(WARNING – even though humorous, I do talk about suicide, avoid if this is a trigger for you.)

I mentally broke on day five in hospital. I was in extreme pain and constantly vomiting, I wasn’t improving and felt like that was how I’d spend the rest of my remaining days. If euthanasia was on offer I’d have taken it. I did ask a nurse for this service and got the reply ‘I’ll bring my gun in tomorrow.’ She obviously thought I was joking and played along. Now the pain has gone I’m glad there wasn’t that option available to me, but in my despair and delirium I was trying to figure out a way to kill myself.

My first thought was jump out of the window. But as I was only on floor two and the windows only opened six inches I had to rule that out. I’m not that skinny and a fall from two floors would only result in a sprained ankle. Realistically, I reasoned with myself, I’d need a fall from sixteen floors to die. The hospital only had five or six floors, I couldn’t remember which, so that would probably result in just a broken leg, if my fat suit didn’t break my fall completely. Aha, I thought, I’ll dive off the fifth/sixth floor head first with my arms by my side, that should do it. Feeling smug I remembered that I was struggling to walk the ten steps to the toilet and back, so trying to navigate my way to the roof was a non-starter. Drat.

My next idea was to save up the liquid morphine I was allowed hourly and overdose. I was given it in little plastic measuring cups and they didn’t watch me drink it, so it was doable. I had a bottle of Fruit Shoot next to my bed and I thought if I drank all of that I could tip my shots of morphine into there until it was full. Great idea. Except I would have to stay in even more pain if I wasn’t taking the morphine hourly, and Fruit Shoot bottles aren’t exactly big, so even if I drank a bottle full of morphine sulphate, without vomiting, I’d probably only make myself extremely woozy. Drat.

I observed the drugs trolley closely when it came around. Being a pharmacy dispenser I know which drugs which drugs will cause the most damage and kill me. I’ll grab some from the trolley and use those I thought. But the trolley was never unattended long enough for me to pull off a heist. Drat.

Watching a nurse use a syringe to inject anti-emetics into my IV, I had an idea which I thought was my best chance. I could inject an air bubble into my vein trough a cannula and bingo, it would travel up to my heart and kill me. I was ready to swoop on any forgotten syringe that got left behind, but unfortunately/fortunately for me this never happened. Drat.

My final idea was the least likely to work out, but by this time my brain was clutching at straws. My boss is a pharmacist and I had the genius idea that he could come and visit me, bringing drugs in with him to finish me off. But there were too many flaws in this plan. While it would solve my problem, it would no doubt be traced back to him and his visit and he’d lose his business and go to prison. I’m quite proud of myself that I was unselfish even in pain and didn’t want him to get into trouble for me. Although I had thought about how I could get my life insurance policy changed, to him being the beneficiary, so I could bribe him with that to do it. It was only because I knew he’d want more than the eighty thousand pay out to endure a prison sentence that I abandoned exploring that option more. Drat.

I happy to report that now I’m recovering at home I’m glad that none of my options were feasible, and I’m glad that I’m still here on the planet. In fact, I’m so glad and grateful that I am, I’m finally taking control of looking after my health, so I can avoid ever going to a hospital ever again.

But, I am increasing my life insurance policy, just in case.