The Great Ham Sandwich Fiasco ebbed into the past. Eventually I started to feel less ill.
They noticed that I was dehydrated and put me on a drip for a day or so, and as
I began to feel less unwell, I started being able to eat and drink more. It
took several days for the results of the cisternogram to come through, but they
did and the surgeon decided to operate to replug the hole. Not only would this
require a new fat-graft, but he decided to install a lumbar shunt as well. This
is essentially a pipe that runs from my lower spine into my abdomen to help
drain off CSF while my leak was healing.
The appointed day of the operation came
round, and I was once again decked out in the subtle but stylish surgical
stockings, gown and paper pants. I was loaded onto a trolley and trundled off.
Events proceeded much as before, but this time, the injections into my arm hurt
less. I’d mentioned the pain the first time round to the anaesthetist, and she
went rather more slowly. Again they fitted the mask, and again I began to feel
rather woozy. I lay back, closed my eyes and tried to relax.
After my first operation, I remember
being woken up after the surgery, but this time I have no such memory. I lay
back and let the anaesthetic do its work, then I was awake and back in the High
Dependency Unit, but have no recollection of actually being awakened.
Happily, this time round the operation
had been much shorter, since they neither needed to remove any brainlumps or
collect nasal stem cells for the advancement of Science. As a result, they’d
not felt it necessary to fit me with a catheter, a decision of which I was
extremely glad. On the other hand, the nurses in the HDU seemed oddly obsessed
with my ability or otherwise to pass urine.
They presented me with a bottle and
demanded that I provide some. I explained that I didn’t really need to go at
the moment, but agreed to do my best. However, nothing was forthcoming, and the
nurses exchanged concerned looks that threatened the insertion of pipes where
no pipes ought to be inserted.
Later on, they returned with another
bottle and more demands. I felt more of a need by now, and I was able to
oblige, at least a little bit. They seemed dissatisfied with my performance,
but at least a little mollified. This was repeated a couple more times, eventually
persuading them that everything was operating as it ought.
I had new wounds. One on my stomach
where they’d taken a new and larger piece of fat to plug my head, one on my
spine where they’d inserted the shunt, and another on my side, where I assume
they pulled it through and positioned it. I was informed that there had been a
slight problem with the installation of the shunt. Apparently my liver is not
where it’s supposed to be, or perhaps more accurately is where it isn’t
supposed to be. As a result, in feeding the pipe through my innards, they
managed to stab my liver, producing a small amount of internal bleeding, which
they were able to quickly remedy.
Again I had the wadding up my nose, and
again for the first day or two I felt incredibly thirsty. I was returned to my
ward where I stayed for another week. They decided to pull the wadding out of
my nose again, and a pair of nurses came and spooled it out. Once more it was
deeply uncomfortable, but not as bad as before. The wadding seemed to have been
coated in some sort of slightly oily substance, possibly Vaseline or something
of that ilk, before being inserted, and this obviously stopped it from adhering
to the insides of my head as it was tugged out.
I continued to recover, but I was still expected
to urinate into a bottle and present it to the nurses. This was a process I
found not only embarrassing but extremely inconvenient, especially if there
wasn’t a nurse immediately around once one had finished. You’d end up standing
rather self-consciously, clutching a cardboard bottle and peering around trying
to catch the eye of any wandering nurse who happened to move into the vicinity.
A week after my surgery, I was feeling a
little better and the Powers decided I could be paroled again. However, based on my
experiences of the journey home during my previous imprisonment, I tried to
persuade the hospital to transport me home. This wasn’t out of laziness or a
desire to drain the NHS’s already scarce resources. I’d not had a pleasant
stay, and I wanted to do everything I could to ensure that it wasn’t repeated.
Initially a helpful and sympathetic
nurse went to enquire and came back to say that it wouldn’t be a problem, and
that the hospital would be able to transport me home. Closer to the date of my
release back into the wild, I asked again, and a different nurse came back to
say that this would not be possible. I explained my situation and
circumstances, and how awful my journey home had been before.
Their suggestion was that I should get a
taxi from Central London to Bedfordshire. I expressed my opinion of this
particular scheme, and suggested that they find an alternative. The fact that
I’d been brought to them in an ambulance apparently held some weight.
Eventually they conceded that perhaps they could arrange to transport me home.
The day arrived, and a chap came with a
wheelchair to collect me. After my illness and operation, I was feeling
sufficiently feeble that this seemed wise, and I didn’t feel too self-conscious
as I was wheeled away. I found that this time, it actually was one of those
mini-bus ambulances, which made me feel slightly better about my decision.
However, it turned out that I was the only passenger, which made me feel worse.
Then, during the journey, the driver told me that he frequently had to go and
collect, and later drop off, a woman from Grimsby, and this made me feel better
again.
The journey home was relatively good.
The driver was friendly, albeit wholly obsessed with sports of varying kinds,
so I didn’t feel able to contribute much to the conversation beyond fencing. On
the way, we passed London Zoo, where I caught a glimpse of the giraffes, and
later on passed through a small village which consisted of nothing but a handful of houses,
a tree nursery and a lap dancing club.
Eventually, we arrived home, and I was
able to bid the driver goodbye and gratefully collapse into bed. I spent the
next several weeks slowly recovering my strength.
One minor hiccup occurred recently. I’d
been given an appointment from a follow-up MRI to check that everything is
still present and correct. I travelled down to London and presented myself. I
filled in the usual form promising that I didn’t have cybernetic limbs or a
metal plate. On the other hand, I did have a shunt, so I mentioned this. I
handed the form to the radiographer, who glanced at it.
“What kind of shunt do you have?”
“Um, I’m not sure. I was definitely told
that it’s one that doesn’t interfere with MRIs though.”
“Ok, I’ll just check.” Off he went.
A little while later, he came back. “We
can’t find anything in your notes about the type of shunt, sorry. We can’t
proceed with the scan.”
“They definitely said it was ok for
MRIs.”
“Yes, but there are some that are only alright
for low magnetic fields, and we need to know before the scan. If it’s the wrong
type, it might shift inside you, and you’ll have to have surgery to put it back
again.”
I immediately had images of my shunt
slithering up my insides and trying to strangle my brain, which didn’t sound
like a Good Thing.
“We do have a note in your file,” he
continued, “but it’s hand-written and none of us can figure out what it says.”
Jokes about doctors’ handwriting immediately surfaced in my mind. Ultimately
though, they couldn’t risk going ahead with the scan, and all because the left
hand can’t read the right hand’s handwriting.
Some time later, I finally had the scan.
Beforehand, I had to have an x-ray to help the radiographers figure out what
kind of shunt they’d stuck inside me. I’m sure that I remember x-rays being a
long and complicated procedure when I broke my arm back in the olden days, but
nowadays they’re over before you realise it’s happening. The photographer puts
you in a suitably artistic posture, disappears into an adjacent room, and you
barely have time to say ‘Cheese!’ before they’re back in again and telling you
to leave.
On the basis of this, they discovered
that my ‘shunt’ is little more than a rubber tube, and that therefore they
could safely load me into the torpedo tube. Once more I donned the earplugs and
headphones, once again my head was wedged and caged, and once more I was loaded
and ready to be launched. My first MRI was an experience full of interest and
curiosity. Having had so many though, the novelty has worn off, and I very
nearly fell asleep in there. Eventually I was released and sent home.
A curious thing happened on my way back
to the station however. A homeless man asked me for some change. Instead, I
offered to buy him something to eat, and we repaired to a nearby café. Here, we
got chatting, and when I told him I was a copywriter, he immediately asked me
if I’d be willing to proofread and edit his five-volume work entitled ‘The
Chronicles of Doom’. I initially assumed that this was a fantasy series, but it
turned out to be a collection of prophecies. The titles included ‘The Cosmic
Clock’, ‘2121AD’, ‘The Chronicles of Doom’, and a couple of others to do with
aliens and doomsday. He offered to send me a synopsis. Intrigued, I gave him my
email address. I will be interested to see if he ever sends me anything, and if
so, what.
I’m now waiting for the results of the
scan, and generally my recovery is going fairly well. My initial feebleness has
passed, and even my headaches are only fairly mild. I’m now back at work,
albeit only part-time to start with. The vision in my left eye doesn’t seem to
have recovered much, if at all, but apparently this could take months, if it
even happens. However, The Thing in My Brain has been defeated, so at least it
won’t get any worse. It’s been a mostly interesting process, but not one that I
think I would either recommend to others or wish to repeat myself.
I will end however by singing the
praises of the NHS. Early on in the process I tried to work out how much
everything would have cost in the US, and was already into the tens of
thousands of dollars even before the first operation. The NHS is by no means
perfect. There’s an awful lot that it could do better and more effectively. It
can be rather slow and inefficient. Often the right hand doesn’t even know
where the left hand is, let alone know what it’s doing. However, it is still a
wonderful service filled with hard-working, compassionate professionals, and it
strikes me as being a good deal better than the alternative.
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