pass St Thomas's every day.
Puss
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