10. Nempnett Thrubwell and Other Strangeness
I had plenty of new information to occupy my mind, I was going to be subjected to an absolute avalanche of, frankly, atrocious side effects from the radiotherapy and chemotherapy and into the bargain they wanted to pull two more of my teeth out, possibly by the end of that very week.
But, by the end of the week there was a lot of deafening silence from the NHS which was a cause for some anxiety and celebration at the same time. If they don't pull the teeth out then the ongoing Barrel of Tit's syndrome will almost certainly kick in... ooh you haven't heard of said syndrome, you'll have to return to issue one to read an explanation as I'm certainly not going over all that iredeemable pish again. Anyhow it would definitely kick in and I would get osteoradionecrosis of the jaw and end up with no teeth and no jawbone into the bargain. However on the up side, and let me tell you this is a considerably large upside, in the short term they wouldn't be pulling any more teeth out.
By the Monday after New Year's I was rather reluctantly back at work and working on a somewhat knotty programming problem when I received a text from the NHS, summoning me to a dental assessment in two day's time.
Helen drove me in for this appointment. Who knew, a diagnosis of cancer produces chauffeurs. She dropped me off at the doors of the dental hospital and went to find a place to wait in the car. The appointment was at 2 o'clock. The NHS has become inexplicably efficient and if I turn up early for an appointment I nearly always end up going straight in, so we have got into the habit of arriving about half an hour early, gives you time to find a parking place and wander round lost in the bowels of the BRI.
So, I strolled into the dental hospital at half one or so and made my way to the waiting room, it was empty, the shutters were down on the x-ray department reception as well. I sat down and waited, I'd bought the latest book by Haruki Murakami with me to read, fuck knows why as I wasn't reading for some unknown reason. Alright I'll let you in on a secret, I am a tart and like people to think I am intelligent and the Murakami was big, fat and somewhat intellectual so it might impress the dentist. Who am I kidding, still, it goes with the tweed waistcoat and moustache, I am basically an elderly hipster who looks vaguely laughable. However I shall maintain my dignity and pretend I'm looking sharp.
I opened the Murakami and tried to read but it really wasn't going in. It very slowly dawned on me as I looked round the deserted waiting room that it was just after half past one and, of course, everyone was on lunch and no other fucker had bothered to turn up early as, unlike me, they had something resembling half a brain cell in their heads and had clocked the fact that no-one would be there. I didn't even have anyone to impress with my useless book.
Sure enough, no one turned up until about 5 to 2 when a trickle of other patients arrived. I will bear this in mind and not get to any further lunchtime appointments early.
Shortly after 2 a nurse appeared from the wrong side of the waiting room, called my name and beckoned me to to follow her. This is exciting, we aren't heading in the usual direction but across the corridor into a hitherto un-entered door. The excitement very quickly turned into a rather large amount of dread, the room that I had entered was packed to the rafters with dentists. This is possibly my worst nightmare. There were thousands of little cubicles, alright, alright, about ten, each one occupied by a dentist and a nurse, in some cases, 3 dentists and five nurses all clustered round a torture victim in a space barely big enough to swing a mouse, let alone a cat.
I was led into a cubicle and the dentist introduced herself and very quickly got down to work. Well, maybe not that quickly, like every other person in the NHS she wanted to know my height, weight, date of birth, length of toenails and what, if anything, I was allergic to. I was tempted to say that I was severely allergic to dentists but I restrained myself to the bare details.
She started by gently feeling around my neck, this is a new practice that I have only just become aware of. Nice that the dentists are checking you for cancer as well these days.
"Did you notice the lump in your neck and go to the doctor?"
"No, I happened to be in for something totally unrelated and they noticed an issue when they were doing an ultrasound on my neck"
"Oh wow, so the cancer was an incidental finding?"
For all my moaning about the aforementioned Barrel of Tits Syndrome, I actually count myself incredibly lucky. If a couple of NHS radiographer's hadn't noticed a very minor shadow in my neck, while looking for evidence of a TIA, then there is no way that I would have noticed anything until maybe it was far too late and the cancer had spread too far to do anything about.
She had a good look at where the two wisdom teeth had been removed and declared that they were both healing well.
"I understand that the dentist that you saw a week ago recommended that these two teeth be removed"
The disturbing x-ray of my teeth had made yet another appearance and I reluctantly agreed that, yes, the two teeth she indicated were indeed scheduled for execution, sorry, extraction.
"The radiotherapy is going to start at the end of this month, the last dentist I talked to said that the extractions had to be done as soon as possible otherwise there wouldn't be enough time for them to heal"
"Yes, that's correct, I understand that you will need this to be done under sedation?"
"Yeah, I'm afraid I am a complete wuss and have an unreasoning fear of dentists"
The dentist turned to the young, extravagantly tattooed nurse who had been assisting her, "Can you see whether you can get a sedation appointment as an emergency, explain that we have very little time due to the cancer"
The nurse disappeared and shortly I saw her on the far side of the room talking animatedly with an older colleague, there was a certain amount of hand waving back and forth before she returned to the cubicle. "Will Tuesday next week be OK"
I gulped, Oh fuck, "Yes of course"
The dentist then filled my arms with pamphlets about tooth extraction and conscious sedation and presumably, on past evidence, how both of them could go frantically wrong and cause discomfort, pain and imminent death.
With that I was released back into the wild to find Helen and make my way back home. The next week before the extractions was full of nothing of interest, apart from me nearly killing myself on the new bike.
I was still suffering somewhat from the surgery to my throat and the removal of two teeth but it was gradually getting better even though swallowing was still a chore. Saturday arrived and Helen was off to watch her eldest grandchild play football. He's become a bit of a star with his own groupies who come to watch him. Helen has become quite obsessed with football, a game that fails to grip me whatsover. Most Saturday's she's off to hob nob with Bristol's most interesting characters.
"Yer 'e's the 'ardest bloke in Bristol mind"
She does come back with some...interesting, stories about bookings, fights and love affairs galore.
I was left to my own devices and decided the time had come to get the new bike insured, and maybe take it for a cheeky ride round the lanes. After spending about an hour on the phone to the insurance company, most of it waiting for someone to answer, I had a freshly insured motorcycle. I went out and dragged the rattling ruin out of the garage and inspected it. Hmm...it's been a very long time since I had a bike that has a kick start.
Following the instructions from the nice man from the Old Boys Motorcycle Workshop who I'd bought it from I set the choke to full and then backed it off a quarter, turned on the petrol and gave the carburettor a tickle until fuel came through. Two fairly hefty kicks later and the old girl thumped into life.
As it turned out there was basically no water, the lane was a little muddy but that was it. I was travelling at a fairly sedate 20 miles an hour or so, not pushing the envelope or the bike for that matter. I completely failed to notice something, still don't know what it was, sticking out of the hedge into the lane. This something or other caught my left foot, the one that has had over 11 surgeries and counting, and wrenched it off the foot peg and backwards rather violently. I screamed at the sudden excess of pain but didn't, Lord knows how, fall off. I very quickly pointed the bike homeward, trying not to think of what damage I had done to my already sorely abused ankle. More to the point, how much trouble was I likely to be in when Helen found out.
The bike chose this moment to start missing and spluttering, oh fuck, I've damaged my ankle so I won't be able to walk and I'm several miles from home in the middle of nowhere in a notorious phone signal dead spot. There is a possibility that this ride on the old ruin may not have been a wonderful idea.
I nursed the bike back to the top of the lane down into our village where I was able to coast a bit, the bike was definitely not happy and as I turned into our drive it died completely.
I limped back into the house, divested myself of my motorcycling gear, opened the garage and stowed the bike away as if nothing had happened.
I can't have done too much damage as I was only limping for a couple of days which was a bit of a relief.
A letter had arrived from the dental hospital that told me in no uncertain terms that I was to be accompanied by a carer when I went in for the extractions. Moreover this carer had to be a responsible adult, luckily Helen qualifies. I don't qualify, as the previous unaccompanied jaunt on the elderly motorcycle demonstrates quite ably and I should probably be accompanied by someone responsible at all times.
Time seemed to sort of telescope in reverse and the day for the extractions arrived rather too quickly for my liking. Once again Jo and Kev stepped up to the plate and dropped Helen and I to the dental hospital at 8.30. Not being too sure which waiting room to go to we asked the receptionist at the main desk inside the the door of the dental hospital where we needed to go. Much to my surprise we were directed to seats just in front of him and we settled down to wait.
It being the morning an interesting stream of people were coming through the door and pretty much none of them looked like patients. The vast majority of them disappeared through the door to our left, I was playing a game in my mind of "doctor or patient" so far it seemed that the hospital was light on patients. A heavily built young man came in talking on his phone and I marked him down as 'patient' and was gratified when he went through the door to the inner waiting room. I'm good at this. As it turns out, not that good, five minutes later he came back through the door dressed in scrubs and went through the 'staff' door to our left. I was starting to think that we were the only patients there when a nurse appeared through the staff door and called my name. I passed my book and coat to Helen and said, "Can I leave these with you, I'll see you when I get out"
Much to my surprise the nurse said to Helen "We'll need you to come with us"
This is a turn up for the books, I’m slightly concerned that they are going to do something so horrific to me that they need a witness. The nurse opens the door with her pass and ushers us through into the torture chamber, it's the room that I was in the week before and we are guided to one of the little cubicles.
The nurse asks me to sit in the reclining dental chair, I take off my glasses and hang up my coat and settle into the chair in a state of extreme nervousness. Helen is sitting in one of the ordinary chairs by the entrance to the cubicle.
Now I have opted for sedation as I am scared rigid of the dentist, unfortunately for me I am also scared into moderate rigor mortis by needles, in particular cannula’s but the fear of the dentist outweighs the fear of needles by a whisker so here I am waiting for some butcher to stick a horse needle in my arm or worse still my hand.
The butcher arrived, duly introduced himself and did the well known dance of NHS introduction, name, rank and serial number. Once he was satisfied that I was who he thought I was and I had confirmed my identity, sex and shoe size he got down to business.
Interestingly the cubicle did not contain any of the torture implements that usually adorn a dentists surgery. There was him, me and a reclining chair, I was starting to wonder whether he was intending to pull my teeth with his fingers when the extravagantly tattooed nurse from last time arrived carrying a covered tray. I am presuming this contained said torture implements but it was placed out of my sight and so it began.
I have never had a family member as a witness to someone sticking a needle in me before and Helen took an indecent amount of interest in the procedure. The dentist prodded my veins in my arm in a professional manner and then looked at my right arm and recoiled slightly.
I broke said arm when I was five and my elbow is at such a weird angle that so far no health professional has dared use it for either a cannula or blood test which meant, right now, that my left elbow was feeling rather over used and abused.
I started to get slightly anxious about the way he was dithering, and, yep, I was right, he stuck the cannula straight into the muscle. He spent some further time investigating my hand and then my elbow again, to no avail. Finally the nurse who was standing by, metaphorically tapping her foot, said,
"Would you like me to have a go"
She sounded very confident and the dentist relinquished my arm and trotted off to who knows where, his back view looking ever so slightly embarrassed. As the nurse bent over my arm, out of the corner of my eye, I could see Helen's head dancing back and forth as she tried to get a better look at the gory details. Of which there were none, I might add. The nurse whacked a tourniquet round my arm and stuck the cannula straight in the vein first go out of the trap. The dentist came back in and it was all systems go.
It all gets a bit fuzzy from here on in, I remember them flushing the cannula and asking me whether it hurt and after that I vaguely remember a bit of wrestling but that was it. I came back round after what felt like 3 minutes or so and it was all over bar the talking.
The dentist looked quite flushed and he said, "I'm very glad you had the sedative, that wouldn't have been fun otherwise"
"Not half as fucking glad as I am, I can tell you", I muttered sotto voce, then replied at normal volume
"Everything went well then?"
"Yes, indeed, everything went well. There may be a fragment left of the lower tooth as it was quite difficult to get out and we've put in some stitches which will dissolve in a couple of weeks. You are good to go home"
I presumed that Helen had not been there throughout the wrestling session but she was now back as my responsible adult and took care of all the various pamphlets and dressings that were piled into my arms.
The nurse and the dentist gathered at the door of the cubicle and waved goodbye as we were ushered back out into the world.
All 1 can hope is this latest assault on my mouth will have healed before the radiotherapy begins.
Comments
Post a Comment