Sanjays Story Part 2

Chapter 2: The feel of the older, central London hospital contrasted with the newly built local hospital I’d just left. It was predominantly built in the Victorian era so the joins in the wooden floorboards set off rhythmic patterns of sound as my trolley-bed wheeled its way to the lifts. My first time in a lift while flat on my back staring at the ceiling, another rather unwelcome first time I grumbled to myself.

In the ward, which was to be my home for more than a week, I was assigned a bed in the high dependency part, by the window overlooking the Thames with the houses of Parliament on the other side of the river. It was just as well the view could afford me some distraction from matters closer to hand as minutes after I’d taken up my allocated space a flurry of activity from nurses and orderlies resulted in a collection of monitors, displays and drips being connected to me.

A large drip was taken from my left forearm, courtesy of an insertion point made by the African orderly at the local hospital that morning and this was connected to a drip trolley, something that was to be my companion for a few days at least.

A blood pressure armband was then attached to my other arm. I noticed the catheter in my groin was still in place yet surely this could be removed now, having served its purpose? In my dazed condition querying procedure seemed the last thing I wanted to start.

Having debated whether to raise this issue I was then alone and in a fairly empty part of the ward. After fiddling with the angle alteration aspect of the motorised bed - I found the forty degree angle with the horizontal the best - I settled down. Time to reflect and take stock.

But I didn’t want to think too deeply about my predicament!

My thoughts turned to people who needed to know what had happened. Firstly my wife had to be told. I caught the eye of the pleasant-looking blonde nurse assigned to my part of the ward and passed on my wife’s mobile number. Amongst all the filipino, african and oriental staff she stood out as an English rose. I hoped she would be as tactful as possible on updating my wife on events after my angiogram. Heaven knows what effect receiving that news would have on her. I did come to learn that there was much wailing and tears at my parents house when she would break the news to them and my sisters.

Time then slowed while I waited to be told what was to happen, only the metronomic inflation of the blood pressure armband, every thirty minutes at ten minutes and forty minutes past the hour, kept me company while I waited. Marking time, using hours as a time frame rather than bars of music. The bleeps and pips that were the backdrop of any hospital ward providing the tonal quality of the strange music of the hospital concert I was to enjoy for a while longer, day and night.

It was late afternoon when a group of doctors, trainees, juniors and a registrar arrived at my bed. As I’d stabilised I would not now be operated on till the day after tomorrow. Any lingering hope there was that surgery would not be required was ended there. On the bright side – if such a side was at all possible in such a situation – the extra days preparation possible, both for me physically and the operating team, would lead to a “more favourable outcome”, as the Registrar so quaintly put it.

So that was it, in less than two days I would be split open, from neck to navel, and operated on to give me a chance of life, a life under the threat of a heart attack or stroke. I certainly would not be in the office tomorrow! Perhaps I’d better impose on the english rose nurse I’d ask previously to relay the news to my manager at work.

“Excuse me, I need you to tell my office what’s happened”. Having supplied the name and number she’d need I attempted to explain further, “Can you tell him that……..well what’s happened?” as I felt too drained to provide more detail. Much to my annoyance once my manager had been contacted he even had the cheek to ask me a work related question! One had to laugh at the incongruity of his priorities.

Drained and beginning to feel the unwelcome nausea of self-pity coming my way. I felt myself drift off to sleep only to be woken by the first of a series of shell-shocked visitors. My wife, then parents and finally my sisters would all see me that evening with faces only slightly masking bewilderment. As is my want I felt a nagging need to almost apologise for having allowed things to get to this state.

Having waved off the last of my evening visitors I would be left to settle down to my first night in hospital as a patient. The birth of my first son had stretched over two days so I could anticipate the feelings of incarceration that would follow. Out of the window the early spring sleet falling outside gave the Houses of Parliament a picture postcard look, the historic building given an orangey brown hue from the riverside lighting. Quite a bit different to the occasion a few years previously when an image of a starlet was projected onto it, a real eye opener for all red-blooded males. I preferred how it looked that night, as it would do behind newscasts of political reporters on evening bulletins. A comforting, reassuring sight for me at a time of anxiety. The constant chatter of the various machines/monitors that were allowed no respite from their work lulled me to sleep, on my back as if I were in any other position my artificial connections/entrails would work free. Being a notoriously awkward sleeper I was quite surprised by easily I drifted off to my slumber, but it was a sleep that I constantly flitted in and out of.

The next morning brought a mental numbness, part fear, and part denial of my situation. The english rose nurse had been on the night shift. “I don’t normally work on this ward, I’m usually in the recovery suite. So I’ll see you there tomorrow. But you probably won’t notice as you’ll be sedated” she said as she left. It was quite nice to have someone treating the next day as routine as friends and family would be inevitably see it as non-routine.

Looking out of the window the early spring rain that had started during the night continued to fall, making the houses of Parliament appear as if through a haze. The red light procession of the traffics stoplights crawling over Westminster Bridge particularly slow as the rush hour built up.

As the day progressed more family members came and went, all showing that apparent calm outward look with the edges of the eyes betraying their fear of what was to happen to me. When I had to trail my blood drip apparatus after me to visit the toilet I could see the pity in their faces as I wheeled off, machine bleeping as I trundled off down the corridor to add to my apparent humiliation.

My kid sister had impressed upon me the need for an upbeat attitude to the bypass surgery as my father had felt very negative at the time of his and had suffered complications, the prevailing theory amongst medical circles being that the two facts may have been interrelated in some way. She also suggested some form of distraction that night, I could think of one such distraction, an FA cup replay for my team up in darkest Yorkshire, against Sheffield United. Arsenal were predominantly fielding a side of youngsters and reserve team players due to injuries and suspensions so I didn’t expect much joy from that fixture, such was my internal pessimism. Outwardly I would not try to let the side down and express the apprehension that was churning my insides.

I was grateful that the visitors to my bed from the raft of hospital staff were more perfunctory in their attitude to me, the ones that came for various blood samples, readings, x-rays and other monitoring activities in advance of the following days surgery.

“So what are you after then, blood?” I’d ask another lab tech looking sort of guy. “Yes, I’m afraid so” would be the reply as I got used to being punctured and probed at frequent intervals. I preferred the non-blood seeking people being the species of coward I am with pain.

Directly after the operation I would have to change my attitude to pain.

A member of the operating team (the registrar) a malaysian gent visited me to advise me on what was going to happen the next day, assuming I’d sign the consent form for the operation. Hobson’s choice to be frank as if I refused then any heart attack that followed would be down to my decision, or lack thereof. As the registrar had a disarming, friendly way about him what could have been a difficult decision to make had become straightforward.

“You’ll be the first one to be operated on tomorrow morning so you’ll stay in intensive care till the evening and maybe we’ll move you back here on Thursday morning. We anticipate making at least two bypass grafts and a maximum of four depending on what we see when we’ve been inside and had a look around” I was told, with a reassuring smile. He also mentioned the name of the egyptian consultant who would be leading the operating team the next day, by a coincidence the same consultant who’d operated on my father ten years previously. At least when he was fiddling around in my chest he may see some familiar inherited aspects about my heart gleaned from his previous experience with my father.

“We’ll give you a sleeping pill tonight after we’ve had you shaved so you take a shower before you go to bed”.

I liked the sound of that, nice and routine, no complications, no fuss. My only fear then was an emergency case of higher priority pushing back my operation and the resultant wait/delay causing my ability to hold things together mentally to give way.

By the early evening a young nurse, with short dark hair, arrived at my bedside armed with something electrical and bladed. Another of the indignities to be undergone, the body shave.

“So is it going to be the californian or the brazilian?” I quipped in a lame attempt to lighten my own dark mood. The nurse had probably already shaved half a dozen grizzly old bodies so had probably seen enough male body hair, of which I had more than average. Of course body waxing would have been a very painful, and vain alternative to the hospitals preferred depilatory method.

As I undressed the nurse murmured, “It’s going to be like shearing a sheep”. It was nice to know she was relaxed and not felt she wasn’t dealing with a morbid, tense patient.

“It’ll be your chest, arms and legs - in case they need to open you up for veins from your limbs” she informed me.

“But won’t my hair come back all stubbly?” I wanted to know; yet I felt myself finish off her next sentence almost before I’d completed my question.

“That’ll be the…” she started,

“….least of my problems by then” I finished for her as we both giggled at the thought of how my stubbly body may turn out; a sort of all-over five o’clock shadow.

Once my dark haired and demure nurse had clapped shut her “sheep” shears I shuffled off to have my pre operation shower, blood drip machine wheeling after me, as usual. An orange, gelatinous fluid was the antiseptic body wash I’d have to use; not exactly Lynx shower gel as I’d use at home, but anything to try and stave off the chances of MRSA adding to my present unwelcome mix of maladies.

With the shower curtain screening my robotic appendage I gingerly bathed myself within the constraints of the trailing pipes, feeds and assorted sticky pad sensors on me.

My newly smooth and largely hairless body gave me the feel and look of a drag queen, perhaps it would also mean I’d begin to appreciate the talents of Judy Garland or, worse still, performance poetry.

After returning to my bed I was to discover Arsenal had won the FA Cup replay on penalties via my mobile phone. The match report I brought up on my mobile gave the bare details of what had happened and provided me with a welcome morale boost.

One of the few points raised was the emergence of a defender who’d had a storming game, one P Senderos. Of course everyone would say he was Spanish with a name like that, but I knew he was swiss and I allowed myself to feel a little smug at being so well informed. As if I should feel anything else at that point in time.

The previous morning’s patients had been brought in from the post operation recovery area and two where across the corridor from me. Both with even more pipes, than me, leading in and out of them, connected to large bottles and various feeds. One in particular looked quite tranquil, no coughing or spluttering and at ease lying in his

That’ll be me, tomorrow. I’ll bounce back from the surgery easy, I thought to myself.

The evening had darkened the outside skies and my family visitors had come and gone, all offering their final messages of encouragement and support. By then I was feeling very alone.

I would try to cheer myself up by comparing myself to those unluckier than myself in a similar situation to me, to gain some perspective. There was an elderly lady in the bed opposite who’d had her daughter visiting and it had become apparent she’d had a heart attack and sustained damage to one of her heart chambers as well as a valve.

As the clickety clack of her daughter’s high-heeled shoes echoed off the polished floors I watched her move away from her bed to confer with the malaysian registrar who’d been so attentive to me earlier. As she passed my bed she gave me a brief, quizzical look as if to say: “You’re the wrong side of sixty to be in here”.

Already weakened by the attack and about to undergo a complex procedure I felt a guilty twinge of relief for only having to undergo “routine” bypasses without having a major heart attack.

I heard the daughter try and pacify her mother.

“You’re in the best place for this kind of operation..…the people here know what they’re doing”

There were clearly family tensions as the old ladies daughter was complaining about another family member who had not helped her to deal with her mother’s situation, a family impasse I could relate too. Family tensions would also be there for me, hidden from me while I was in hospital but part of the reason for my presence there too.

By then the sleeping pill had worked itself into my bloodstream and I duly slept.

There was no breakfast for me the next morning so I was wheeled down to another operating theatre by seven thirty. Trying to remember calming/reassuring thoughts suggested to me by my wife I waited on my trolley bed outside the doors to the theatre.

The anaesthetist came out and gave me a brief run down of the anticipated progress of events for the morning. Again, all very routine and predictable the way it was spelt out. Once his piece had been said he returned inside and I realised how tired I still felt. As I again felt myself loosing consciousness I absently-mindedly wondered if I’d see the english rose of a nurse in the post op, intensive care department……..

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Sanjays Story Part 2

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