Hospital Snippets

Actual conversations I had with hospital staff...


‘How’s the pain, Tom?’

‘First Class, best I’ve had’

‘Good.  Now you will ask me if there is anything you need?’

‘Well I could do with the gentle application of a soothing cream…’

‘You’d like cream for your leg?’

‘Well, you can use trifle if you like, I was just hoping you’d give me a massage.’

 

During a discussion on oral pain killer doses

‘You’re not very big, Thomas’

‘Not even my wife would be inconsiderate enough to make such a deeply personal observation.’

 

Very attractive female anaesthetist just before I go into theatre:

‘I am going to give you a powerful pain killer,’ Mr. Gowans.

‘Will it take me to a nice place and make me feel all warm and fuzzy?’

(laughing) ‘Yes, Mr Gowans, I’m sure it will.  In a minute I will give you another injection to make you sleep.’

‘How long before I am asleep?’

‘Only five or ten seconds’

‘If in that time I made a remark to you laced with sexual innuendo would the judge at my sexual harassment trial consider the drugs a mitigating factor in my defence?’

 

‘I know it must seem a little silly but you do understand why we put a name band on each wrist, Mr. Gowans?’

‘In case I misplace one of my arms?’

‘No, silly!’

‘I was just joking, of course I know, it is for administrative reasons.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yes, one tag stays with the body and the other goes back to the NHS war graves commission marked as killed in action.’

 

While inserting a cannula

‘Now don’t go asking me to hook you up to a bottle of whisky or anything like that, Mr, Gowans, I have heard them all before.’

‘Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of certain well known hallucinogens fashionable among the sixties celebrity chic…’

 

While checking my wrist band before administering intravenous drugs

‘Can I just check your name, please?’

‘Thomas Gowans’

‘Why does it say Thomas Andrew?’ 

(My name is Thomas Andrew Gowans)

‘Andrew is my maiden name, if you look on the next line down, it says Gowans, that’s my surname now that I am married.’

 

The surgeon in A&E having performed an initial debridement of the wound and having marked the extent of the infection and having informed me that if in two hours the infection had spread beyond the marked boundary he would operate immediately and remove a lot more flesh than that and, should he feel it warranted, would not bother to halt the procedure just to wake me up and tell me he was going to amputate my leg

‘I’m sorry that’s a bit blunt but that’s just the way I am.’

‘That’s alright Doctor, I am sure the hospital has a department well versed in providing emotional counselling to your patients’

 

While having a vacuum dressing removed without anaesthetic

‘Oh my God, I can’t watch!’ (This is the nurse speaking), ‘Does it hurt?’

‘It is a little uncomfortable’

‘Is that all?  Gosh, I thought you’d be in agony!’

 

Questions before going down to theatre (bearing in mind I have been three days nil by mouth waiting for a slot)

‘Have you any loose teeth, dentures, caps or crowns?’

‘I have a loose tooth at the back here and a false one screwed in here.’

‘Oh,’

‘Why, is that a problem?’

‘It is.  You see we have to put in a breathing tube and we cannot afford the risk of any loose object causing an obstruction.’

‘Hang on a sec, I have completely misunderstood this question.  Can we go back?  Ask me the question again.’

‘Have you any loose teeth, dentures, caps or crowns?’

‘No.’


OK,OK, I can see everyone is less interested in my wit and more in the gory details so an update.  All looks good, I feel great.  They still do not know exactly what caused it but they now have me on the right antibiotics and signs of infection are receding.  I am waiting for the plastics people to decide what happens to me next but it will likely mean me being discharged from this hospital and being transferred to the Royal Free Hospital where they will do skin grafts or whatever reconstructive surgery they feel appropriate and then, once they are sure the graft has taken and remains free of infection, I will be discharged and treated as an outpatient until I am fit enough to travel back to Angola.

To keep you ghouls happy, a short video of the last stages of me removing my own vacuum dressing yesterday: