Long Ron Silver

The Communist was worried about us today because we were late visiting him. The traffic was horrendous - it was tipping it down and was clearly the wrong sort of rain, so had blocked up all the traffic in Leeds.

So just as we arrived on the ward - after a journey of an hour when it should take half that - my mobile rang - the hospital had rung home, so Stephen was ringing to see if we were okay.

Anyway, the Communist was very proud, because he was out of bed and sitting out in a chair, and he wanted us to see him there. He'd been sitting out all afternoon, and had managed this for much longer than they expected. The leg-that-used-to-be was propped on a pillow, with its ghost toes hurting him, and he looked a bit pale because of this, but was nevertheless in a positive frame of mind.

He'd been given some hospital-issue cream crackers and plasticky cheese which were sitting there impenetrably wrapped in polythene. Using only my nail scissors and a few of the scarier-looking implements from the surgical ward, we managed to get into them and he ate them with pleasure.

So, things are going well. But I'm suddenly very tired. I usually have endless powers of keeping-going and at the moment I don't feel I have them.

This afternoon I was doing some medical roleplay to help train some qualified doctors in challenging consultations. I was playing a woman who turned up rather frighteningly angry but who would swiftly burst into tears of sadness if dealt with sympathetically by the doctor.

I didn't have a problem tapping into either emotion.