So Sid has for ages had a sebaceous cyst on the back of his right thigh. It has sat there for some time but grown larger and last week it started weeping. By Friday it was quite painful but, being a bloke, Sid resolutely refused my exhortations to get to the doctor, dammit. The more I insisted, the more French he became. There is a quotient attached to such a balancing act, beyond which it is inadvisable to tread.
By Saturday he was in quite a lot of pain and the thing was huge, hot and very angry, so I stopped by at the pharmacy (actually for T's eye drops) and asked the pharmacist whether I should take him to hospital. One slightly patronising look ensued along with that "there there little miss don't be alarmed" thing that medics and vets are so damn good at (I wonder if there is a module for this at med school that pharmacists also get to take) and he assured me that it would be fine and could be lanced and drained at our local surgery. Alrighty then. Suitably reassured, I went back home and told Sid that the doctor should be able to deal with it and that he was to make an appointment first thing Monday morning come hell or high water. The rest of the weekend passed for Sid in a haze of significant pain while the rest of us were off poncing around in slightly irregular circles in our best breeches at a local competition venue.
Monday morning; I call from the gym (while toiling away on exercise bike) to ensure that the appointment has been made. 3:50pm. Good. By this point the site was a big tempestuous boil of a thing throbbing with pus. Arrange to leave work early and hotfoot it down the motorway to get home just in the nick of time to transport the patient. Doctor: "oooh, very impressive, I'm afraid this has gone past the point of antibiotics or anything we can do here. You'll have to go to hospital". Argh. She makes an immediate call to the surgical team and packs us off to Hospital A.
After a suitable interval we arrive at Hospital A, register the patient and await the triage nurse. Upon being seen, he informs us that they cannot do the surgery there as they have no emergency facilities, and that we need to go to Hospital B. He goes on to explain that the two establishments share a switchboard and, as such, the doctor is unlikely to have been any the wiser about which hospital surgical team she had put on standby. Marvellous. HOWEVER! Since we are here, we cannot be allowed to leave until he has been seen by a doctor. Further waiting. Eventually we are seen. I sign a disclaimer to take responsibility for transporting the patient to Hospital B, thus offsetting any liability on behalf of the Hospital A. Sid is in a lot of pain, with elevated temp (38.6) and heart beat (114).
We arrive at Hospital B, some while later. We register at the desk and I explain about the referral and how the doctor said we would not need to wait in line at A&E. The receptionist is equally resolute that we must wait nevertheless. Meanwhile Sid is looking increasingly grim and getting hotter and more feverish. Those hospital reception seats are not built for comfort at the best of times, and especially not when you have a boiling cauldron of infection on the back of your thigh.
Eventually he is triaged for the third time that night and finally, finally is taken to a room where he is triaged again. I felt like having "no allergies, no diabetes, temp 38.6, tachycardic and nil by mouth all day bar two extra strong mints" tattooed on his forehead. He is put on a drip and has a canula fitted. Actually that's the other way around isn't it. By this point it is around 9:30pm and the lack of food, coffee etc is taking its toll, not to mention the worry as he is looking rather green. I feel like my insides have been scooped out and left in a pile somewhere, to be replaced by a small handful of pips. Nip out quickly for a snack only to find I unwisely offloaded all my change to the barista at work that morning for a soya cappucino and a panini and the pathetic choice remains of machine coffee of a bag of crisps. Opt for crisps. Stale crisps, just for that extra little cherry on top of the midden heap.
Approximately an hour after being transferred to the room, he is wheeled up to surgery, though not before the surgeon (young, posh, friendly) has been in to add his comments to the impressiveness of the site. Even for a relatively simple procedure - albeit one accompanied by a galloping infection - it is difficult to watch your loved one being wheeled off to go under the knife, but the theatre nurses, well practised at this sort of thing, were great. Off he went and off I went to wait for him to come out of surgery. Three nights of very poor sleep must have caught up with me and I think I must have dozed in the relatives' room, waking periodically when my back or butt started to throb unbearably after spending so many hours sitting on so many uncomfortable seats. On the plus side, pretty sure I didn't start dribbling.
The nurse came by about 11pm to tell me he was awake so I was able to see him, sitting up, looking rather more perky, certainly less green, and talking about kebabs. We had a cup of tea and after making sure he was ok, I left him for the night and drove home, rather sedately due to fatigue and the crash that happens once the adrenaline gives way. Wander the corridors for a while (seems I am only person there) before finding the exit courtesy of another snotty medic who insisted on speaking to me in a slightly too loud and certainly too patronising tone, just to finish me off. Unfortunately I was too far gone to take her to task by saying "My dear doctor; I fully appreciate the elevated status that you inhabit on the social ladder and I also appreciate that you are probably inured by now to treating all your patients as the proletariat fuckwits that they undoubtedly are in comparison to your lofty intellect and 15,000 years of training, but please, in the name of all that is holy, employ those formidable powers of observation and just recognise that I've had a hell of a day of stress, worry and sitting on your bloody uncomfortable chairs, and spare me the patronising manner, capiche?"
Home, a tin of soup and bed. Slept like a king with three cats piled around me. I don't think I moved all night, though whether this was to do with the fatigue or being pinioned by cats, or some combination of the two is not clear.
Sid was finally discharged about 2pm and we finally got home around 24 hours after the whole thing began. The wound has been packed and dressed and will need to be be changed daily by a nurse for the next week or so. This sounds innocuous but is in fact a brutal procedure comprising the brisk cleaning of the wound from the inside out by a nurse possessed of only a passing concern for the patient's comfort or nausea levels. The district nurse will visit at the weekend and I just know Sid will insist on me being there to see the wound.
The medical staff are being evasive about how long it will take to heal, this large crater in his leg that is subjected to a vigorous daily scrub. Sid's mum, in her capacity as "un oiseau de mauvaise augure"
The moral of the story for Sid is that it's always better to get to the doctor sooner than later, even if you are a bloke. For my part, I learnt that levels of common human decency are much higher in other departments than in ours.
