Diary of an impatient patient

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Nigel Hurll

This is a medical blast from the past – April 2010, to be precise. To cut a long story short for the uninitiated (and avoiding mentioning some unsavoury details by the use of cryptic rhyming clues), they found a [rhymes with a word meaning unsubstantiated gossip] in my [rhymes with the name of any one of a,e,i,o,u] and surgery has been undertaken to remove it. It seems all is clear but, as a precaution against any recurrence, I will be having to undergo a home-based course of (colloquial shortened version) [rhymes with the name of the captain of Jules Verne’s submarine Nautilus] for a period of 24 weeks, starting about the middle of June. I understand that the only possible side effects of this treatment are soreness in the mouth, hands and feet. My hair won’t even fall out – result!

Read on for a diarised summary of my NHS experience. I should emphasise that the care I received from all the staff at both hospitals was impeccable, even the doctor at Southampton who failed to spot the painfully obvious shortcomings in my ability to enunciate English. You meet him on May 1^st.

Monday 26^th April – Having finally found a suitable vein in which to infuse anaesthetic (four attempts this time!), had operation which the surgeons say was successful. Spend the next few days and sleepless nights recovering, keeping my wife up to date with my ever-shifting location within the ward complex and trying to count the number of holes that have been made in my skin; gave up on the latter exercise.

Friday April 30th – I am to be discharged today and, having phoned home, I walk to the ward window to admire the view of the Wiltshire hills in the distance, which is a bit difficult as this is obscured by three massive air ducts and the hospital laundry. Suddenly experience a severe posterior epistaxis – sounds better than a “bad nosebleed” doesn’t it? Following a quite traumatic visit to ENT, I am told I will have to stay in. Epistaxis occurs on two further occasions, the second (at about 11pm) resulting in the on call Registrar having to drive from Southampton (I am in Salisbury) to take charge, and a blood tranfusion (two units).

Saturday May 1st – Am taken by ambulance to Southampton Hospital (“blue-lighted”, in the vernacular, I understand! Exciting, eh? Not). Spend a total of four days (and more sleepless nights) in Ward F5, not being allowed to eat or drink anything hot because of the epistaxis thing, and not being allowed out of bed for the same reason.

Wondered why, when I arrived, a doctor persistently asked me my name, date of birth, address, normal medication etc. etc. when both my nostrils were completely stuffed with some special material, and covered with a bolster (look it up) which is fixed by tying it behind the ears, all of which prevented coherent speech (and, come to think of it, breathing, coherent or otherwise); wasn’t all this information on my chart? He could have shown me and allowed me to nod confirmation, surely? Seriously. Even my walking stick had a sticky label containing all my personal information affixed to it (this actually proved very useful as one of the nurses at Salisbury kept borrowing it to draw the ward curtains). So I ended up shouting everything to him very slowly (and succinctly, I imagined) but he still entered some medication on the sheet that I had never heard of and asked how to spell Ringwood. It’s only about 15 miles from Southampton; I had had enough by then and I’d only just arrived.

During my stay, nobody seemed to know precisely what new medication I had been prescribed and I was repeatedly asked what certain items had been prescribed for; I explained – somewhat testily on occasion, I have to admit – that, as I hadn’t actually prescribed any medication to myself, I didn’t know, but had been perfectly happy to rely upon the relevant practitioners’ expertise.

Wednesday May 5th – I can go!! They tell me this at 1.30pm and I ring home with the good news. My wife arrives at 3.25pm, having queued for 45 minutes to get into the car park, I get dressed, and all we have to do is wait for my sack of medication to be wheelbarrowed up from Pharmacy. We manage to get away at 6.05pm. No, you needn’t say it, I already have.

So there it is. For the record, I was told (via a leaflet given to me) that, for about two weeks following discharge, I would have to:

Avoid blowing my nose (I don’t think I will ever want to again)
Avoid picking my nose (ditto)
Avoid strenuous exercise (drat!)
Avoid lifting heavy weights, such as a full kettle (it really does say that!)
Keep baths/showers cool (hmmmm, I don’t think so)
Avoid bending over (wilco)

I always do as I’m told.

Naming names

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Nigel Hurll

You may remember me telling you about the young lady BBC News reporter I discovered one day while watching the lunchtime news and whose name is Julia Caesar (sadly, she doesn’t don a toga to deliver her on the spot news reports); I was actually going to ring her Mum and Dad to have a go at them but they are ex directorium.

This reminded me about some names I encountered when (often) thumbing through one of the issues of the erstwhile Kelly’s Directory of Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch. My predecessor at the office where I worked had thoughtfully kept all available editions of that splendid work (1935 to 1973, if I remember rightly) and it had come in useful on countless occasions. It had two sections, one with entries ordered by address which were alphabetical, split into subsections depending which side of the road (geographically) they occupied, and punctuated with indications of when other roads joined the one you were examining – marvellous! The other part was an alphabetical list of occupiers – I’d like to see Mr Kelly try and slip that one past the Information Commissioner and his data protection Nazis.

I find it inconceivable that some parents seem oblivious to the consequences of the names they give their offspring and I could only begin to wonder what abuses and indignities must have been suffered by Mr and Mrs Hood’s son, Robin – it’s true, I tell you! In later life, he would surely have been marched straight to the nick if he gave that name to the police. And I desperately wanted him to marry a woman called Marian, but Mr Kelly stopped producing his magnum opus in 1973 and I never found out whether he did or not. And you can believe me or not, because it’s often a joke, but I really did find a Justin Thyme. And a Carol Carroll: shameful. I wonder what sort of car Austin Healey’s dad drove?

There was actually a national newspaper article on just this subject, which opens with an exhortation to sympathise with the likes of Barb Dwyer and Paige Turner, just two of the many unfortunates who had turned up in a recent survey. Investigations further afield, notably in the US, uncovered such gems as Carrie Oakey and Bill Board.

One of my favourites is the retired airman from Gloucester, Stan Still. He was interviewed by the BBC and explained that his name had been “a blooming millstone around my neck my entire life. When I was in the RAF, my CO used to shout ‘Stan Still, get a move on!’ then roll about laughing. It got hugely boring after a while.”

Finally, a Susan Mee from Doncaster wrote: “I used to be Susan Frame; I am a lawyer and my husband Robert is a banker; now we are Sue Mee, a lawyer, and Rob Mee, a banker.”

There are many others that I’m sorry I never found: Alan Key, Ben Downe, Arabella Fontie, Daley Starr, Minnie Cooper…I could go on.

But I won’t.

Odour Cologne – Phil causes a stink in Germany

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Nigel Hurll

This was the title of another of my larger-than-life stories from the old pub newsletter concerning two of the regulars. Richard owned a local cycle business and Phil worked for him. They both attended a big Cycle Show in Cologne for an entire weekend and, in a frank interview later, Richard told me that, as far as he could tell, there had not been as much damage inflicted on the city since about 1944.

The lack of food provided by their accommodation necessitated frequent visits to a nearby hostelry; this was nothing much more than a convivial local pub in a working-class district and on the first night Phil was soon integrating enthusiastically into German society by engaging the clientele in friendly competition. As the evening wore on, the local artisans were warming to Phil in a big way. They also had difficulty remaining upright. During the course of this revelry, Phil encountered two Bulgarian businessmen who were in town for the same show. This proved commercially fortuitous and a meeting was arranged. Several steins later, however, they joined the rest of the customers under the table and forgot to attend the meeting. That took care of Friday – and about half the native population.

Richard recalled that a particular sight for sore eyes was Phil, arm in arm with several inebriated gentlemen, joining in a mass sing-song. This was no mean feat as Phil neither spoke German nor knew any of the songs but, with true British never-say-die doggedness, he accompanied his new companions by simply singing a variety of English words at random – nobody seemed to notice or care. That took care of Saturday – and the other half of the population. The German Grand Prix happened to be taking place the same weekend and on the following night Phil took on the might of the Cologne Ferrari Supporters Club; that took care of Sunday.

To cap an action-packed weekend, someone at the airport wrongly checked in Richard’s suitcase as Phil’s and Phil was promptly taken into custody by two armed policemen because they thought Richard’s nebulizer was a bomb. Phil told me later (well, this was the gist of it): “I never provoke an antagonistic confrontation with a representative of a law enforcement agency or anyone else who is pointing a gun at me!”

Guess what he actually said.