We don't get out much these days. This is because we need to be on hand almost permanently to look after two aged and infirm (not to mention quite badly demented) parents. My Dad needs attendance three times a day for me to get him some food and his pills, and Anne's Mum needs more or less constant supervision due to her continuing obsession with her bowels and her inability to learn how to cope within her own powers.
So... Anne's birthday on the horizon! With a fair bit of foresight and a fair bit of luck, Anne had got her Mum booked into the local care home for six days' respite so we could have a birthday out together. My Dad would probably be OK on his own if I left him a ham sandwich and a piece of cake for lunch, all concealed under a mug of water with his pills balanced on top, and a note saying 'One O'clock Pills'. All on a chair directly in front of him, so he couldn't easily forget it.
We thought we'd go to Aberglasney Gardens to see what was blooming, and for lunch in their neat little restaurant. Something of a treat, this, as our normal meals out consist of bacon egg and chips when we go to the dentist in Cardigan every six months or so.
The weather held up, and the gardens were beautiful. Early lunch. Anne had the roast pork, and I had the ratatouille. Cup of tea.
Ten minutes later, after wandering through the little beech wood, I developed an itch on my chest that wouldn't be scratched away. Then it spread to my back. Anne checked... no rash on the chest. Then it spread to my backside, which seemed to have become completely corrugated with bumps. Then my hands began to feel nettled and tingly. Anne, being a woman, had a couple of potions in The Bag and gave me an antihistamine. We sat on a bench for a couple of minutes then moved on. Within twenty paces I was feeling woozy. Then went down on my haunches. Then had to lie down on the path, feeling very faint. When it was clear that this wasn't going to go away in a few moments, Anne fetched help and rang for an ambulance.
The lady from the bookshop (Vanessa?) gave me her coat for a pillow (thankyou Vanessa, for your kindness) and was clearly concerned that she ought to keep me talking. I felt my vision fading. The leaves of the beech tree above me were turning from green-against-blue to a strangely solarised or posterised effect. The leaves were black, each surrounded by a grey-beige outline. The sky was just... pale.
I remember saying to Anne 'I've been poisoned'.
I don't know how long it was, but the paramedics turned up with the sort of stretcher that would have served well as a trans-Antarctic sledge. Not that I could actually see it at the time. All I could see was the posterised filigree above me, and the face of the medic. He asked me a few questions. No, no breathing problems. Just... very very weak. Funny vision. Itchiness.
He checked my chest and confirmed that there was now a rash. He slipped a mask over my face and turned on the oxygen. I feel I ought to say that it helped, but it didn't. I just felt as though I was on the verge of... what? Sleep? Faint? Death? Well, if this was death, it wasn't so bad. Better than a poke in the eye, at any rate, and I speak from experience. But who would get Dad's pills? And how would Anne manage two geriatrics without me? And who would finish the book I was writing?
The paramedics were very kind. No rush, but constant appraisal. I think I began to feel a little better, although I can't positively remember this. I must have felt stronger though because I found the energy to roll onto my side and vomit into the hostas. Mmm.... a genuine pavement pizza, with little chunks of Mediterranean veg in a slew of tan gravy. I remember someone saying 'Do you want to lie back, Chas?' and replying 'No thanks. I'd rather look at my vomit.' Quite why, I don't know. It wasn't that interesting.
They lifted me onto the trolley and wheeled me off, past the little knot of visitors who had gathered round. Gentle concern. Gardeners, you see…
I was definitely picking up by now. Perhaps the oxygen was helping after all? I can remember the medics launching me and the trolley down a grassy slope towards the carpark. We agreed it was straight out of Last of the Summer Wine. When I say 'launch', I mean 'guided', really.
In the ambulance they hooked me up to a tube and Things That Go Ping and we waited there for a while. Anne came in and sat in the guest seat, looking perplexed. I had a catheter in the back of my hand, accepting a drip of some sort, and an injection of, I think, hydrocortisol, to act as a further antihistamine.. but don't quote me on that. I've always had a gift for immediately forgetting or confusing everything I ever learn in the medical sphere. I'd have made a poor brain surgeon.
They got me back to Carmarthen Hospital, with Anne following in our car. We had eaten at about twelve, so I guess it must have been about two by now, but really I have no idea. Maybe it was three. They trolleyed me into A&E and then trolleyed me back out and into the ambulance again. 'Full.' We sat and sat. In my case, lay and lay. 'My' shift of paramedics said goodbye and left. Another shift arrived. We sat again. Eventually a doctor called Nigel turned up, and re-checked a few things, including my blood pressure. It was getting back to normal, at about 120. I gathered it was down to 87 when they first tested me. That sounded low. Later on, as I felt more like myself, I read the instruction note stuck to the ambulance wall, near my head. It said, if I remember rightly, that the Trauma Team may be called if a road crash victim's pressure dropped below 90. Oh. Right.
At 4.30 they wheeled me into a casualty bay. A nurse and her assistant, who looked too young to be out by herself, wired me up to a heart monitor thing. Electrodes stuck on everywhere. The nurse seemed to not have the information that the doctor had got about me. Why not? I wondered. Maybe talking is more reliable than notes. She took the catheter out and wadded the little wound. 'The doctor will be with you soon.'
Anne meanwhile had set off on the fifteen mile drive back home. She would get Dad's hot meal for him, and give him his tea-time pill. And she'd feed and pill her Mum, and clean up whatever parts of her needed cleaning up, hoping that Mum hadn't fallen (as in 'slid to the floor') again trying to get back from her commode to her chair. If she was on the floor, Anne would not be able to lift her without my help. No... wait.... Mum was in respite. No problem there. Just my anxiety speaking.
I was still in the ambulance when Anne left. The radio was on. Splutter scratch splutter... and a report of a traffic accident in Cynwyl Elfed, a village on the A484 that Anne had to go through on her way home. 'Too soon for it to be Anne?' I checked with the medic. 'It said 'a single male'.' I told him of how someone had once pulled straight out of a notorious junction in Cynwyl and had driven smack into the side of Anne who had the clear right of way. 'I bet it's that junction again'. 'No... it said something about trees and being trapped.'
Not Anne, at least. Some other poor sod.
I was feeling pretty chipper by the time they got me inside. In fact I wanted to go home, but they wouldn't let me until the quack had written me off, to coin an unfortunate turn of phrase.
Doctor Nigel did eventually return and confirmed that I was fine to leave. What had caused it? The best he could offer was a 'vaso-vagal event', which I think means.. 'Er... you sort of fainted'. But what about the itches? Surely this was an allergic episode of some sort? He agreed, but couldn't suggest anything helpful. After all, what could be wrong with ratatouille from a respectable establishment? What indeed? Incidentally, the joke about basil being in the ratatouille turned up three times in the course of the afternoon. Some gags will never die.
And that was that. Anne got back home late, as the accident on the A484 forced a long delay and then a long diversion. Dad didn't want his hot meal as he 'had that at dinner time'. This wasn't deliberate bolshiness. It was just his extreme conservatism showing through when Change loomed.
So Anne left him with a slice of bread and ginger jam, and at his request, a mug of tea.
I sat in the picture window of A&E, on a wheelchair, and went into a gentle meditation. I felt fine, if a little weak. What could have caused it all? I had no history of allergy. I had touched none of the plants, so it wouldn't be that. My breathing was fine, so it wasn't going to be pollen, and anyway I'd been to the Gardens several times before with no problem. What else? It could only be the rattytooey, with or without basil. Complicating factors might be the pills I'd been put on a month before following a strange five minutes when my wrist suddenly lost all presence. The GP thought it might have been a mini-stroke and stoked me up with pills and booked me in for scans on my head, heart and neck. So... pills plus ratatouille equals....what? Widespread itch, plus dramatic drop in blood pressure? Didn't seem reasonable. But the ratatouille wouldn't go away, except for the pizza I'd left behind in the hostas, which by now would have been discreetly interred somewhere less obvious, to return its elements to the elements.
Anne finally came for me at six o'clock. Rather than be officially diverted, she'd opted for the longer alternative route back to town from the start. She'd brought a bag with pyjamas (I own pyjamas?), my book of the moment (about the history of world empires; very good: I 'd already learned from it what made the Holy Roman Empire tick), my little blue netbook, and, bless her, my mp3 player. But not needed. Home James, and would you mind driving? 'I was going to, anyway.'
We went home, again via the long route. Anne had driven 70 miles that afternoon, sorting me and Dad out.
Dad hadn't eaten his sandwich or drunk his tea.
Still none the wiser. Aberglasney were most helpful and sent me a full recipe for the ratatouille, including the sources of their ingredients. Nothing to catch the eye. 'Mushrooms' would surely have meant 'Bog-Standard Mushrooms', and not 'Something Weird Picked by Trolls from the Swamps of the Styx'. 'Mixed Herbs' would surely not have incorporated 'Hemlock' or similar, or somebody would have already noticed the pile of bodies in the yard.
Our GP confirmed that it did indeed sound like an allergic event, but had no further wisdom to add, except that I should carry some antihistamine with me and call an ambulance if it happened again... Assuming, presumably, that I am within five minutes of a telephone (or am in a mobile-useable area, and can remember how to use my phone), and that the ambulances are not all parked up outside A&E because of another administrative log jam.
So where does that leave us? Should I be more careful? Of what? How? Should I never eat out again? Avoid ratatouille? Avoid herbs? Mushrooms? Aubergine? China bowls? Forks? Cups of tea? One of Anne's friends loves the Aberglasney ratatouille, and has it every time she visits. It's fine. It certainly tasted terrific. Yes, I recommend it.
It's a funny old world.
