For crying out loud

Friday 23rd July am
It's funny. I hadn't cried for days, maybe as long as a week. Then this morning I was idling the time away, and looked through the little photograph album that Catherine and the girls gave me before I came into hospital - just a bunch of pics of loved ones in various happy poses - when I felt myself welling up, with tears streaming liberally down my face.
Maybe a good cry is therapeutic, but I just felt like a ridiculous softy, weeping for no reason in front of all the staff and patients on the ward. Particularly as all the signs are so resoundingly positive. Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age.
A hospital ward is like a miniature community, with a bunch of disparate folk brought together with the one common denominator of illness. Of course, the community is constantly shifting, as people leave (sometimes, believe it or not, in less than a month), and new arrivals follow in their wake.
When, like me, you're literally speechless, it can be difficult to develop any real rapport with your fellow patients, but it is heartening to sometimes find people who are going through similar or worse experiences, and to strike up a certain camaraderie. I've developed friendships with a couple of people since I've been here, and I'll always value their moral support, even though I may never see them again.
Conversely, those of us who are too poor or too mean to go private are stuck on a public ward, and cannot choose the people we are interned with. As I've never been particularly known for my patience or tolerance of anyone who doesn't fit my narrow definition of a "good bloke", it will come as no surprise that some of the inmates irritate me immensly.
The latest such individual is an ageing cockney, possessed of a booming voice, and an inability to stop talking for even the shortest period.

Last night, as some of us tried to sleep he held a mainly one-way conversation with the man in the bed opposite to his, which covered a range of subjects - but the main topic was himself. Today has seen a succession of outgoing calls on his mobile phone to his undoubtedly concerned friends and family. I feel so much better informed now that he has given me - and everybody else in the ward - the graphic detail of the blood in his urine. I must remember to add this to my list of party conversation topics. In the meantime, is it uncharitable of me to wish they'd give him a tracheostomy, just to shut him up?
As I started this post by confessing to a lachrymose moment, I'll finish it with ten songs about crying:-
1 Don't cry no tears - Neil Young
2 Letter full of tears - Gladys Knight and The Pips
3 The tracks of my tears - Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
4 Hold me while I cry - Irma Thomas
5 Here come those tears again - Jackson Browne
6 The sound of crying - Prefab Sprout
7 Cry to me - Candi Staton
8 Town cryer - Elvis Costello and the Attractions
9 Tears - Teenage Fanclub
10 Fool to cry - The Rolling Stones

Peace, love and understanding!
RP