Late breaking news

Vicki and I are back at home. 48 hours of fluids got her back on the straight and narrow, and she's feeling much better in herself. I'd forgotten how ghastly it can be as an in-patient. Vicki was placed on the open ward and unfortunately there was a young patient in at the same time who was quite distressed and her treatment meant that she was often woken during the night, upon which point she'd scream the place down and of course wake everybody else up.

Now I'm not criticising the poor patient or her beleaguered parents, but the ward staff for their handling of this. Knowing that this particular patient acts in this way, they should have moved her to somewhere where the noise can be isolated. By leaving her on the ward she's disturbing all the very ill patients around her. Ample provision exists on the ward to do this, and in fact I've seen over the past 6 months other equally distressed children handled in this way. For some reason on this occasion the well being of the other children seems to have become secondary. It's the accumulation of these type of events which contributes to counter the excellent clinical work carried out at Leicester which seems an awful shame.

Meanwhile back in Leicester for an unplanned visit meant that Vicki and I had no fresh clothes so I had to go shopping to kit us out for the days ahead. Whilst walking back from the city centre I came across 2 chaps and a girl, who were veraciously disagreeing with each other. This became violent, and one of the guys punched the girl in the face. The girl, now somewhat enraged by this random act of senseless violence, picked up a sandwich board and swung it like a cricket bat at the two guys. More fisticuffs followed and then all 3 disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. Right behind where this live episode of Strictly Come Brawling was staged was a local newspaper kiosk, and in front of the kiosk was a billboard will today's lead story on. It read "3 hurt in street fight". Wow, now that's what I call a fast news service, right on the pulse of local events!