I’m dotting about a bit randomly at the moment, partly to get my mind off the memories that I’m deliberately digging up for the book, tell you what those demons had better damn well be dead when I get it finished.
After moving to London in 1975 I found myself in the care of an orthopaedic consultant who decided that my knee problem needed surgery and later that year I had the first operation. Despite being such an accident prone boy I’d not actually been in hospital since the entertaining affair of the tonsils so pretty well everything that happened was completely new.
It all started to go pear-shaped when the anaesthetist came to see me the day I was admitted. The problem was my big sister had made me a very chunky towelling dressing gown for my birthday and sitting in a chair wearing it I looked as though I was average weight for five foot ten so he prescribed the anaesthetic on that not bothering to have me weighed in those days it was all calculated by weight.
The pre-med, about an hour before theatre, was an injection that a lot of people would pay big money for and by the time the trolley arrived I was completely off my head, lying there looking up at the strip lights passing overhead was like a really crappy hospital drama. To make things worse after I’d been wired up and had an oxygen mask on the anaesthetist came up with a syringe, picked up my wrist and said, I swear that this is true, the immortal line “just a little prick in your hand, son” I was in hysterics and they had to up the level of gas to oxygen to stop me, then the world went fuzzy, dark and out.
I woke up screaming with pain being cuddled to the most immense bosom I’ve ever been anywhere near and a strange voice murmuring comforting things in my ear calling me “baby boy” and things like that. When I got my eyes open I could just about make out the very comforting and motherly face of the West Indian nurse who was holding me but who then unceremoniously stabbed a needle into my bum and I was asleep again.
I shouldn’t have woken up on the ward, I should have been in the recovery room surrounded by machines and very impersonal efficient nurses but because my weight had been massively overestimated I’d been over anaesthetised and they couldn’t wake me so, once all the readings were normal, decided it was safe for me to go back upstairs. On the plus side waking up in the arms of a surrogate mother was very reassuring.
There’s a second part to this comedy but that’s enough for now
Love
OH my God – this post shows some of the reason why hospitals scare me!
Kate xx
Frightening eh?
Mac
You’re lucky you came out!
Wait until part 2, survival is even more miraculous!
Malcolm
You sure this really was a hospital? Sounds like… God knows what. I’m convinced the vets would have provided better care for you!
Love
Daniel
I think it was a hospital, at least they said it was
I once woke up it the middle of surgery, because they were afraid to over medicate me….. was not nice at all, as it was sinus surgery…