Catheter, Come Home - Steve Rudd

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the whole establishment. But the fact remained, and with dawning awareness I realised that I had fallen into a 21st century re-creation of the monastic ideal of charity to the sick.

      A concept that went back to the time, ultimately, of the Christian ideal of the Good Samaritan and was based eventually on loving your brother as much as yourself. True, I was ill, and not loving every minute, but it was still majorly interesting, and I liked to think Beveridge would have seen the point, although the people who created the NHS were probably more interested in life before death. With soup.

      And of course, like the Monasteries, the NHS hospitals are now living under the threat of Dissolution. The new Tory/LibDem administration is pledged to make massive cuts in the public services, although they have said they will “ring fence” spending on the NHS. Presumably, though that only means sticking to previously-planned expenditure, not increasing it in any way.

      But it also turns out, now, at the time of writing, some18 months after the events which first prompted these thoughts, to include breaking up the NHS, turning it upside down, and putting it through a needless and costly reorganisation, though strangely, no-one you ask in the street can ever remember voting for this!

      Having concluded my monastic analogy, I noticed a nurse, about to leave the ward, stop and reach out with her hand to get a toot of the general antiseptic, anti-viral gel, from a plastic dispenser on the wall, in just the same way as an earlier acolyte may have dipped her hand into a piscina for Holy Water on entering or leaving.

      Later that day, nature (and some sort of laxative) having inevitably taken its course, I was introduced to the joys of the bedpan, the sort that looks like the wedge-shaped plastic dustpan of a dustpan-and-brush set. It was to be the first of many. I am pleased to say I managed to acquit myself, and not, as I had feared, to shit myself. Not that time, anyway.

      By the Monday lunchtime it was clear I was not going home, or anywhere near it, any time soon. The consultant who was supposedly looking after me, for a start, did not do ward rounds on a Monday, so all I was able to find out about my condition anyway was that there was no abnormality showing on my ultrasound scan. Which of course turned out to be wrong, later. The “bloods”, which I discovered is what medical people call blood tests, had a high white blood count, so the consultant was going to take additional precautionary tests – now there was a mention of a Cat Scan on Monday. All of this was vouchsafed to me by a beautiful, slim young girl with perfectly almond-shaped light brown eyes. I couldn’t say for definite, but I assumed she was yet another doctor. The place was crawling with them. Plus, I noticed, they almost always went around in gangs, particularly when they did ward rounds. Perhaps they were scared of being mugged by the nurses.

      I passed the time by watching the green-clad cleaners, who by now I had dubbed “The Worshipful Company of Swiffers”, all parading through the wards like the Pope’s Swiss Guard, implements at the ready. They split up, taking on different tasks, and their brushes and mops seemed to have been specifically designed for a single job - one young girl had an extending duster-type thing on a right-angle pole with which she carefully polished all the tops of the rails that held the curtains round everyone’s beds, and I found myself wondering if this was something she’d bodged up for the purpose, or whether there was actually a factory somewhere that made these extending dusters just for this singular purpose.

      By now, I was having daily blood tests; also my blood pressure was being taken twice a day, I had had urine tests, a chest x-ray, a stomach x-ray, and so on. On Monday I discussed results with the House Doctor who had said there was nothing averse about my ultrasound and they took additional blood samples for culturing. I got used to people asking questions like “do you have a cultured stool?” (No, all ours came from IKEA) and “Are you catheterised?” (Who made me? God made me). The blood tests became so routine I could answer the questions about my name, date of birth and hospital number with all the nonchalance of a Prisoner of War in a black and white 1950s film about Colditz. I was always rewarded by the words “sharp scratch”, which is what the Fleabottomist invariably says as she sticks the needle in your arm.

      Hospital is a strangely sexless place, despite what every hospital soap opera from Dr Kildare onwards would have you believe. During my entire stay in hospital, the number of nubile young women who had said to me “Mr Rudd, your penis is very swollen and inflamed”, and then gone on to examine it tenderly, while wearing thin latex gloves, will never be surpassed in my life. Sadly, however, every last one of them was acting in a purely professional capacity. The number of strangers’ hands to have touched my bottom is even greater. In fact, during my stay in hospital, I had things done to my nether regions which I had never even considered, in my sheltered life beforehand. And mostly by people who were being paid £7.64 an hour. I am not sure I would even touch my own bottom for £7.64 an hour.

      There should be a statue in Whitehall of “The Unknown Hospital Worker” paid for and maintained out of an annual tax on drug company profits, and we should all make a pilgrimage there once a year, to lay flowers and to say thanks to the NHS.

      I should have mentioned visitors, of course, both my own, and others. My visitors were a select, small band, at least at first. My sister and my brother-in-law hard-arsed their way up the motorway from Northampton on two successive weekends, Debbie came every day, sometimes bringing her Mum, and in the course of my stay I was also visited by Phil, who used to work for me, Debbie’s Dad, Owen my old schoolfriend and his wife Susie, who called in en route from Wales to Liverpool (as you do) three or four people from my office, and several people from the BBC Archers web site, of whom more later.

      What surprised me, though, was the people who didn’t come. Strangely, it didn’t occur to me at the time, but afterwards it hurt. I won’t list them out here, they know who they are. Anyway, it’s all blood under the bridge now, but there’s nothing like a six month stay in hospital to bring home to you who your friends are.

      Other people’s visitors were also interesting, as an inveterate earwigger on conversations, I sometimes had to bite my tongue to resist the urge to join in. One visitor I really missed seeing was Tiggy. Not only had the poor mutt been deprived of her holiday and her annual dip in the bracing waters of Kilbrannan Sound, but she must be wondering what had happened to Daddy. I suggested as much to Debbie, who replied that as far as she was aware, Tiggy showed no signs whatsoever of pining for me, and the cat didn’t care if I lived or died as long as there was someone there to open a tin of cat food for her, but then that’s cats all over.

      I did have a brilliant idea for a business opportunity while I was musing on the absence of my furry chums – someone should start manufacturing hygienic fur-fabric stuffed pets with realistic appearances and similar body weights to household pets, so you could feel the weight of the dog on the bed at night, just as if you were back home.

      My sister told me that when she was nursing at Leicester, it had actually been mooted at a meeting that patients should be allowed to bring their real pets into hospital, given the therapeutic value of stroking an animal, which has apparently been shown to lower blood pressure. The idea got as far as the Head of Infection Control, who is alleged to have heard about it and immediately roared,

      “Pets?! F***ing PETS?!!”

      in a voice that rattled the windows, and no more was said. So, who knows, perhaps my idea has legs – or not, as the case may be.

      Anyway, by the end of the week, it had become clear that a) I wasn’t getting better and b) the surgeon was coming to see me, apparently. Which he duly did, accompanied by the usual entourage. He explained calmly that I was seriously ill. My bowel was perforated, and I had peritonitis. They were going to perform an operation called a bowel resection, which basically involves chopping out the bit with the hole in it, and then sew the two ends together, a bit like repairing a hosepipe, I guess. And when was I supposed to have this operation? Now, this afternoon, today, he said. Ah. Right.

      While all that was sinking in, I said it sounded very serious. He said it was. I said that I guessed it wouldn’t be a local anaesthetic, then. He said it wouldn’t. Ah, I said (already shitting myself mentally at the prospect - but not physically, that was sort of the problem) and tell me, Doctor, is there any alternative, what

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