Some have obvious injuries: a teenage girl has a DIY bandage around her head; a muscular guy in a football shirt and shorts has his ankle strapped; a woman walks past, a bloodied handkerchief pressed to her nose. Most people have someone with them;

the odd few sit alone, stoic.

I'm presenting with a high temperature and nausea, brought on, I suspect, by a painful and infected blister on my foot. I check in with the receptionist and pay the 60 hospital charge. She notes my symptoms, types up my details and invites me to take a seat.

The TV on the wall is tuned to RTE Racing. No one is watching the live horseracing. The broadcast adds to the reception's down-at-heel bookie's shop ambience. Conversation is muted. Everyone looks up whenever the triage nurse calls the next patient.

After 10 minutes my name is called and a nurse ushers me into a small room off the main waiting area for a preliminary examination. I'm given a codeine-based drink to kill the pain and asked to return to the waiting room.

Two hours pass before my name is called again. A second examination follows. A blood sample is taken and I'm sent for an x-ray. Ten minutes later, I'm back at reception, handing in my x-ray. I resume my seat.

At 6pm, I get the call. A nurse ushers me through the double doors and into the thronged emergency department, down to the circular nurses' station at the end of the rectangular room. He finds me a plastic chair and makes a space amid the phalanx of occupied wheelchairs.

The room is the size of a basketball pitch, with a row of seven curtained-off cubicles on either side, 14 in all. Each one is occupied. About a dozen occupied trolleys, horizontally positioned head-tohead, form a spine down the centre of the room.

Some patients look frail and pale and very sick. Relatives or friends stand around, looking concerned. A man in a Dublin City Fire Brigade uniform is hunkered beside his partner, who seems to have fallen asleep in her wheelchair. Her hand covers his on the blanket over her knees.

There's a low hum of conversation and a lot of coughing.

Staff convey an upbeat sense of brisk efficiency. Nurses wheel drip-frames and medicine trolleys as they attend to patients. Porters in red t-shirts create space by constantly repositioning occupied trolleys. Doctors with concentrated expressions stride around purposefully.

I'm brought to an empty cubicle where a doctor prescribes an IV antibiotic drip for 72 hours. The clock over the entrance doors reads 9pm. I get two injections of antibiotic and a tetanus jab.

"Mr Flynn, we have a trolley for you, " a nurse announces with a smile.

I'm carrying my coat and have an overnight bag with me. The nurse raises the angle of the headrest, creating a space for me to store them.

"I'll hardly get a bed tonight?" I say. "Well, you've progressed from a chair to a trolley, " she smiles, "so, you never know." An attendant pushes a tea trolley past and I accept a mug of tea and a packet of two McVities digestives.

I remember that I'm still in my day clothes. I can't unclip the sidebars and have to inch forward on my backside to manoeuvre myself off the trolley. There's a lengthening queue for the public toilets. Patients in pyjamas and dressing gowns stand in line with members of the public.

Constant use means it's physically impossible for the cleaning staff to keep the two cubicles in an acceptable condition. I need a shave and a wash but the one shower looks decidedly uninviting.

There are dirty footprints on the white tiles and the shower's glass panels look grimy.

When I return, the middleaged man on the trolley beside me is being administered morphine for intestinal pain.

All night long his worried wife will sit quietly by him, watching him intently.

The night sister introduces herself and apologises for the uncomfortable conditions.

There is one trolley space, she says, in a small box room, but the patient already there is snoring loudly. I opt to stay where I am.

At 11pm, the lights dim. I sleep fitfully, waking to various interruptions. "F**k off, you bitch, " a drunken female voice screams from somewhere over my right shoulder. (In the morning, I hear that a female nurse was assaulted and the gardai had arrested a drunk female patient. ) Every so often, someone breaks wind, occasionally at an alarming volume.

"Sorry, " a small voice says sheepishly after one such incident. For most of the night, a foul-mouthed drunk maintains an incoherent monologue peppered with recognisable expletives.

The lights go up at 7am.

I'm fasting for a blood test and can't sample the breakfast options of various cereals and brown bread and jam.

I try to work out the relevance of the various uniforms the staff wear. Beaumont nurses wear blue uniforms, agency nurses dress in white, most doctors wear green garments under white coats.

Ambulance crews, fire brigade officers and, occasionally, uniformed gardai stroll around casually throughout the day.

At 10am, I'm told I'm being moved to a side room. I struggle off the trolley, grab my slippers, climb back on and am whisked away briskly. The room is small and strikingly quiet. The one other trolley is occupied by a man in his 30s who's been here 24 hours and needs an operation on damaged knee cartilage. "I didn't get a wink of sleep last night, " he tells me. "The guy where you are now snored like a trooper."

Before lunch, we're told we're both being moved to the wards. I'm lying there, anticipating the porter's arrival, when a second nurse says there's been a mix-up and, for the time being at least, I won't be going anywhere.

My new acquaintance says goodbye and is wheeled off.

Almost immediately another patient is wheeled in, a middle-aged man admitted overnight with abdominal pain which has already eased with treatment. He's obsessed with having a smoke and wanders off in his dressing gown looking for an exit door.

We eat lunch . . . roast chicken with veg . . . on trays clipped to the trolleys' horizontal bars.

Around 3pm, we're told the room is required for an "emergency" and both of us are wheeled back out onto the main floor area.

When the medical teams do their rounds, you can't avoid overhearing the intimate details of other patients' case histories. While my consultant examines the raised lymph nodes in my groin, the doctors accompanying him afford me some privacy by forming a human curtain around the trolley.

5pm. I'm now positioned near the double doors and a cold draught leaves goosebumps on my skin. I ask for an extra blanket and an apologetic nurse brings me two.

"Medical patients like you can be unfortunate, " she says.

"Surgical patients are often short-stay. That means beds in surgical wards are often freed up quicker. A medical patient is sometimes more likely to be in hospital for a longer period and so beds become available less frequently."

The IV drip is making me groggy, and I keep dozing off.

Twice I wake up to find my trolley's been repositioned and I'm sandwiched between patients I haven't seen before.

Later on, I wake up wondering if it's still afternoon.

I need to visit the toilet. The trolleys parked both sides of me are so close there isn't space for me to step down. I have to call a porter and ask him to reposition them.

Someone has urinated on the toilet floor. There's no sign of any cleaning staff. I notice a thin, vertical line of blood on the sink's splashboard. I have no option but to stand on the wet floor, meaning my slippers get soaked.

Given the nature of my injury, I can't risk wearing them again and they end up in the bin.

It's 9pm and I've just been told I'm being transferred immediately to St Luke's ward.

It's 30 hours since I arrived at reception. I want to thank the nurse who looked after me for most of my stay. It takes a few minutes to find her. She's busy attending a pale teenage girl who seems to have overdosed in one of the cubicles. I let it go.

Already my trolley has been manoeuvred out into the corridor and a porter is waiting to wheel me to the lifts.