The Star Wars Bar

THE STAR WARS BAR

The odds against every alien and mutant from the bar scene in Star Wars, being admitted to the same hospital are enormous. Having eventually been admitted for my operation (they found the bed and it was under the blankets as I suspected) I found myself in a ward with only four people. Operation about 4pm. The anaesthetist had the strongest Belgian accent I have ever heard and as I have spent a lot of time with Belgians, Dutch and Germans in recent years I commented on this to him. My very firm advice is not to comment on a Belgians' accent when he is about to decide just how deep a sleep to put you into - particularly when he is Dutch! I really don't think he could have been more upset if I had called his mother a prostitute and a male one at that. My surgeon has insisted that at no point did he find it necessary to punch me during the operation, the nurses I saw all looked fairly slight of build and seemed quite pleasant, so I'm pretty sure I know who to blame for the fact that I woke up with a fat lip. They found not one but four holes (hernia) and stitched and duly patched me up. Apart from the fact that I woke up feeling like I had spent a pleasant evening with Mike Tyson, all went well. Pain is a very strange phenomenon because the apprehension of it is far worse than the actual thing and here's how I have learnt to deal with it. Let it be someone else's pain. The reason I can laugh at my situation is that it isn't me that has the problems. It's the other me. I don't think I ever took a conscious decision to do this and maybe it developed when the morphine was playing with my brain cells but one me has the pain and tries to deal with it whilst the other me is completely pain free and happy. I don't even feel sorry for the other me because it's not my problem. This is the dominant me. I guess it isn't quite normal to decide to have multiple personality disorder but extreme circumstances require radical solutions and I'm sure this can work for a lot of people. Loads of people have said "you're so brave", "I don't know how you do it" etc. Not true. It's not me, it's the other me and I very rarely let that me talk. So far I have kept this from the medical profession because admission to a secure psychiatric unit wouldn't put either me in a good mood.

What of the NHS?  I found that when I vacated my bed there were 7, yes 7 people waiting to get into it.  6 were going to be disappointed.  The nursing and auxiliary staff were simply superb (no need to mention surgical - I'm alive, home, stitched up and was unconscious when I met most of them).  Nothing was too much trouble and for the most part THEY SMILED.  One nurse even laughed when she removed my drip and I had the discourtesy to squirt a lot of blood all over her clothing. I left feeling I had made some friends.  That's how it should be but I think it is often not the case.  Thanks to all of them - even the Belg Dutch guy.