When I spent four nights in hospital recently, three of them were on the orthopaedic ward. (Night two was in the high dependency unit after surgery).

The first night I didn’t sleep too well- one old man on the ward was calling for the nurse half the night (and being ignored), another made very loud very strange noises like a cross between snoring and gargling.

When I returned to the Ward on day three, the old man had gone but there was someone comatose with their head bandaged instead. As soon as it got dark, bandaged man came to life. He had apparently been beaten up and was out of it big time. He kept getting out of bed and wandering round the Ward, pushing alrm buttons and trying to climb out of the window.  At one point, I came awake and found this strange man wandering past, staring at me. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel threatened by him at all, but most of the other patients did. The night nurses spent most of the night cajoling, shouting at and pleading with him, but as soon as they were gone he was off again. The staff were so distracted that they never got round to closing the blinds or the curtains  until the middle of the night.

On the plus side, however, he so spooked the others that the death rattle noises remained absent for the rest of my stay.

The following day, the Police came and talked to concussion victim at length, but he wasn’t saying anything. They must have tired him out though, because he didn’t wander about quite as much that evening.