…sharp scratch… sharp scratch…
Repeated in soft, professional, sing-song female voices at Chelsea and Westminster A&E Unit…
Never in my life was I afraid of pain.
So the jab-after-jab procedure carried on in such a manner was in fact reassuring.
Even with deep anxiety about the future of my fingers worming underneath.
Having been moved further into the Hospital, I waited some 54 hours for the operation.
With all the stringent fasting procedures employed from every midnight on: ‘no food, no drink’…
…only to be told around 7pm: ‘not tonight, sorry, they’ve had to drop you from the operating theatre list… go and have something to eat, darling’.
Well, never in my life was I afraid of proper fasting…
They did come for me at last… deep into the night on Monday the 2nd of July (the accident happended on Saturday, midday).
The last question before I fell asleep was: ‘Is it your signature, madam?’ ‘Well, in a sense…’ – I retained a residue of my sense of humour… with three crucial right-hand fingers to be operated on in a moment, you may well imagine the graphic qualities of the Saturday-executed handwriting… and the form was to the sense that I was aware of ALL the possible complications and sad outcomings.
When I woke up, trembling in a cold recovery room, after the general anasthetics wore out – I looked at the huge clock high up, and asked: ‘O, already eleven pm? you’ve been working a two-hour overtime with me!’
They burst into laughter, then a doctor remarked, that I should have spoken my first words in my mother tongue.
Well, a Polish patient was keen to please… When another doctor woke me up in the middle of that night (to give a new jab or to switch on a new drip) – I reacted on his gentle touch with ‘normal’ Polish ‘tak?’ (=’yes?’)
The sharpest scratches were over… In a sense…
But then – never in my life was I afraid of patient exercise…
…oh, weren’t you?…
