A Brief Brush with a Nurse Called Elaine.

I had a telephone consultation with a Senior Specialist urology nurse from the Royal Derby Hospital today. (Senior Specialist nurses are virtually doctors these days, and my attitude to the fact is ambivalent. I like to think of nurses as surrogate mothers who tend to your physical and emotional needs as your own mother did when you were a little boy, but never mind. Life moves on and ’twas ever thus.)

She began by asking me how I was feeling generally. I told her that I was malfunctioning literally from head to toe, but I wouldn’t bore her with the details since she wouldn’t want to know. She did want to know, she said, and so I wasted five minutes of her valuable time giving her the briefest run down I could manage. She listened patiently and then moved on (I assume my multifarious health issues were not germane to her professional interest, which just goes to demonstrate that I can be right occasionally.)

Her call was all to do with my impending next set of CT scans (which I knew already) in preparation for which I had submitted urine and blood samples. She told me that the urine sample was clear of any little nasties (like microscopic cancerous bits), and my blood test indicated that my remaining kidney was functioning precisely as kidneys are supposed to function. So now I can be booked in for the scans, and there you have it.

Her name was Elaine, she was from Northern Ireland, was very lovely and patient and friendly, and I felt better already, don’t you know. End of story.

(I wonder whether Elaine is an alternative form of Helen – or Hélène if you happen to be French. I think I wrote a post once about meeting the lovely Hélène from Le Puy. I’m sure I did. She wasn’t a nurse though, she was an English teacher. Does that make a difference?)