Wednesday 4 April 2018

Today's Encounter.

I saw the District Nurse driving her car into my garden earlier, so I went to greet her.

‘Are you the woman who should be wearing a bonnet and riding a bike?’ I asked (for such is the classic stereotype of the British District Nurse.)

She stared at me for several awkward seconds before asking:

‘Are you Mr Beazley?’

sigh I’m afraid so.’

You win some, you lose some.

So then she came up to the house and began her ministrations, and what a brilliant ministrator she was in every sense. (Word says there’s no such thing as a ministrator, but I choose to differ.) And I discovered two interesting things in the process.

1. My wounds have healed brilliantly.

2. I’ve lost around 14-20 pounds in weight over recent weeks. I’m now the lightest I’ve been since the age of about 10. I wonder whether being grossly underweight endows you with brilliantly healing skin.

Tomorrow it’s back to the torture ministry to have my catheter removed. (Sorry to be a bit lavatorial again. One’s standards of decorum tend to plunge through a hole in the floor and flop into the basement as soon as medical procedures show their grubby faces.) And I’m going to need luck again, I’m afraid, because catheter removal doesn’t always succeed. They have to keep you incarcerated for hours until they’re sure the relevant parts are working normally. Sometimes they’re not, and then they have to fit another… (Oh, God! I mustn’t even begin to contemplate that eventuality.)

2 comments:

Della said...

Gosh, what an ordeal. But it sounds like you're making good progress! Good luck today, hope all goes well and you can begin to put this chapter behind you. Interesting hospital stories, though :)

JJ said...

False dawn, Della. The catheter removal was disastrous and I was taken back into hospital following mini ER treatment. Seems there's now a new problem with the bladder and so there are more investigations to come. Am home at the moment, but still have this damn catheter in place for probably another two weeks. The original operation seems to be healing fine, but now this new issue is muddying the waters and clouding the future a bit. I expect I'll make a post about it in the fullness of time. Thanks for your concern, though.