Hand surgery

After some weeks or maybe months, of torturing my "wart", one dear nurse decided to listen to my bleated complaints and took a closer look.
"Maybe a doctor should take a look".
Someone did, than several others and decided that it was a mucoid cyst, which would not respond to the freeze treatment in a million painful years.
Could someone whip it off? - -but no - it was on a joint, so I would need to attend the local hospital, where they would sort it out, no problem.

Weeks later, the offending cyst was examined by a mournful doctor. "Ah, no" he was very sorry, it was too big AND it was on a joint, he could not help me; I would have to go to a plastic surgeon.

Weeks later, I was seen by a plastic surgeon, interviewed first by his underling and then the man himself. Yes, he would remove it; it would be necessary to remove a flap of skin down to the next joint and swivel this around, having removed the cyst itself, to cover the gap.
Expecting another hiatus of six weeks or so, I was surprised to be contacted within days. There was a cancellation - would I...? would I?
This morning the cyst was removed. A lengthy business at the hospital where administrative procedures took a repetitious few hours to complete. Considering that the operation would be performed under a local anaesthetic only, the safety procedures seemed overdone.
I had read my instruction sheet carefully and arrived without money, mobile, make-up, laptop, valuables, jewellery or ipod but with a dressing gown, thick socks in lieu of slippers and - entirely my own idea - a book. Actually I did have some money (well, I was travelling there and back on public transport AND hoping to do a little shopping afterwards in a town that had an M & S, unlike where I live) but it was very well hidden. The other women had not read their instructions and arrived WITH mobiles, etc but without dressing gowns and slippers. However, they were soon supplied with thin robes which were much more suitable that the thick dressing gown I had brought with me. We all ended up wearing our own outdoor shoes, as my socks were deemed too dangerous to wear.
It appeared that the hospital would be unable to offer any security for our belongings but were overly concerned that we might fall over as we walked a few feet along a corridor, before being loaded into wheelchairs.
As soon as I arrived at the theatre my shoes were removed and brought back into me afterwards to put on. Stepping from the operating table, I had to turn round immediately to sit down in the wheelchair once again provided for me.
Tea and toast was thoughtfully provided, once we returned (not together but in turn; I was the last to go down to theatre) to the recovery room, where our clothes and belongings seemed to be quite safe.

As for the operation itself? The injection was VERY painful; a large syringe at least half-full of liquid went into the palm - the mound just under the first finger and the finger itself very slowly and painfully went numb. It felt as if the needle was being bent around inside my hand and the procedure seemed to last for a very very long time. After that, it was pretty relaxing for me but frustratingly, the nurses insisted that there be a screen put up so I could see nothing of the surgery. However, I could hear the (male) surgeon instructing his (female) student on the procedure, which she was performing. Considering that I had been told several times that he himself would do the surgery (and the first woman to go down to theatre said that he had done hers), it was glossed over very quickly that the student or trainee who introduced herself to me would actually be performing mine.
I should have inquired how far along in her training she had progressed. After all, for all I knew, she might never have picked up a scalpel before this bright sunny Monday morning.
Fortunately, my experience over the years at the dental hospital has given me great confidence in the teaching system and the close supervision I have noticed there seemed to be matched here. However, a niggling annoyance made itself felt later, when I considered how ludicrously overprotective the system is - - until you get to the real nitty-gritty and then it's assumed that all will be well and the patient is best not bothered by such details.
The finger is now heavily plastered and I am supposed to keep it up, up, up so that it does not swell and throb inside its little plaster bed. I was inspired to take the photo when I saw a rather more minor wound on Zoe's blog,which I would link to if I could: myboyfriendisatwat.com Oh I seem to have managed it,amazingly: see post of May 18th 2009.

Heh-heh! My one's bigger.

working, but not producing

Barely recovered from my mysterious laryngeal infection, I dove into a 3-day conference and then ricocheted from that into an eight-day series of invigilating examinations, broken only by a trip to Russborough House.
We were trying to figure out the landscape changes, which were wrought 250 years ago or thereabouts, the trouble being that almost no records survive, concerning the planning and design of the grounds, which included a linked series of lakes in front of the house, terraces and an ornamental pond behind the house and such architectural features as an ice house, decorative gates, courtyards and a moss house.
Then it was back to invigilation work, pounding the unforgiving concrete floors of the cattle barn where the college students sit their exams. Now that duty is almost over and I will be able to get back to my own work, including transcribing the last 35 letters.
The photocopies of these letters have been sitting patiently on a trolley waiting for me to pay them attention since I returned from Belfast. The work I have not done yet or have turned down or meetings I have not attended, seems to be growing into a mountain.

Mexican Flu

A media illusion, to take our minds off the recession?
I have been unwell since I returned from Belfast and as my condition was getting worse, in fact I had taken to my bed - I telephoned the doctor's surgery, to find out if help was available for those suffering from regular flu. I had already denied that it was an emergency, so I was informed that I had to attend the surgery the next morning.
There, I was advised that I did not have any kind of flu, because if I did, I would not have been able to get out of bed. This conundrum was beyond my fuddled abilities to work out, but I was quite happy to be able to collect a prescription for an antibiotic to help clear up the throat infection which I was identified as having.
I think that I received a friendlier reception than I might otherwise have done, only because my diabetes makes any infection potentially more dangerous. Secondary infections can be much worse than the initial one, so even quite minor ones, such as the one from which - my doctor implied - I was suffering, could turn nasty.
I felt what I had suffered through the last week had been pretty unpleasant. The Mexican flu sufferers didn't seem to have been particularly ill either. Supposing they had called our local doctor's surgery, would they have been required to sit in the waiting room? Well, obviously not if they had mentioned Mexico.

As my doctor said to me as I left, clutching my prescription, 'Just don't have anything to do with any Mexicans!'