The Christmas that went wrong: I had a massive abscess and spent my first ever night in hospital
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The year already ranked among my very worst – then I wound up on a tinsel-draped drip, while my family texted fun photos from the pub. It hadn’t been a vintage year. I was in the middle of a divorce and had turned 30 believing my life was over in the way only a 29-year-old could. Christmas was set to be a nice reprieve from the misery, spending a week with my family and eagerly awaiting the promise of a new year. I felt tentatively hopeful.
![[Bella Mackie]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/06/Bella-Mackie,-R.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Ten days before the holiday, my throat began to hurt. “Tonsilitis!” the doctor said, giving me a prescription for antibiotics. The pain didn’t abate, even after a week, so I dutifully went back for another dose. The pain got worse. On Christmas Eve, with no GP surgeries open, my mum drove me to the local walk-in clinic. A doctor took one look in my mouth and said I had a quinsy (don’t Google this, for the love of God, but it’s basically a throat abscess) and told me to get to the nearest A&E as soon as possible.
At home, everyone was readying to go to the pub, dressed in their festive finery, while I was being driven an hour away to hospital, where I was told I would have to stay overnight. I was helped into a wheelchair, had an intravenous drip stuck in my arm and promptly burst into tears. My dad snapped a photo of me before he left, promising I would find it funny one day. I looked like a haunted doll.
I spent my first ever night in hospital on a ward surrounded by people wailing and coughing, tinsel wrapped around my IV stand (I couldn’t face wearing the paper party hat sported by many of the other patients). My family texted me jolly photos of everyone at the pub, raising a glass to me in an attempt not to leave me out, which didn’t help at all.
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