“Our blood pressure is a little high this morning” exclaimed Nurse Annie with more than a small amount of concern in her tone.
“I’m hardly surprised!” I respond (in my imagination only) “you’ve just shaved me from anus to ankle and made me put on the equivalent of a dish cloth with armholes but no fastenings and made me lay in a public ward with my family jewels on display and then put a child’s blood pressure cuff onto my Bingo Wings!”
“Maybe we should try another arm?”
“Good idea, let’s choose one of yours.”
Wrongly, I had made some assumptions about a nurse who carried the name badge of ‘Annie’.
To my mind Ann, or Anne belongs to a big-bosomed, business-like no-nonsense nurse. Annette, on the other hand, conjures up thoughts of a harsh dominatrix who enjoys inflicting pain and suffering.
Annie is fun, frivolous and flirty with a ready smile and a quick wit. Annie Get Your Gun.
Clearly this is wrong. My Nurse Annie went on to explain in all seriousness that it would only be possible to obtain MY blood pressure reading by using one or other of MY arms.
The second arm and the second reading proved to be slightly more acceptable despite me fretting as to how complete my humiliation would be if all this demeaning assault had been for no purpose and my operation was going to be postponed because a case of embarrassment had brought on hypertension in me.
Nurse Annie left me on the bed with a pillow over my groin contemplating my next few hours, days and months.
By any standards, this was a minor operation to improve a skeletal problem – OK let me say it: to improve the performance of a dodgy knee, a condition that seems to run (well, limp) in my family. It wasn’t a tumour, it wasn’t a blockage, it wasn’t very invasive, and the recovery would be rapid in comparison with other procedures I had been through. In fact, I rather felt that they were only giving me a general anaesthetic because I am a bit of a wimp. Hard men probably only went for a local anaesthetic and Sylvester Stallone probably just bit down hard on a twig!
I was just lulling myself into my happy place when the anaesthetist came through and checked that I was who I claimed to be. Up to this point it had not occurred to me that I could delegate this pleasure to someone else. What an opportunity missed! Equally, it had never crossed my mind to undergo the surgery for someone else!
He ensured that we were in agreement about which knee they would operate on to remove the damaged cartilage. I pointed out that the other knee is a prosthetic and finding cartilage there might be a challenge.
“You’d be surprised what we can do these days” he informed me, his comment left hanging in the atmosphere between us.
My mind raced as I tried to imagine the surprise that they would have had when they stuck their camera into my false knee looking for damaged tissue. It would definitely blunt their scalpel, that’s for sure!
“Do you have any adverse reaction to anaesthetic usually?” he enquired.
“I sleepwalk” I advised him in a matter-of-fact tone.
He scrutinised my face for the punchline and seemed disappointed when there was none.
“What, you get up off the operating table and stroll around?” he smirked.
“No, I suspect that you would make that pretty difficult for me by sawing through my femur,” I responded, “it generally occurs in recovery or soon after my return to the ward. One time they found me at the end of my bed restrained by the drains and tubes that you had inserted in various parts of my body. Another time they found me in the shower.”
My anaesthetist, a handsome, elegant young man from the subcontinent, paled to a complexion akin to an English tourist on the first day of his summer holiday in Skegness. He rushed to the nearest phone and spoke into it with the rapidity of a submachine gun, looking in my direction from time to time. He replaced the handset facing away from me and stood for a couple of seconds before turning to me with a rictus grin on his face.
“Oh yes, Mr Ward, we have these things happen all the time. We will deal with it no problem if and when it arises. See you in theatre.” With that he strode off, stalling only long enough to talk to three nurses, nodding in my direction as he did so. All three nurses looked across at me. Two of them laughed uproariously as they observed me from a distance; Nurse Annie was still looking for the joke.
An anxious hour later a porter showed up looking to take me through to theatre. He was ambushed by the two nurses who spoke to him briefly. I heard him say something that sounded like ‘handcuffs’ before heading towards me.
The journey across the corridor was achieved effortlessly apart from a small matter of ‘trolley rage’ as my porter, lets call him ‘Pete’, attempted to manoeuvre me through the double doors ahead of his colleague coming in the opposite direction. Things could have turned nasty until it was clear that Pete had something like ten stone advantage over his adversary who reversed his trolley out of harm’s way, allowing us full access to the theatre ante room.
Pete entertained me with small talk about how few trips he could do in a typical working day simply by fetching patients before they were called and thus being forced to wait with them until he could do a handover.
“Dunno why they don’t all do it!” he remarked with incredulity, “some of ‘em think they get more respect for running around like the Red Arrows with their trolleys. As if!”
As I lay on my temporary bed, Pete attempted to distract me from my impending procedure by showing me his array of tattoos starting with a heart on his left forearm.
“It’s clever, this one. See the wording? C-O-N-C-E-R-T-I-N-A. Get it? ‘Concertina’! It’s another name for an accordion, like a squeeze-box. Want to know why?”
I nodded more in confusion than curiosity.
“See, I had this girl called Tina and I had the tattoo done when we were all loved-up. Then she ran off with my best mate. Well, I say ‘ran off’ but she was such a porker it was more like ‘waddled off’ to be honest”
“So, I see the need to get rid of the name Tina, but why ‘concertina’?” I enquired.
“So, I’ve got this lovely new girl. Beryl is her name.”
My brow furrowed still deeper – had they already dispensed the sedative without my noticing?
“Beryl’s got these two outstanding assets, if you get my drift. I love ‘em! And she loves that I love them. So, I call her my squeeze-box, but she says that I have to keep that private, like, just between the pair of us. And she thinks the word ‘concertina’ is just our secret code because of her squeeze-box. She loves that I did that just for her. She thinks the reason the word isn’t right inside the heart is because I used a dodgy tattoo-ist, and I’m not gonna tell her any different, am I?”
I started to warm to Pete and his scally-waggery, but our time together was rapidly coming to a close.
My anaesthetist came in and looked at my file and again I heard the word ‘handcuffs’ bandied around – I was beginning to wish I hadn’t mentioned my somnambulism and just leave them to deal with my wandering around with my backside hanging out, if and when it arose.
I had assumed that my raised blood pressure would make finding a vein so much easier. How wrong I was. Instead, the initial needle insertion was slightly off target and a lot of prodding and poking was needed before the vein was pierced and the anaesthetic was pumped into my arm. A discussion was started about whether or not I would need a face-mask to provide gas and air. I started to offer my view on the subject………
I lay in a spartan and brightly lit room, mouth as dry as a nun’s gusset and gasping for a drink. I decided to make myself a coffee and started to swing my legs off the bed when two things happened at once. First, the bulky bandaging around my right knee prevented me from bending the leg. Second, like a sprinter on the starting blocks, a nurse ran over to me in seconds before my shoulder blades left the mattress and eased me back into the bed.
“Not yet, lovely, you’re still asleep, dear!”