My apologies for the long gap since my
last post. I can assure you that rumours of my death are partially exaggerated.
However, the two and a half months since posting have been rather eventful, and
I’ve not been in much of a position to be able to write. As it is, I can’t
write for very long before I start feeling ill (more on this later), hence the
length of time it’s taken to compose this.
Let’s pick up where we last left off.
Tomorrow became today, and we got up at an hour usually reserved for milkmen,
postmen and members of the criminal classes. I’d been forbidden from eating,
but was permitted a bottle of water at precisely six o’clock. It’s difficult
downing 500 ml of water in one second, and I did not succeed, but decided not
to tell the hospital in case they cancelled my operation again.
We got the train into London, and
arrived at our destination without incident. We went into the reception and
were directed to a waiting area. More people began to join us, wearing apprehensive
expressions. Eventually we were informed that we could head up to the surgical
unit, and all piled into a lift.
We ascended, and my wife and I were sent
into a waiting room of our own. Here we waited. After a while, a youngish chap
came in. “I’m a doctor!” he proclaimed in a loud, cheerful voice that was
possibly meant to reassure me. Instead, it made me wonder if he was actually a
doctor, or an escaped lunatic who’d stolen a stethoscope.
“Can you feel this?” He poked me in the
arm.
“Yes.”
“What about this?” He poked me in the
leg.
“Yes?”
“This?” He proceeded to poke me a few
more times, then started stroking the sides of my face, my torso and my legs,
adding to my growing suspicions.
“Um, yes?”
“Right, stick your tongue out.” I did
so. “Now waggle it round.” I began to suspect that this was less an escaped
madman than some sort of reality TV prank show or something, and glanced around
for the hidden camera. However, I followed the instruction. Apparently
satisfied, the man left again, either to stay ahead of hospital security or to
go over the footage with his producer.
We continued to wait, and after a bit
longer, someone else came in. This was a young woman in a lab coat, who asked
if, while the surgeon was sticking things up my nose, I’d mind if they kept a
bit of it. Apparently she was a medical researcher involved in a study on the
use of nasal nerve cells, entitled ‘The Source, Culture and Characterisation of
Human Olfactory Ensheathing Cells Obtained from Biopsies of Nasal Mucosa’. In
layman’s terms, as she explained, nasal stem cells.
I immediately consented to take part.
Firstly, the surgeon would be up there anyway, so I didn’t see why they
couldn’t take a little piece from the inside of my nose, secondly, it sounded
like it had the potential to help an awful lot of people, and thirdly, because
she was really rather attractive in a geeky sort of way, which is the best sort
of way.
I have, however, realised that there was
a significant lost opportunity here. Since that day, it has occurred to me that
I could have said, whilst signing the consent form, “Well, it’s no skin off my
nose!” However, at the time this ingenious bon
mot did not occur to me. Alas, the master punster’s life is littered with
such lost opportunities, and all one can do is resolve to be more vigilant in
the future, and seize on such chances when they present themselves.
Two more couples arrived in our waiting
room, looking fairly miserable, and took seats. Shortly after this, a tall,
sweaty man in neon cycling gear marched in and announced that he was my
anaesthetist. My confidence failed to be inspired. He proceeded to ask me a lot
of questions that I’d already answered to various different people. I lied
about drinking 500ml of water at exactly six o’clock. Eventually, he got bored
of the interrogation and left again.
We continued to wait. The two couples
who’d come in, both rather elderly, had started to talk. One of the old men
seemed to be complaining about his local council. Apparently they’d recently spent
£40 million on new cycle paths, but the old man couldn’t get eye drops. I wasn’t
quite certain of the connection, but he seemed very annoyed by it.
My eavesdropping was disturbed by a
nurse who came in to take my temperature and blood pressure. She seemed
especially impressed by the blood pressure, which I took as a compliment. She
also provided me with a hospital gown, paper underpants, surgical stockings and
slipper-socks. I reluctantly donned these, and was not impressed by the overall
effect. I don’t expect to see them on the catwalks of Milan any time soon. That said, the slipper-socks were bright red and I was really rather
fond of them.
By the time I’d finished changing, the
old man had moved on to complaining about his son. Apparently this deviant
delinquent breakfasts at Gordon Ramsay’s, but doesn’t own a hedge trimmer!
The nurse returned, and gave me a
wristband with my name on, in case I forgot it. I was also tagged like a
criminal, with a tracking device around my wrist, so that they could track me
if I sneaked off to the restaurant.
It was then announced that the time had
come, and two nurses escorted me through the corridors. We arrived in an
extremely cold room, where I once again encountered the sweaty cyclist, now
more reassuringly dressed in medical scrubs. I was once again asked all the
same questions, and once again lied about drinking my water at precisely six
o’clock.
I was asked to lie down on a bed, and
lay there trying not to shiver. Not only are hospital gowns not very appealing,
they’re also not very thermal. Happily, one of the people offered me a blanket,
which I accepted gratefully. They stabbed a canula into my arm, which they used
to start injecting me with things. They also provided me with a face mask thing
and told me to breathe deeply. Having never been anaesthetised before, I
observed all this with great interest. They injected two or three different
liquids into my arm via the canula The sensation of cold liquid being injected
into your vein is very odd. In fact, it started to become extremely
uncomfortable, even painful.
However, I continued to breathe from the
mask. I began to feel
light-headed, and lay back, closing my eyes to try and help things along.
“Tom? Tom?” I woke up with a jerk and a
grunt to find a nurse standing over me.
“Are you okay?”
I considered this for a moment, but was
too tired to say anything, so I simply nodded.
“Do you know where you are?” I thought about this, and nodded
again.
My recollection of events is a little
confused at this point. I remember my wife being there when I woke up, but she
assures me that I was already awake and in the high dependency unit when she
was called through.
As my mentis became increasingly compos,
I began to realise a few things. I now had long strands of gauze coming out of
each nostril, and taped securely to my face, there was a pipe coming out of my
spine, they’d fitted a urinary catheter, but worst of all, someone had stolen my
bright red slipper-socks! My feeling of betrayal was palpable.
I was also feeling rather sick, probably
due to the anaesthetic. On top of this, my mouth was incredibly dry. My tongue,
when I poked it in a spirit of scientific enquiry, felt like old leather, and
when I tried swallowing, the sides of my throat stuck together rather
uncomfortably. I had a jug of water by my bedside, but even this didn’t help
much. I’d have a drink, which was immediately absorbed by the inside of my
mouth. I’d drink a bit more, enough to damp my throat, and I’d be more
comfortable for a bit, but within minutes, the Sahara-like dryness would
return. This went on for a couple of days, after which my mouth regained its
former moistness.
The nurses on the high dependency unit,
where I stayed for a couple of days, were very nice, but had a nasty habit of
asking the same questions over and over again. “What’s your name? What’s your
date of birth? Where are you?” Even once you’ve demonstrated your knowledge of
these tricky brain-teasers, they continue to ask, in case they can catch you
out.
The bed next to mine contained an
elderly gentleman, who was being subjected to this interrogation. “Do you know
where you are?” He mumbled something more or less incoherent. “Ok,” the nurse
tried again in an unusual fit of generosity, “do you know what kind of building
you’re in?”
He thought about this for a moment.
“Victorian, I think isn’t it?” This answer immediately made him my hero.
I was removed to a regular ward to
recover, and here I stayed for about five days. I will mention at this point
the food. Hospital food generally has a bad reputation, but overall I found it
reasonably good. Some dishes were better than others, but most were at least
edible. In the morning, along with breakfast, we’d be given a menu to choose
what we wanted for lunch and dinner. This included a large array of different
options, both hot and cold, and one of the possible meals was an ‘All Day
Breakfast’. This intrigued me, and I asked about it when the Food Lady (I
assume that this was her title) came back round.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes?”
“I have a question about the All Day
Breakfast in the menu.”
“Yes?”
“Well, we don’t get the menus until
after breakfast.”
“That’s right.”
“I suppose my question is: Is the ‘All
Day Breakfast’ available for breakfast?”
“No, sorry. Just lunch and dinner.”
“Just lunch and dinner?”
“Yes.”
“The ‘All Day Breakfast’?”
“That’s right.”
“I see.” I didn’t push it further, since
she was just doing her job and was a nice enough lady really.
Time passed, and eventually they decided
to remove my lumbar drain, the pipe sticking out of my spine. This was fairly
painful, but by no means agonising. They also pulled the gauze out of my nose.
This wasn’t painful, but was deeply unpleasant. The doctor just kept spooling
it out, like a handkerchief from a magician’s sleeve. The next day, they
decided to remove my catheter. I won’t go into unnecessary detail here. All I
can say is that it was extremely unpleasant, and if any of my readers were
thinking of getting one I cannot recommend it. Zero stars out of however many
stars you want. It doesn’t matter which astronomical scale you’re using. It
gets zero.
Worse was that I had previously
overheard a fellow inmate who’d had one of these, and who was suffering from
urinary retention, so he had to have his put back in. Having one removed was
bad enough. The thought of it going the other way was absolutely terrifying.
The first time I went to the toilet after it was removed was one of the greatest
reliefs of my life, in more than one sense of the term.
I must now, and with great regret,
report that I failed to complete the To Do List from my last post. I told the
surgeon that he got up my nose, and actually managed to use the ‘Lumbar Jack’
one several times on different nurses, with varying degrees of success. The
rest, I am sad to say, went unused.
I was eventually judged fit to return to
civilised, law-abiding society, given my parole and released back into the
wild. As a parting gift, they presented me with a bag containing various drugs
and medicines. What they did not present me with was a means of getting home.
As it was, and still feeling very ill, we got a taxi back to the station, and
from there a very busy train. I was still feeling rather feeble, dizzy and
nauseous, and this journey was hellish from start to finish. The train driver,
aware that I was on board and holding a severe grudge against me for reasons
unknown, deliberately chose the bumpiest possible route to ensure that his or
her section of the journey was as bad as they could make it. Despite their best efforts I
survived the journey. A friend met us at the station, and drove us home,
rendering the last portion of the trip as minimally hellish as possible.
I got home and collapsed onto the sofa
to begin my convalescence away from interrogative nurses and breakfasts
that you can only have in the afternoon. However, it seemed that the NHS had
not heard the last of me, as I will relate in my next post.
