Never Hurts, Silly! (Said Grace) (NHS in general)

Member Name: Muffin_the_Mule

Product:	NHS in general
Date:	17/05/02 (350 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I get Manly Scars

Disadvantages: Scarlet Gold runs like a river down your Chest.

There are people in this world who live by the saying
"My body is a Temple"
Most of these people have gym memberships, a disposable income, and partially-baggy tie-dye pants. They also have stories of woe, about how they were the skinny kid in school, until they discovered that by lifting weights and eating the entire cabbage export of Ecuador, they could become the lords of the Sun-domes and silver-grey XR3i cabriolets.

I am not one of these people.
My tale of gym membership is a fable that even aesop would have difficulty in finding the silver lining to, my disposable income is something I yearn for, and in the meantime I pretend I have one, much to the annoyance of the man at the National Westminster.
My body Isn't a Temple, or even a Kingdom Hall. It's a Civil War.
My left arm, for the past 30 months has been campaigning for independence from the rest of my torso.
The General in this bodily tug 0' war is my Shoulder.

General Shoulder's plan has been to simply throw out my shoulder when it thinks I won't notice. Be this during a game of football, carrying food across McDonald's busy car park, or cunningly, in my sleep.

The first act of skeletal mutiny was in 1999, during a game of cricket. I was batting, the bowler was bowling. That's how you get the best games of cricket.
The bowler bowled (I hope you're following here) and I was shaping to hit the best hook shot of all time. It would have bounced off the Mir Space station if I'd connected properly.
Unfortunately for me, but Luckily for the Russian Space program, I missed the ball, but nobody laughed at my airshot because they could see that my left arm had remarkably managed to turn nearly 180 degrees an moved a good 4 inches around to the front of my body, at the same time as making a lovely crunchy noise.

General Shoulder had made a bid for a left arm republic, but, (and this is the reason ther
e are few body parts in the British army who hold ranks independent from their owners), he had forgotten to recruit my skin, and all I ended up with was a dislocated (Missing in action) shoulder.

After a helpful on-scene nurse kindly relocated my shoulder in the wrong way, I ended up in the Waiting room for 'Clinic 10' formally known as the Fracture Clinic in my Local General Hospital.

My first consultation resulted in a second consultation being arranged for 6 months later in the year. This was a pattern that I would follow for 2 years, until May 2001, where my surgeon, who I can only imagine grew tired of the fact that I actually turned up to every appointment, decided it was time for me to join the waiting list for shoulder surgery.
Mr Muddu, my surgeon, was attempting a peace deal, the Kofi Annan of my upper body, if you like.

I received a letter in October 2001, advising that I was going to go into hospital for a Saline Clean and Arthroscopy of my shoulder joint.

A good wash and internal perv with a camera then.

All I had to do was wait.
6 to 8 weeks the first letter said. I'll be out and fit again ready for New Year then. Wonderful.

14 days into the 8th week of waiting, I called the hospital for an update.

Six to eight weeks, actually means 3 to 6 months. I didn't know that and felt a little bit daft when the nurse told me.

My time came in May. May 5th to be precise. Only 2 months into my last month of waiting, I was happy.

Basically, and really it is, you get a letter describing what time you have to be there for, who you will see, and what the basic rules after surgery will be.
You also get a booklet called "Pain Relief After Surgery" reassuringly written by "The Acute Pain Service"
This helpful guide includes advice and explanations on all sorts of pain-reducing measures, such as Intra-Muscular Injections (those Big Needle
s) or Epidural Analgesia (Is it cruel to want to see a 100 meter sprint involving the freshly epiduralled - Imagine the hilarity)


Just in case you weren't sure before hand, after reading the tips book, you damn sure know that somewhere along the line, this is going to hurt.
May 5th. The day of my acute pain. I felt none. Not even a twinge.

This is because I rang the ward at 7 am (bleary and grouchy, yet oddly sexy voice incurred by little sleep due to adrenalin disturbing me the night previously.) only to be informed that my operation had been cancelled due to lack of beds.

I offered my inflatable Lilo, but they wouldn't accept it.

Never fear. Once fate deals you the card of post-operative pain, you're guaranteed to get it sooner rather than later. My sooner was 10 days after the latter's later.
May 15th was the new D-Day in my timetable.
The profile-page observant of you will note how close to my birthday this was. They did it on purpose I'm certain.

7.30am I arrived at ward 3.
It was before the official wake up time, so everywhere was dimly lit, and the nurses shuffled quietly around.
The first thing I noticed was a sleeping lady in a bed, in the corridor. I would later learn that this lady was called 'Lucy' and was infamous throughout the entire ward for getting up during the night and causing general havoc.
Lucy the Terrible was 94 years old.

I was shown to my bed, encouragingly it was bed 13.
As the clock turned 8am and the neon lights made me half blind, I noticed that the average age of my fellow wardonians was a little higher than one might have anticipated.
If there is ever a ward where those deemed too old for the geriatric ward are sent, it's Ward 3. I met most of the inhabitants fairly quickly.

One felt so comfortable with my presence that she had the nurses close her cubicle curtain (almost fully) and she had a Po
o. Yesterday was Egg Mayonnaise I think.

My first encounter with a patient called Grace is when she popped her head into my curtain.
(drawn round me to make it a bit more 'private' for the only young male in the 'Change-of-Decade veterans' females ward - especially as some of those who had been for a shower hadn't managed to dress themselves entirely successfully before they came back to bed)
Grace then turned to announce to the ward that

"we've got a young one"

and I suddenly felt even more vulnerable than the bum-showing gown I was dressed in had made me.

You get the obligatory visits from the staff nurse who will be responsible for you whilst you are on the ward, then a visit from the Anaesthetist, who asks pretty much the same questions as the nurse, but doesn't give you the lovely friendship band, and then your consultant comes to remind himself exactly what he'll do, by marking you ever so clearly with a black marker.
A nice big arrow on the back of my wrist for me.

Eventually, you are taken down to theatre and the really really sexy nurse starts sticking the heart monitors on you, making small talk about where you work and so on, safe in the knowledge you'll be drugged in 5 seconds and so will never have the opportunity to ask her out.

Here I can say to all the men - If you think that Beer-Goggles work wonders for the standard of local totty in your pubs and clubs, you really should try morphine*.
I had Marilyn Munroe stroking my hair, until I gathered my senses and realised it was my chum Grace and I was back on the Ward.

I was sent home 4 hours later, after being given (yep, you guessed) an Egg Mayo muffin and Vanilla Ice cream to eat. I wasn't allowed to operate machinery, drive a car, ride public transport, or wash up for the day.

The doctor thinks I'll never ever be able to wash up again, and I'm distraugh
t that my friends will have to make special trips to my house to do it for me, but C'est la Vie.

Arthroscopy is a fairly minor prelude to more serious future operations, but I still managed to lose half a pint of blood during and after this one, so I'm now going to make an appeal to all of you out there who don?t already donate blood, to get to your local blood Donor and give some. I gave some to the floor, and to a nurses uniform from 4 feet away, so I'm sure you could get a little bit into a bag. They give you free cups of Tea. And you might save my Life, and prevent another attempted Mutiny.





(* Please don't take morphine for recreational purposes. You'll only regret marrying her.)

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