Nine to Five

Not only Dolly Parton, but Sheena Easton too waxed lyrical on the mechanics and attributes of the exciting world of the office workplace. The days of staring at nine have long gone, just like Dolly's real hair, but work for most of us consumes most of our day. With all the recent travails however, my desk seems but a distant memory.

Therefore it was with a sense of excitement that I returned to work last Wednesday (hey Monday and Tuesday were just toooooo soon...plus I hadn't finished watching National Geographic, I mean recuperating). As I pushed open the doors to our office, and swept away the legions of adoring fans, I struggled through the mountains of welcome back gifts, and then took my seat. My desk appeared much as I had left it, perhaps with a trifle more papers needing attention, but basically the same mess that I had left it in. Coffee was de rigeur, so I made my way to the staffroom. There I caught up with old faces (some of them are really old) and dear friends, all mingling around the caffeine canisters.

Later I returned, offering a quick halloo to whomever I passed, and retook my seat amongst the paper trail. Soon I was underway, with letters to be read, and heaps of papers waiting to be signed, moving work from one side of my desk to the other and back again.
Indeed my world seems to revolve around the very important movement of pieces of paper. 

I suddenly felt the urge to undertake some stapling  to appear busy. As I reached for my personally allocated stapler, panic gripped my very core. I could not locate my paper joining implement. Searching high and low, checking all the drawers, but all to no avail. My stapler had vanished without trace, just like the ill fated MH3370.  To console myself I reached for my calculator to make some important looking number punching, but that too had disappeared.

Oh no! How was I to amuse myself with no silly words all day, like ESSO OIL, GOGGLES and BOOBIES?

Clearly while I was having my appendix removed, someone else had also removed my stationery.

I was not a happy chappy at all, in fact I was more like an office Grumpy Cat!

And it was only lunchtime, another four hours to go.....

Ain't nothing going on but the rent...

Gwen Guthrie made it her J. O. B. to get to number V...in her summer 1985 cash inspired hit.

Her rent? Financial security and treasures to plunder. 

My rent? A simple appendix torn asunder.

"Torn asunder"may be a tad dramatic, but the devilish chilli lookalike became inflamed and started to rupture. Ultimately it decided to perforate for good measure. 

Those poor readers who have suffered the excruciating pain and debilitation normally associated with appendicitis, will be interested in my recipe to avoid the searing agony of a burst appendix

First choose peritoneal dialysis in order to obtain some internal surgical scars. Next, go get yourself a transplant, preferably double organs, for maximum internal rummaging. Allow to rest and settle internally for a couple of years. Add in one arterial graft, and several exploratory invasions and allow to harden and scar inside. Eh voila! 

For it was the very fact that my interior tissues were so scarred from the previous work conducted in my abdomen that my insides were quite hard and numb. Which is a handy by product when it comes to a perforated ulcer.

So for me there is no pain, "cos there ain't nothing going on but the rent

Back to work tomorrow, I need to earn some money...

Be off with you!

The fact I awoke in a different ward some 6 hours later was a reassuring sign. Staff were fussing over me. Charts, uniforms, and a flurry of stethoscopes winked as they caught my eye. Also just in vision, all wrapped up in a shiny new plastic bag with a hospital label appended, were my erstwhile pants. Ah excellent. All went well then in the theatre.

Another sign of surgical happenings were the surgical support hose, curiously strapped to my legs. Had I been attacked by a wandering Nora Batty, keen to support her own leg fashion? The surgical team had been busy and I was now strapped into these tight inflexible calf chambers to limit blood clotting associated with lengthy stays of inactivity, such as recovering from an operation, or a lengthy flight.

As time progressed and I gained more movement and lost grogginess, the change in the stockings became more apparent. When first applied, they gave a lithe youthful appearance, not unlike a handsome Beau from the court of Henry VIII.

After some wear and a little sagging they start to acquire a less glamourous look, a mix of Ronald McDonald and The Wiggles. Finally the stockings loose shape and need to be replaced, in case they lose their efficacy, and instead of the calves of a king we end up looking like a salty old sea dog.....

  Ah well, at least the food's consistent? Eh Cap'n.....

 

Turned a corner?

                                          

I was about to mention that my healing graft wounds have radically improved and that "things have turned a corner". In fact, having turned that corner they have lurched sharply from side to side, taking a wrong exit at the next roundabout, before ending up on the first highway out of town.

After complaining of a steadily worsening pain in my lower abdomen, I was coerced into going in to see my renal team at the hospital. They took one look at me and rushed me through to Assessment & Planning, cleverly bypassing the A&E queues. After many prods and pokes I was sent for a cat scan...

When the results purred their way into my doctors claws, it was something of a shock. Nothing renal related, or linked to old diabetes, but..........Appendicitis!

A good old fashioned normal 'itis'.

Within an hour I had been taken by Ambulance to Auckland Main Hospital where the great medics argued whether it was safe to perform a nighttime appendectomy, or wait until all the renal and transplant folk were at work. It would involve diving into a body that had already been claimed by the renal and vascular surgeons, with all their excellent work still functioning well, so it was felt ithat waiting 12 hours so they all could be on hand should problems occur. To misquote Oscar Wilde, to lose one organ may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.

Therefore at 8 of the morning clock, I was prepped and ready to go. Well almost. No one had asked me to remove my underpants during the preceding investigations, and I doubted their surgical suitability in the operating theatre, let alone the rigorous standards of the senior ward nurses!

What would happen? As I slipped into unconsciousness, was this to be a brief encounter, or would my briefs fit the brief?

Come friendly bombs fall on Slough

Urged poet John Betjeman during the 1930’s, not out of misguided love for carpet bombing, but rather a dislike of the rapid industrialisation of the once pretty Berkshire town. It soon became a popular English metaphor for blight and urban sprawl.

Ask a kiwi nurse what Slough is, however and they will fill your heads with tales of scraping off wound tissue. And it’s pronounced sluff. So now for Slough read sluff , or slau, as in Braun. How now, brown cow. Er ....that’s enough of the Slough cow stuff..

This yellow fibrous tissue is a part of the normal healing process, but needs to be tended regularly by the nurses as it can become tough. If it is left untreated, things can get rough lest it becomes infected. Currently it is seen three times a week, which seems to be enough at present.
So come friendly nurses, fall on slough.