So there I was finally in hospital and with pain relief. My next door neighbour appeared. He happens to be a bone surgeon working in the hospital, how handy is that? He does legs, however, not arms, but he advised me that the break was a very bad one, and he knows I make things all the time, as he has had some of them, so he said to wait as there was only one man in the hospital who was good enough to restore me to my usual dexterity.
So when someone popped up later in the day to prep me for surgery I refused point blank. Which is how I let myself in for hanging around for most of a week with a very broken arm until the right man was available to stick me back together. I got through a lot of morphine and a lot of cups of tea.
On Thursday the anaesthetist popped by to discuss pain relief after the operation. Here’s a rule for life: do not discuss future possible pain when you are chock full of morphine. You will underestimate it. Very. A lot. Heaps. I know I did. The anaesthetist explained that there would be pain because all the nerves go through the shoulder but that it was possible under anaesthetic to surround the shoulder with numbing injections. This, he said, has only ever been done whilst the patient is unconscious, it cannot be done once the patient is back round again in the land of the living, Never been done. Decide now if you would like that he said. No opined the idiot morphine filled Jane I will not need that, I’ll be fine.
So in the afternoon I took a stroll with a very large nurse to the theatre, right through the hospital, I assume to get my blood flowing. I told her how I was the third person in the world to see Legionella Pneumophila, which is the item responsible for Legionnaires Disease. How that happened and how I seem fated to be a bystander in medical history I’ll tell you next time, including how I now understand that there can be so much pain you really can see death as a feasible alternative to going on, going on.
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No count, no Min, the world has gone mad.