2025, Week 14 journal.

Week 14 of 2025 began and ended in the Virgen de la Caridad Hospital in Cartagena. My leg was less swollen, but the ankle pain was only bearable because of the constant feed of pain killing drugs I was fed by drip.

Monday 31st March.

I woke up early, and by 8 am, I had had the drips for antibiotics and pain killers switched a couple of times.

During the day, I was taken down to the main hospital level, where I had doppler scans done on my ankle before being taken back upstairs to my room.

Food throughout the day was okay but very bland; they did not cook with any spices, even salt or pepper.

Tuesday 1st April.

When I woke up, I went to check my messages and discovered what I thought was an April Fools' Joke, but it wasn't. It appeared that Farcebook objected to me saying that the drugs I am on in hospital are helping and that they work.

Alan, you have 180 days to take action.

Hi Alan,
Your Farcebook account has been suspended. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards on guns, drugs and other restricted goods.

If you think that we've suspended your account by mistake, you'll have 180 days to appeal our decision. If you miss this deadline, your account will be permanently disabled.

They have told me that my account has been suspended because my account has breached their policies on guns and drugs. I clicked the button to appeal but don’t expect the numb nuts at Farcebook to reinstate my account soon, if at all. I had been thinking of leaving Farcebook anyway because of all the adverts and number of scammers using it. I have reported hundreds of scammers and fake accounts, and nothing is ever done about them, but it looks as if I have been banned, and the numb nuts have beaten me to the draw as far as leaving Farcebook goes.

I had been trialling a different type of social website called Bluesky. It has no scammers and no advertising. Unfortunately, most of my friends use Farcebook. Still, I think Bluesky will begin to get a more significant share of the social media market in years to come as people get fed up with the spamming, advertising and poor security on Farcebook.

This afternoon, a surgeon and a consultant came to see me. They tell me that I don’t have necrotising fasciitis, which I am pleased to hear. The viral infection is in the fat within my leg and bones and will be treated with antibiotics for a week. They hope that treating it with antibiotics will make it unnecessary to operate. I hope they are correct, but I do not hold out much hope.

My antibiotic and painkilling drugs, which are fed to me throughout the day by drips attached to my arms, are changed constantly and kept the pain at bay.

Wednesday, 2nd April.

When I woke up this morning, I had a horrible taste in my mouth. I think it is just the antibiotics giving me a dry mouth and a strange taste, but I will let the consultant know. The dressings on my legs and the antibiotic and painkilling drips are continually being changed throughout the day.

Around midday, I was told that I would be taken to a new room that afternoon. I was not told why. In the afternoon, I was taken from floor 4 to floor 3, and my belongings were all carried down to the new room for me.

I was not told why my room had been changed, but I did notice that the TV in the new room had a couple of English channels, and I wondered if that was maybe the reason I was moved. I used my time to watch lots of educational programs on DMAX and the National Geographic channels.

I must have been feeling a bit rough in the afternoon because one nurse began to annoy me. Every time she came into the room to change the drip, she turned all the lights on, and when she left, she left them all on and the door to the room open. The room is right opposite the nurses' station, so it isn't quiet with the door open. I was able to struggle out of bed and carry the drips with me to shut the door and turn the lights back off, but it's painful and leads to backflow of blood into the drip tubing.

Thursday, 3rd April.

I slept all the way through until my breakfast was brought to me today. After eating my tostada with tomato and drinking the coffee and fruit juice, I waited for a nurse to change the drip. The consultant came to see me and seemed pleased with the infection site; it didn’t appear to be growing. She told me that at some time today, I would be taken to have new scans of my ankle. She got a nurse to come in to remove the drip from my arm so that I could take a shower.

After I had taken a shower, the nurses put the drips back in my arm and then cleaned and redressed the wounds on my leg.

Mid-morning, I got a message from my sister, who was due to have an operation today. She was ready to go into the theatre when the operation was cancelled at the last minute. Supposedly, this was because they felt the operation may not be necessary. I am sorry for her and the way the English health system is run, and feel lucky to have my private health insurance here in Spain.

This afternoon, my friend Kate brought her daughter Aria to see me. It was nice to have some company for a while.

No one collected me to have the scans done on my leg, and I played games on my laptop till around 11 pm. I had real trouble sleeping during the night and kept getting up to use the toilet because none of the nurses had emptied my urine bottle since I got to this room. I couldn't empty it. I had to push a drip and use a stick to walk, which left no free hands to carry anything.

Friday, 4th April.

I slept right the way through to 8:40 am when my breakfast was delivered today. After breakfast, I noticed that the new drugs in the drip bag contained Nolatil, which I know shouldn’t be given to Northern Europeans. Most Northern European countries have banned it. When an orderly delivered a stand for the drip bag, I told him about this using Google Translate. He took it to show the nurses and came back a short time later and just gave me the thumbs up sign. What this meant, I didn’t know, whether they would change the painkillers or if they didn’t believe me and thought it was okay. I will ask the consultant when she comes in.

I had a quiet day reading and apart from the pain in my ankle and arguing with nurses about which drugs I could take, it was a quiet day. Several times, I refused drugs they said I could take. They said I could take them with sintrom. I told them my pharmacist wouldn’t sell them to me and that I couldn’t. I took the painkiller that was for nerve pain and didn’t affect Sintrom but refused Tramadol and another long-named painkiller that I couldn't remember the name of, along with the Nolatil I refused to take earlier. I don’t think my refusal made me very popular.

Saturday 5th April.

Today was my eighth day in the hospital and my second week in Virgin de la Caridad. I was woken when a nurse came to put a paracetamol drip in my arm around 8 am. I dozed off for a while until later, when she put another bag on the drip and breakfast arrived.

I enjoyed breakfast this morning and afterwards was able to take a shower once the last bag of paracetamol had emptied into my arm. After breakfast, a nurse removed the dressing from my ankle, cleaned it up and redressed the wounds. A new consultant came to check on me, seemed very friendly, and told me to let her know if I needed anything.

During the morning, my neighbour, Liz, messaged me to see how I was and said she would come in to see me later. I asked her to bring me a few clean T-shirts and pairs of boxer shorts. She said she would look for some in my apartment before coming to the hospital.

Just as I had finished typing some notes for my website, Liz arrived, and we sat talking for a couple of hours. Liz had brought my T-shirts for me and she swapped the bag with my clean clothes for my bag of dirty clothes to take home with her. Just as she left, my dinner arrived, and my friend George called me. I chatted with George briefly and told him I would call him back next week when I knew more.

Dinner today was some white fish with onion and mushroom. It was okay but, again, very bland. With it was a pasta dish that tasted horrible and was very dry. I tried to eat some of the pasta, but it was too dry, so I gave up trying to eat it. I had a bit of the salad, but I am getting very tired of lettuce and tomato, which they serve to me twice a day.

In between sleeping and reading my Kindle in the afternoon and evening, I saw that the Everton vs Arsenal game was on, so I watched the text commentary on my phone.

Sunday 6th April.

I woke up at 3 am. I had a slight headache and a funny taste in my mouth. I used the bathroom, and as I did, I spat in the toilet. I noticed that I was spitting blood. I went back to bed and worried it might be something serious; I pressed the bedside alarm. I typed into Google Translate how I felt, and after looking in my mouth, the nurse called a doctor.

When the doctor arrived, I showed him my Google Translate note, and I told him I was on Sintrom. He replied in perfect English, with a slight American accent.

He examined my mouth and told me he could see blood in it, and told the nurse to give me something for my headache and then left. The nurse put something in a drip in my arm, and she left after. A short time later, she checked the drip and told me to call her when it finished or if I started bleeding.

A bit worried about the blood, I propped my back up, washed my mouth out with water and began to read a book on my Kindle.

After the drip bag had emptied into my arm, the nurse removed it, and I dropped off back to sleep at around 5 pm.

I woke up again when breakfast was brought in. I ate breakfast, and after my drugs had finished going through the drip for this morning's dose, I got up and took a shower. After showering, I lay on the sofa in the room to read my Kindle. I fell asleep and was woken up at around 1:30 pm for my lunch. Another drip was put in my arm, and the nurse put new drugs in a couple of times.

After eating lunch and waiting for the drugs in the drip bags to finish, I continued to read my Kindle while sitting on the sofa. I again fell asleep and was woken up when I was brought some orange juice and a biscuit at 4:30 pm.

As soon as I had eaten the biscuits, I fell asleep again and didn’t wake up until around 7:30 pm when my supper arrived. I ate the bland soup and lasagne but couldn’t eat the white fish disks; they were horrible. After the meal, I got back into bed, typed up notes for my website, and watched the National Geographic TV channel for a while.

The last lot of drugs to be put in my drip were put in after 11 pm, but they didn’t remove the drip from my arm when it had finished and left me with an empty drip attached to my arm all night, again.