TheBanyanTree: The leg on the cutting room floor

[Theta Brentnall]

The nurses are getting brighter, indeed, if one of them can leave you 
without a retort.  It's a good thing they turned on the sleepy juice to 
save you from the humiliation of not having the last word! Glad you are 
safely home and healing.

Theta

On 3/13/2013 10:12 PM, Peter Macinnis wrote:
> I have just written to a medical practitioner friend with whom we do a 
> lot of bush walking: he and his wife, also a medico, say we are alone 
> among friends of their age in keeping up and not groaning. Last 
> Sunday, we walked 10 km that involved about 500 metres of ascent and 
> 300 metres of descent (vertically) over rough ground. We have known 
> them since 1974.
>
> For Christmas, he sent me anonymously, and only identified himself 
> later as the donor, a book called 'The 100-year-old man who climbed 
> out the window and disappeared".
>
> I have had some other reading to catch up on, but I needed some very 
> minor surgery to delete a lump in my throat, a benign cyst that has 
> been lurking under my beard.  It's annoying, but it was best to get it 
> out and miss a few days of working.  Time, I thought, to read the book 
> which was highly recommended.  Here follows what I wrote to my friend.
>
> Before I share that, I have a history of disruption in hospitals, 
> though I have never gone over the Dark Side.  Once, when asked if I 
> used aids for walking, I answered "yes", and when asked what, I said 
> "legs". Another time, I confronted and dressed-down an overbearing 
> thug of a matron who started abusing me for not shaving.
>
> I had had my beard shaved off for the op which had happened two days 
> earlier, and was growing it back.  I might have explained that, but 
> she had severely irked me.  I don't like bullies, and in my 
> bureaucracy, I was senior to her in hers, yet I never treated people 
> like that. "Madame," I said, "I haven't shaved for seven years, and I 
> don't intend starting now, just to satisfy your whim.  So, if you have 
> no medical advice to offer, be off with you!"
>
> This was spoken loudly enough to be heard by a number of nurses who 
> loved me for it, because they lacked the freedom to speak out, and 
> this old cow was merciless with them.
>
> A few years later in another hospital, they brought round the tea and 
> coffee trolley, left it for ten minutes in a common area and then 
> whisked it off before we inmates could get seconds.  Three of us 
> hijacked the trolley on the second night, and after the puzzled 
> attendant found it missing and stalked off, we brought it out of the 
> empty ward where we had stashed it and had a second cup.  It was 
> standing there when the attendant came back, but he never worked out 
> where it had gone while I was there, which was another three nights.
>
> There have been other ploys, but those vignettes will suffice to stake 
> my claim to being a potentially disturbing influence and combined 
> Strange Attractor in any quasi-medical to medical/surgical situation.
>
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> The thank-you note:
> -------------------
> I saved the book for a special moment and that came yesterday while I 
> was sitting around in my ward, waiting for over an hour to be gowned 
> and put up on the cart (cue obligatory joke from the Python version of 
> the "Holy Grail").
>
> Anyhow, I have never seen such a marvellous textbook for a 
> surrealist/anarchist plotting his escape from a hospital as this work. 
> I am home now, lying down a lot and I have followed Allan to Iran, so 
> far (that's around page 150).
>
> This is sheer joy--and not a bit of inspiration!
>
> The nurse who was prepping me added a second wrist band to my leg and 
> I said to her "I don't want to interfere, but if that is there so they 
> can identify that leg after they removed it, I would have no further 
> interest in it, but that if they really needed an ID, they would have 
> the left leg for comparison.
>
> There had been some good badinage, and I expected her to say they were 
> taking both legs off, in which case I would have said "well you've got 
> me stumped," but instead she told me an independent surgical team was 
> going in through the heel, so that if the short-cut group missed The 
> Lump, the long-strike team would get it.  It seems that nurses are 
> getting brighter.
>
> What could I do? I murmured "the wonders of modern technology" and 
> they turned the tap on.  Just as well, because I was about to go out 
> the window.
>
> Sometimes, the best scripts don't quite make it onto paper.
>
> peter
>