SCAR WARS: My adventures in hospital ------------------------------------ By Giles Turnbull, gilest@iname.com On the web at http://www.gilest.webfusion.co.uk/lump.html This is a pure text version for text browsers, PDA users and anyone who is in a hurry or wants to print this out. --- ARRIVAL AT GUY'S I went into Guy's Hospital on the Sunday afternoon. I expected it to be buzzing with activity, but it was completely dead. No-one around and deathly silent. Dorcas ward was in one of the older, 1950s style buildings. When we arrived it was patient rest period - or afternoon siesta. It was full of old people snoring. All of them had drips and tubes and strange objects hanging out of their beds or bodies. Having never been into hospital for anything before, it was very, very odd to see all this stuff and think I would be in a similar state 24 hours later. Duty doctor Bikram booked me in and told me what would happen. I was to have a medial stenotomy (cut in the chest) the next morning, and I was third on the list. That night I found it hard to get to sleep. Not because I was nervous, but because another patient in the ward, old Tom, kept everyone awake by calling the nurses constantly. Poor guy, I think he was a bit senile. He kept asking for them to take his pyjamas trousers off, and they told him over and aver again, "They're already off, Tom." "Oh but I'm so uncomfortable," he moaned. Anyway, next morning I woke early and listened to Radio 4 on my Walkman. The nurse gave me a surgical gown and said, "Slip that on when you go for a wash." I did, and did it up at the front. No! It does up at the back, I heard her telling another patient. I quietly slipped back to the loo and changed it again. Then I sat around reading a book until they called me, at about 10.30. Then I got nervous, with big butterflies in my tummy. They put in on my bed and wheeled me down to the operating theatre. In the anaesthetic room a nice chap reassured me that everything would be fine as they strapped me down and stuck needles into the back of my left hand. I was shaking quite a lot now. "Are you cold?" they asked. Doh. "No, just nervous," I said. That's normal, they smiled, and wheeled me into the theatre itself. I saw the big lights above my head and turned to look at a blank TV screen on one side. I had not realised that the injection had already gone in. Suddenly everything started to go numb and thick - my head started to feel like soup and my limbs were stretching into the distance. I looked at a nurse who had surgical gown and mask on. "Gosh, I'm beginning to feel quite light-headed already," I said. Z O N K. I was out. --- OUT OF MY MIND ON DOPE AND SPEED When I woke up I was instantly aware of pain in my chest. It felt tight, like - like - oh god, like it had a huge cut from top to bottom, a line running from chin to stomach. Plastic tubes everywhere. Ugh, pass out. Wake again, this time with nurses around. Five minutes later or five hours? I had no idea. A nurse said to me, "Are you in any pain Giles?". I said yes or nodded, whatever. It did hurt. She put what felt like a TV remote control in my hand. "You can press this button to give yourself more morphine if you want," she said. The remote was connected to a stand with an automatic injection system mounted on it, all very high tech. I pressed the button several times in the next few hours, dosing myself up with morphine and steadily losing all awareness of pain, time, everything really. I was off my head. At some point the food trolley came round. I was sitting up in bed, in Dorcas ward once more. I was hungry, and was no longer a "nil by mouth" case. They gave me a plate of hot macaroni cheese with mashed potato. The pasta was awful, the richness of the cheese made me want to vomit. I decided to stick with the potato. The effort of getting my fork up to my mouth sent me to sleep. Then I woke up with the fork and mash hanging off my lips, and slowly chewed and swallowed. Then back for another forkfull, and crash out again. I have no idea how long this went on, but it seemed that it took hours. Each mouthful of food required a good 15 minutes of snoozing, it seemed. Later on Kate (my lovely wife) arrived and tells me I was still sleepy for a while. I still had iodine all over my chest from the op when she arrived, and a nurse came and mopped it off. Then I perked up a bit, and demanded five lemon puff biscuits from Kate. I had a sudden need for sugar and scoffed the lot, plus half a banana, very fast. Then I fell asleep again. Kate stayed with me while I slept for two hours, stroking my arm. Bliss. I vaguely remember her kissing me goodbye and going home. Things are pretty hazy after that. Monday was over, I had a drain tube sticking out of my stomach and I was higher than I have ever been before on drugs. Then I puked up the lemon puff biscuits. It was ZONK time again, and I was out till Tuesday. --- THE DRUGS DON'T WORK Tuesday morning I had the drain removed from my stomach. It had been there to carry away blood and pus and other horrible gunky things that had been dribbling from the wound. The tube was extremely uncomfortable and I was very pleased to get rid of it. By now I was able to move about a bit, and went to the bathroom and managed to take a shower and have a shave, but after that I was exhausted. In the morning I told the nurses I didn't want any more morphine, since it was just making me feel sick. They did carry on giving me codine and paracetamol pills, and the anti-inflammatory drug Voltrol. My dad came to visit that afternoon and while he was there, a nurse arrived to tell me I had been cleared for a transfer to a private ward - Nuffield House. They needed my bed for another surgery patient, there were spare beds at Nuffield, and I was the youngest (fittest) person in Dorcas ward - so I got the bed. Nuffield was a whole new world. My own room, with TV, phone, excellent food and individual nursing care. Amazing. I had no idea what private medicine was all about until I got this "free sample". On Wednesday I was given lots of painkillers - the morphine had finally got out of my system and I was now in quite a lot of pain. Bad move. That night as I tried to sleep, I started hallucinating and hearing things. I felt sick, had no appetite, and was dizzy without even moving. It took me a long time to get to sleep because I saw bizarre visions every time I shut my eyes. The Verve were right: the drugs don't work. --- HOME IS BEST On Friday my brother and Kate came to fetch me from hospital. I couldn't wear a seatbelt because of the cut in my chest, so I sat in the back and my brother drove very carefully. Even the simple process of driving a few miles through town was exhausting. When I first came home, everything was. As time went on, and my strength returned, I was able to do more and more. I spent most of my time sitting and reading, or sleeping. I often had a snooze in the afternoon or early evening, but it depended on how many drugs I might have taken that day. While on the codine, the pain was fine, but I was constipated as a result. Mmm, nice. After about ten days I stopped taking pain killers, and stopped being a zombie. I began to move around the house more, and go for more and longer walks. Over time things improved until I found myself able to catch a bus or even drive with no problems. But what about the lump? I know now that it was a teratoma - a harmless, but unusual lump of tissue. The doc said there's no explanation for it growing there. "It's just one of those things," he said. I'm just relieved that it wasn't anything more serious, like cancer. My chest is now held together with seven stainless steel wires to help the bone stitch back together. They will stay in forever (unless there are serious problems with them) and all I should be left with is a thin, almost invisible line scar. The cut in the skin in very neat and healing very quickly. So far, so good. --- AFTER ALL THAT: SO WHAT? Now it's the beginning of July. I had my operation on May 18th. Six weeks later, I am well recovered and I shall return to work next week. It's been a hell of an experience, and something I wouldn't wish on anyone. But still I have learnt a few things. I must:- - Take more care of my body. It's given me one warning already - one friend said to me, "Only eight lives left now." This means I should: - Drink less booze - Eat more fresh fruit and vegetables - Exercise more - Enjoy life more. One thing I was scared of was if it had been something nasty, like cancer, I would have started regretting all the things I had never done. - Live for the moment, rather than next month. - Make more time for reading, and writing. - Spend less time on the Internet. - Listen to my music collection more, rather than just buying new CDs for it. - Not feel sorry for myself. - Stop procrastinating. And what did I achieve while sitting around at home? - I read Tony Benn's political diaries, most of Frank Herbert's Dune sequence, Christopher Hibbert's Story of England, at least one newspaper every day (usually the Independent), Wired, Private Eye, FHM, Loaded, and New Scientist. - I listened to long-unplayed cassettes by the likes of the Cocteau Twins, Eurythmics, Neneh Cherry, The Fall, The Go-Betweens, Elvis Costello, The Bluetones, Beastie Boys, Wire, Sugarcubes, loads of em. Fab. - Purchased a new cassette desk (hence point above). - Re-ordered the books and computer software on the shelves at home. - Put all my life's photos (27 years' worth!) into photo albums. Thank God for Woolworths and cheap albums. It took loads of em and loads of time, but it was worth it. - Completed a 500-piece jigsaw. There were three pieces missing. Arrgh! - Gone for several long walks with binoculars, watching birds. The feathered kind. - Cultivated some herbs. - Redesigned and written a few things for this web site. Ultimately, I am most thankful that the thing that scared me most - cancer - was not there. It was a harmless lump and I should never have any similar problems. But the experience humbled me somewhat, and taught me that despite my 27 years, I've still some maturing to do. --- NB: DEAR JOHN DIAMOND, Today (June 26th) I watched the videotaped copy of your Tongue-Tied documentary. I am a journalist too, and earlier this year I was found to have a mysterious lump in my chest. Surgery was the thing for it, they said. "We don't know what it is, Mr Turnbull, but we would be happier with it out than leaving it in." It was a complete surprise. Like you, I went into hospital apparently perfectly fit and healthy, kissed my wife goodbye and got wheeled to the operating theatre looking, well, pretty normal. Like you, I emerged a mass of tubes and drugs and vomit. Like you, my reactions swung between terror of what might be, depression, sick humour and listless hours in hospital. I would not be deprived of my voice, but my mobility, and that only for a very short time compared to you. But I did share the anxious feelings about the future, the concern for my family, the feeling that although I didn't want it to happen, there were bits of it that were eye-opening, inspiring and that in bizarre ways even felt good - things I would not have experienced had it never occurred. The tumour was directly behind my rib cage, and required an incision of the type used for open heart surgery. They sawed my breastbone in half and opened me up like a cardboard box, snipped out the offending material and sewed everything back up with steel pins to keep the bones together. Like you, that made me think of setting off airport security alarms for the rest of my life. But although my experience is now over and I have been assured there was no cancer, many of your experiences struck a curiously familiar note. The concern over your career - if not available to do a programme or a column, would you ever be asked again? The concern for your family, who also had to cope with your anger and frustration. The awkward manner of friends who don't know what to say or how to say it. I had these too. Unwilling to jeopardise the delicate healing process going on under my (newly-bald) chest, I was forbidden, in fact unable, to walk further than a few hundred yards. I struggled to get in and out of the bed or the bath. My cut oozed pus and itched madly. The bones underneath ached and stung as they recovered. The worst for me was sneezing. Did you have problems with that too? For me, for weeks, each sneeze seemed to tug at the steel pins holding me together, wrenching them within their bone mountings and making me shed tears with the pain. How I cursed my hayfever then. Then after a few weeks I returned to my doctor at Guy's Hospital and was told the lump was harmless. Taking it out had been a good move because it could have squashed my windpipe or heart had it grown larger - but it was not malignant. Unlike you, my source of worry was cut out. The lump was gone. It was not cancer. I still have the same chance of getting through the rest of my life without cancer as the next person. This note is not looking for sympathy, nor is it an attempt to convey any to you (although you do have mine if it's of any use). It's just that your adventures so closely matched mine, up until the moment where you were told you have cancer and I was told I hadn't. I feel a whole lot luckier. I knew from the outset that "there's always someone worse off than you," but thanks to you and your sensitive film, I was hit in the face by it. best wishes, Giles Turnbull ------ Copyright 1998 Giles Turnbull All rights reserved.