Two Operations

I try to stay out of hospitals. I certainly don’t recommend any for an overnight
stay. For the first ten years I only made the occasional brief visit to casualty
, once for a pencil in my eyelid and another for stitches after kneeling on brok
en glass. Like most of my generation I did start off in a hospital. In fact I
started off quite well in a small hospital maternity unit in Forest Gate weighin
g a bonny 7lbs 9oz. My wife was also born there. (She was 8lbs but you wouldn’t t
hink it to see her now.) There were only two delivery beds at Forest Gate and it
is a true measure of the two degrees of separation theory that she and I were d
estined to share the same bed given the likelihood that we started off in the sa
me bed. I consider this idea romantic; Mrs Wood however merely shrugs at the ide
a.
My first stay overnight in hospital was at the East Ham Memorial Hospita
l. This did prove to be romantic. It is here while I was recovering from havin
g my appendix removed that I first fell in love. I was ten. I was about to start
my last year at primary school but my appendix had other ideas. After a home v
isit by the Dr I was whisked off the two miles to hospital in my Dad’s Ford van an
d into surgery. My first love was in the bed next to me and called Susan. She ha
d spent a good deal of time in and out of hospital and knew the ropes. I didn’t re
alise this twelve year old girl was reassuring me, I thought she was interested
in me. She would play cards with me, chat about her pets, her favourite hospital
food and the nurses that she hated. I never really knew what was wrong with he
r except that she couldn’t walk. I remember that I gave her a kiss goodbye when I
was discharged, just a peck on the cheek like you would your Mum, but that was
it, the first kiss. I promised I would come back and see her soon. I never did
. Ten year old boys then, as now, are often governed by what Mum organises for
you. A social trip to the hospital could not be fitted into the agenda. She had
my younger brother to get to school and back, her part time work, my Dad on shif
ts and me to nurse filling her day. We did go back to the hospital’s day clinic a
lmost two weeks later to have the staples removed from my tummy. Susan was nowh
ere to be seen. I was almost over her by then anyway and the pain from having fi
ve barbed staples removed drove all thought of her from my mind. I didn’t know it
then but I would soon be a lot more involved with Lynne Bunyan who I would be s
itting next to in Mr Wise’s class.
During the next 20 years I only attended hospital for the occasional con
cussion following a rugby match and for the birth of my first two children. ‘Two
lovely girls’ I told the Dr, ‘Who could ask for more?’ I certainly wasn’t going to ask
for any more. With Mrs Wood at 26 facing the prospect of her spending her remain
ing childbearing years on the pill I had visited my Dr to discuss the option of
having a vasectomy. He was impressed at my matter-of-factness, noted that we ha
d thought the consequences through and reached for the ledger that would reveal
when the deed could be scheduled for.
“Let’s see, we’re November now, about a four week wait usually “he said, glancin
g up reassuringly “so we should be looking at some time just before Christmas...oh
dear”.
The prospect of a Christmas convalescing away from the fire station for a change
was both realised and dashed in the same sentence.
“It appears your surgeon has taken December off, either a trip to the Punj
ab with the Red Cross or to his family in the Bahamas. We’ll put you on the list f
or January.”
I’m not entirely certain in what circumstances we conceived David that Christmas,
but given such an over indulgent holiday it’s not difficult to forget or regurgita
te the occasional tablet that you should have taken. Christmas is certainly one
of those times of year when the opportunity for procreation arises and it was q
uite an amused Dr who suggested we might now want to delay the procedure when I
told him we were now expecting our third child.
“Still want to go ahead with it? There is a delay after the op when you st
ill have to take precautions, unless of course your partner is pregnant. This mi
ght work out quite well considering.” He said.
The day clinic was ten minutes walk from our house. I went through the ‘Name, dat
e of birth and post code routine, and the ‘which leg is it we are taking off today
?’ routine and was led behind a screen. I was given a hospital gown to put on and
a disposable razor for taking my downstairs jungle off. I had taken care of all
that I told them. I was still in a ‘this is no big deal’ mood when I was shown int
o the operating room. It was definitely a room and not a theatre. There was a
proper operating table and a big light over it but it looked like the room could
just as easily have a couple of desks in it and a pot plant in the corner. I l
ooked at the ceiling from the table and noticed the paint was flaking. There wa
s no anaesthetist, no bottles of gas or monitors beeping my heart rate just a tr
ay of instruments, covered with paper. The assistant nurse lifted my gown witho
ut comment, took a large sponge with very warm water and iodine and laid it on m
y sack. A nice rush of warm blood shot round my body from my groin as the fluid
relaxed the sack enough that the contents could be easily discerned. I hadn’t an
ticipated what happened next. The surgeon plucked at one of the pipes through t
he sack wall, took a hypodermic filled with anaesthetic and squeezed it all in.
My eyes filled with tears from the pain, the sort of pain that makes others win
ce to see it, and then the pain was gone. There was a quick scalpel through the
sack, literally a snip of scissors through the pipe, a couple of dissolvable su
tures to close the pipe ends back on themselves and a stitch to close the wound.
This was repeated on the other side of the sack and was all over in about ten
minutes. As I sat up I gazed down at what looked like a very small oven ready c
hicken next to a stack of fleshy buttons. Apart from this nakedness everything
felt the same. I was now a Jaffa.
The recovery room was comfy, with a big leather reclining armchair to wait in wh
ile I contemplated if I would walk home or not.
1970 Appendectomy 1992 Vasectomy 1994 rhinoplasty 1999 Left wrist cyst removal 2
006 left shoulder arthroscopy 2008 right shoulder arthroscopy 2009 hernia diagno
sed