Road Trip to Scotland – Part 5

So…. last entry ended well. Got where we needed to be, had a good dinner and settled in for the night.

And then got a very rude reminder of that all this is about and that I need to take a lot more care of myself. I’d eaten too much at dinner, and went to bed feeling OK but not amazing. Woke up at 2:30 in a right mess. Freezing cold and breating very shallow. I thought maybe some food had disagreed with me, but that didn’t appear to be the case. I could barely breathe properly, and spent the next hour or so trying to get warm without much luck. I was hyperventilating and cooling myself down in the process. [Darren neglects to say he had been shaking quite violently for the best park of an hour here, which was quite scary for both of us – Tammie]

T woke up and helped out as she always does. Tried to get me to concentrate on breathing more deeply, which was difficult at the pain in my chest was pretty bad (I think I forgot my last pain killer of the day) so it took quite some time to get anything like control of breathing. I’d been up for over an hour at this point and was really thinking that medical intervention was going to be needed – not something I was looking forward to as you can imagine. T phoned the Mac unit who answered quickly, asked relevant questions and then gave sage advice to take some lorazepam to try to calm things down and to work on getting my breathing under control and stop the shaking. This we did together for the next hour or so and it seemed to work slowly but surely, getting to feel more relaxed (relatively speaking!), and feeling as if there’s some chance I wouldn’t need to be blue lit to the nearest hospital – wherever the hell that would be! She sat there as patiently as ever, my personal breathing couch, paying attention and making sure I was concentrating on breathing properly as soon as I started getting shallow again. I don’t know how long this went on for but eventually long enough to be able to take a drink of water (I was bone dry, did a bad job overall on hydration yesterday) and slowly started to feel like I could get to sleep. T was more than a little ill as well, so maybe something didn’t agree with either of us from last night’s dinner. I cannot even begin to convey adequately the love and admiration I have for her. She truly is one in a million. Without her, I would definitely have needed an ambulance (to no idea where, infrastructure is not a strong point in the highlands!), if not worse. The thought crossed my mind many times that I might die in that room.

Eventually woke around 7 having had about 4 hours’ sleep (T less than that) and made a plan. We need to get home, but the initial idea was to drive straight from Glasgow to home. Which would be a big ask on any day, let alone after 3 hours’ sleep for T and me feeling like death warmed up. It’d be about 8 hours by the numbers, with stops figured in you’re talking more like 10-11. Just not doable and not safe.

So a second plan was hatched to stop part way home, and after some to-and-fro we settled on still going via Newcastle to see Summer but staying in a hotel while we’re there. We got ready (although the hotel shower didn’t work, which was not great). Hopefully today will see me improve (I’m going to work hard on drinking water and eating the right amount of the right things within the possibilities offered on the train!)… but my resolves and resources are tiny compared to what they were pre-illness. There’s just no spare capacity. So everything needs to be done right today if this isn’t going to be a complete ordeal. Even if it is, it’ll be a loooong day.

Got to the station in plenty of time…. weather was lovely at this point!

Currently on the train from Morar to Queen Street, but it is pretty rammed. Our seat reservations were taken by someone else so we’re in some unreserved seats but the ones next to us will be taken for much of the journey, alas (they weren’t, I think they gave up due to what happened next!). Train is running on time at the moment (it’s early days yet though), so hopefully we’ll be back in Glasgow for 3:30 or so, and then taxi back to the camper…. which is hopefully still there intact.

….. and then the Banavie swinging bridge refused to play ball, so the train was stuck for an hour and 40 minutes. Network Rail boys got it fixed though which was a relief as I didn’t fancy a multi-hour bus journey.

So we shall be later than planned…. but the train is at least going again now, so that’s good.

Here’s hoping there’s no more delays as it’s going to be getting on for a late one…. and JustPark will no doubt be getting more of our money! (Actually £2.17 as it turned out in the end so not the end of the world).

On the upside, we should get some of the train fare back as we were delayed for well over an hour. Feeling slightly better as time goes on (and got an hour’s sleep while waiting for the bridge to get fixed) so that seems to have worked slightly in our favour. I’ve also got to make a claim for the cancelled train as that led to a night in a hotel, and extra parking. Public transport for this sort of trip is something I believe in, but it does need to work or people just won’t use it – the cancellations and rebookings and unplanned meals have cost us many times the original train fare.

Damn good job we didn’t bring the mountain bikes, that would have been a nightmare to deal with over the last few days – storage in Glasgow and in Morar would have been no fun… and we’d have had zero use out of them too!

Because of the lateness of the train (and several other factors), I was going downhill again fairly quickly. As ever T took care of decisions, me and everything else, making sure we didn’t leave anything behind, but now the plan had changed. Check into a premier inn about 10-20 minutes from Glasgow to try to get a good night’s rest and then one-shot it straight home next day. We managed this OK, but I was getting weaker as time went on – even a brief chat with the (lovely!) taxi driver was a struggle (he even under-charged us as he forgot a road was closed which meant a detour he said he should have foreseen), and it was a complete relief to find the camper van where we put it, fridge still working away, and the van started right on the money.

Got to the hotel, checked in OK (blue badge really needed as walking far wasn’t an option and…. the room we were booked into was literally the furthest-but-one in the whole place… and booked for dinner as while I wasn’t feeling hungry, I knew I needed to eat something. But as soon as T left me in the room, I was asleep for an hour, so that said a lot.

Dinner was passable (and at least didn’t have any unforeseen side effects), and back to the room for another night’s broken sleep. This wasn’t as bad as the night before, but still shallow breathing, lots of sweating and then being cold and needing to resort to use a towel to provide some dryness as well as flip the duvet cover. The room was hot and airless (and opening the window way too loud) so it was not a great experience. And only one set of towels provided for a two-occupant room. Not the best PE experience by a long chalk, but way better than the night before.

So…. while it didn’t work out the way I’d liked, we’d got a good few hours closer to home during the course of the day, and I felt better than 24 hours before. Not great, not ready to drive, just OK to be a passenger and take in some of the still breathtaking scenery that Scotland has to offer, even from a motorway. We just needed to stock up on some provisions from Tesco beforehand (including dioralyte which I think really helped me get back onto a more even keel as I’d lost a lot of liquid the nights before):

Stopped at motorway services a couple of times, but long story short, T is a trooper. She drove every mile home, and drove brilliantly. She found the disabled toilets (which are a godsend at the best of times at the moment but when your clean-up is considerably more involved than normal as you’re struggling) which were a game-changer. Support like this is invaluable when you’re too tired to think clearly and shuffling around like an old man. Which I guess inside, I am.

Got rather angry (mostly internally) with an idiot in a Golf Estate who parked twice in a disabled bay, stopping access for those who needed it. (He got bumped forwards by a guy who turned up behind him so he moved under duress… to the disabled space in front). Typical guy, my age, thinks he’s a genius. Lots of ‘clever’ stickers on his car (monster looking out from under the tailgate, some cartoon of him taking his wife from behind, a ‘Dirty Diesel’ sticker’. You know the type. Dinosaur, just doesn’t know the asteroid is already on the way). I’m sure he’s a lovely guy, a pleasure of a husband, parent and workmate. Pillar of the community. Had I felt better I would have told him to move his piece of crap car as he watched someone who was properly physically disabled have to walk 20 yards further right in front of him because he’d parked in their space while he ate his Mac’s.

I am a pretty picky driver. On motorways, people don’t keep left, they change lanes at the drop of a hat when they suddenly realise there’s something in front of them, and I often play a game of “I can see you’ve not planned ahead and now you’re just about going to cut in front of me rather than just fade out of the throttle for 10 seconds, let me pass and then I don’t have to brake becuase you have a mental time horizon of 3 seconds”. And she spots these things. She likes driving the camper as it’s large and feels empowered doing so. So we had overall a good day, all things considered. A near miss due to an absolute idiot in a works van (again, changing lanes last second for no reason and leaving no space) was spotted and avoided by her. We got home by 8pm, without incident or problems, and still had time to open the myriad of parcels and letters that had arrived since we’d been away (I have a plan for a project but not sure if I’ll get it done in time). Watched a bit of YT and then went to bed. Woke at 4 (which is an improvement as I didn’t take anything, didn’t feel like I needed it or that it’s really working any more), and tried for another hour with lorazepam to get back to sleep, but nothing. So I’m finishing this at 5:36 as the trip to Scotland (not via Newcastle or York, alas) is definitely done. It feels good to be home, and 48 hours ago I genuinely thought I’d never get here.

This has really knocked my confidence. It may well be a bad meal (food hygiene can be an issue and I know that anything slight really knocks me for 6 now for a few days, but seeing that T was sick and had other effects really points to it being this) but I also know that my resilience to this sort of thing is getting less – much less. There will come a time when I will just not be able to risk it as it could have much worse consequences, so if we do any more (smaller!) trips, everything will need to be 100% on the money as I don’t know how many nights of sweat/freeze/hyperventilate/contemplate death I can do. But even if so, they won’t be this far away:

Big shout out to Summer for being re-messed-about multiple times due to delays and my illness, and also Richard from The Riverfront York caravan park who rebooked us each day when we knew we would be late. I mailed him to say to please keep the booking money (with an explanation of what had been happening including my health) and thanked him again for being such a contrast compared to the experience with the West Highland Hotel’s “tough ****” policy. Hopefully he can rent it out again and get double-bubble for a night!

Don’t get me wrong, I know I can’t do this forever, but I had one more (one day-ish) trip planned in to the EV rally (UK bit, the European is too much even though I would love to do and see it) in a couple of weeks’ time, but I think I need a week to see how I stand before making a decision on it. If it was right now, though, it’d be a no as I know the lines of enthusiasm vs energy are crossing at some point, and that may be where it happens.