surgery | Words on the Street

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.

So there I was on Thursday 11th December a few years ago, finally, in hospital, full of apprehension because it would be the first time I would ever be confined in one overnight; it wasn’t so much the fear of undergoing surgery, more the indignities I could potentially suffer. I mean, your private functions go out the window, don’t they? No, you know what I mean, I had my own side room with a shower and toilet – anyway, the window didn’t open wide enough.

I had received a letter instructing me to make my way to a certain ward at four o’clock but we were a little early, having arrived just after half-past three. We were shown into one of the ward bays (which are a pretty good size, more or less circular and contain four beds and a small seating area with a view of rolling countryside and Car Park 8). At a quarter to five, I was shown to my room by a very pleasant, rather portly Jamaican nurse (in case you were wondering, I mention her ethnicity because I would like you to imagine the way she moved, as if a hidden calypso was dictating her gait) who said “Could you walk this way?” I restrained myself; oh, all right, I didn’t. “I wish I could,” I said, “but I’m hoping to be able to soon.” She had the good grace to chuckle.

The last thing I expected was a room to myself with an en suite shower and toilet and a considerable amount of the aforementioned apprehension swiftly dissipated. We explored the room and I unpacked my nightie etc. Nobody had yet appeared to tell me what to expect but Sheila had to get home so she left at about a quarter past five and I was left twiddling my thumbs (as far as I was physically able to), wondering what I should or shouldn’t be doing. I fiddled with the overpriced telephone and TV (the radio service was free), read a bit of my book and pondered over the Telegraph crosswords; I finished those at about twenty past seven and, shortly after this – hurrah! – a nurse came in and took my blood pressure and temperature. I thought it would be nice to know the forthcoming routine so I interrupted her conveyor belt and asked if that was all that was going to happen for the rest of the night. “Yes,” she answered. Lie.

I got into bed quite early, read a bit more and fell asleep unusually early for me, at about ten, but was awoken at midnight by the aforementioned nurse – the mendacious little minx – who visited again to do my “obs” (you do slip into the jargon quite quickly – “obs”, “meds”, “bedpan” etc.

There was no further interruption until twenty to four when the nurse came in to take my jug of water away (you are allowed fluids only up to two hours before surgery but I had been told earlier that I would be able to have a couple of sips to take my normal blood pressure medication). She obviously didn’t trust me and said, “I have to do this because you’re going to theatre in the morning.” This was the first I’d heard of it; it made good sense, though, as I was already there but nobody had confirmed when I was going until then. “I can have a little with my medication, though, can’t I?” “Oh, no.” “Oh, right.”

A little later (about half-past six), while I was having a wash and the nurse was changing the bedding, another nurse shouted through the door that I could have a couple of small sips of water in order to take my medication. I began to feel like those passengers at Terminal 5 on opening day, except I don’t suppose any of them had numb legs.