Celtic Illumination, part 401, Primum non nocere

It was no surprise yesterday to find a comment from Colonialist but it did make a refreshing change to see that rather than one of his standard insults it was in fact a constructive comment.  But it had me wonder how many others had thought along the same lines.  I have to admit that he showed real, almost military, strategic thinking.  His suggestion was that rather than me being taken to hospital, for nothing more than a severe case of man flu, this could be some devious plot to man nap me where I was to be taken underground to meet some ghastly fate.  Quite possible when you think about it, but who in their right mind would not just want to man nap me but even attempt to man nap me.

For starters Irene was with me, that’s more close protection than the Pope has when he nips out of the Vatican for an ice cream.  Secondly, I have no known enemies; there are people who are jealous of me, jealous of my good looks, my fantastic legs, my superior intellect and my humble nature.  But I don’t think such a person exists who would want to damage me in any way at all, apart from the priests I slag off, the lying, cheating, thieving, scumbag, Paul O Grady, Delia Murphy, whom I promise you we will get back to, and half a dozen or so military men around the world, especially in America.  So I’m not really under any personal threat, which is why I wasn’t thinking along those lines, but well done Colonialist, you’re showing promise.

I had collected the top three books off my current reading pile but what I hadn’t done was take my Debrett’s guide, so I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to talk to the man in the back of the ambulance.  I wasn’t certain what category he would fall in to as an ambulance man.  I decided to treat him simply as working class.  My panic or confusion had subsided and I was now fully back in control of my facilities.  I began to question the man as to where I was being taken, what department, were they aware that I was coming.  I wasn’t expecting red carpets, or a brass band, but a group of fully trained competent medics would be a start.

Praise the Lord for mobile telephones as the ambulance man telephoned the practise nurse, who had ordered my hospitalisation in the first place, Pauline.  With a few suggestions from myself I managed to get the pair of them working together so that by the time we had pulled in to the hospital grounds, not only did we know where we were going, but where we were going, knew we were coming.  I had managed to by-pass the waiting area in the accident and emergency area, which I have to admit can be quite fun, as an observer, especially on a Friday or Saturday night.  So as the lift on the back of the ambulance touched down I was wheeled through a set of doors and taken straight in to the accident and emergency department proper.

I was slotted in to a cubical and left to wait.  I didn’t like waiting for you have the time to question your decisions, like for example I was wearing slippers.  Now it was four o clock in the afternoon, so a touch early for evening wear, but I was on a bed, well; a sort of bed, so night wear could have been considered appropriate.  But I was about to be introduced to people and slippers are not considered formal footwear in any society, unless your name is Hugh Hefner, so I was committing the old social faux pax.  If I covered my feet and accompanying slippers with a blanket, thrown across the bottom of the trolley and my feet, in an almost casual manner, then people might not notice and I could forever hold my head high in local society.  Then they began to come in, the medics that is.  It was all very confusing as I didn’t know who was who or what.  I didn’t know who was a nurse, or a doctor, or even a consultant, in fact it could have been the fecking duty cleaner who was poking about my elbows looking for a vein for all that I knew.

At last one person, female flavoured, came in.  She was Indian, that’s Asian Indian, not Red feckin Indian.  She wore an ill-fitting blue suit with the word ‘Doctor’ printed in heavy thick white letters across the front.  She was also very pretty.  A young fellow came in and began to fiddle with my elbows.  There didn’t seem to be any distinct clothing difference between the different trades so I assumed that the fellow sticking needles in my elbow and wrist was a medic.  It was like having a bracelet as one needle had been inserted in to the arm while two or three connectors flopped about on the outside.  Someone else was draining blood from my right arm, and filling tiny bottles while another person had wrapped that thingy around my arm and inflated it.  Then they all went away.

It could have been quite boring just sitting there, well; I was reclining and Irene  was sat sitting, but luckily enough a young fellow who had been stabbed was in the next cubicle and was giving his statement to one of the accompanying police men with him.  Normally in accident and emergency departments when someone has been stabbed and is giving a statement to police, the police are usually holding him down and there would be an awful lot of shouting, blood and unnecessary violence.  This casualty sounded to be a very nice young man who had found himself to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Even though he had been stabbed in the leg he didn’t complain, or moan, not about the pain or his treatment.  I would hate to think what state I would be in if I had been stabbed in either of my perfect legs.  It’s something I don’t wish to even think about.

Now the young fellow who was sticking needles in my left arm comes back in and begins to ask me questions like “Where is all the blood in your body?  What have you done with it?” Well; I ask you, how impertinent can you get?  It’s my blood and I can do with it what I want.  I wasn’t aware that most of it had buggered off, so listened to his questions to see if I could determine what they had found out about my condition.   The doctor came back in, the good looking one, and I determined that the young fellow was in fact a junior doctor.  Now; I need to explain something to you.  I was brought up in a strict Irish Catholic environment; in fact I wasn’t so much brought up, as dragged up.  The greatest sin was to be a homosexual, a bottom bandit, an uphill gardener, sure wasn’t it even illegal to be a pillow biter up until nineteen sixty seven.  And attitudes didn’t change overnight, so for years, at the back of our small minds was the fear that some rough type of Bum Bandit would jump on us and have his wicked way.

So now that I have explained that, you will understand my reaction when the young fellow, the junior doctor, announces that he is going to insert his fingers in to my bottom to look for my disappeared blood.   There was no soft lighting, no music, not even a glass of chilled, white, Pinot Noir, just the elastic snap of a blue medical glove.  I’m not sure if Debrett’s covers this sort of thing, I’m sure it does, as it’s full of shit anyway, but I found myself refusing the examination.  The junior doctor informs the doctor, the good looking one who now steps forward and asks that I reconsider.  I did and the answer was still the same, for a simple Irishman it was all too sudden, I needed time to get my head around what they wanted to do to me after years of brainwashing from the Catholic Church, not to mention the unwanted attention in that area from the pervert priest, no one was touching my arse.

More and more people made their way in and performed their specific function.  One nurse took swabs from in and around my little bits and pieces and inside my nose and mouth which I found very strange indeed.  Another actually had a look at my bottom which I found very suspect, but if I was missing sixty percent of my blood that I thought they should be looking for a cut, or a hole, where the red stuff would be coming out.  Even as a Good Ol Boy I am sure they were missing the basics.  I breathed a sigh of relief when the consultant came in.  I knew he was a consultant from the moment I laid eyes on him.  He was well dressed and immaculately turned out.  He too was Asian but I wouldn’t even stab a guess at what part of that huge continent he hailed from.  He stood alongside me and I knew that I now had a fellow on a similar intellectual level who would understand me and my decision completely.

It was a bit of a surprise when he too suggested that an examination of my rear end be undertaken.  By now, I could see the sense of what they were suggesting but I still couldn’t get my head around it and still refused them permission to proceed.  At ten o clock in the evening I telephoned number one son Gerard and asked him to come out and pick up his mother Irene.  She wanted to stay but there was no real point.  I was to be taken off to a ward for the night and testing would continue first thing in the morning.  I looked at the consultant, the doctor and the junior doctor all huddled together at the end of the cubicle I was in and wondered if they had an ulterior motive for playing about with my bottom.  I only had forty percent of the blood I should have in my body and was to be admitted for testing and curing.  By the time the porter came to take me to my ward it was half past eleven.  I knew that the porter wouldn’t want to inspect my bottom as I knew him quite well, it was Gary, an old friend from  my taxi driving days, I relaxed, as I knew I was finally in safe hands.