When I had my appendix removed I was nine, so I didn't have the proper perspective on nurses. They did however still wear starched uniforms and those dutch hats. It was a close call, and I had the experience of being rushed into hospital with the blues & twos.
The first pleasure when I got there was being asked to give the thumbs up so an evil nurse could plunge a blunt glass stabber into the end of it (my thumb that is), then suck up a sample of blood. Then, after the first injection of the week, there was the 'on my back/stare at the ceiling' trolley ride to theatre and the bank of overhead lights, followed by semi-suffocation with the strong smell of rubber, and counting to ten but not getting there................
Then it all went black.
Then I came too, with a mouth like the bottom of a parrots cage, but they wouldn't give me a drink. Eventually I dared to lift the sheets to be faced with acres of dried iodine and a lot of dried blood. No keyhole surgery then, he'd been in with both hands, and a friends by the look of it. The cut was six inches, at a jaunty angle, and clamped shut with eight brass staples - quite a new thing then as I recall.
I was kept in for six days. In that time I learned a few things. The really good looking nurse was a bit of a bitch with no bedside manner. The others, while not being pleasing to a nine year olds eye, were very nice to me. I did get a few bed baths, and one in the actual bath. Two other things happened which were not especially enjoyable. An injection in the backside every twelve hours for most of the week. How I hated that! It must have been antibiotics, but they did this at 6am and 1800hrs, so I was woken up for the morning one, and had the evening one after tea and just before lights out. (Childrens ward rules). The other test was an enema. I couldn't do the stuff, because I hadn't eaten much over the previous week, so a nurse turned up one afternoon with what's best described as a soap torpedo. Next came the unmistakeable sound of rubber gloves being put on, so obviously I tensed up. The nurse asked me to 'relax'..... then I felt a very firm finger shove the torpedo well up my arse. To say the effect was instantaneous is an understatement. Immediately I really really wanted a sh*t. Job done then. Obviously I have post traumatic stress about this week because the only thing I don't remember is the food. A friend of the family fetched me home in his Morris 1000 Traveller. I'd rather been hoping it would be his brother in law with his Lagonda Rapide...... Oh well.
