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?
