Brilliant NHS Staff

I had a cyst and was taking antibiotics but it decided to become something more unpleasant so I visited my GP. I belong to a brilliant medical practice run by the charismatic Dr Mc, but rarely see him. This particular morning I had an appointment with Dr. K., who had seen the original cyst and prescribed the antibiotics. Dr. K has two expressions, impassive and even more impassive. It was the second one that crossed his face as he examined what had now become an abscess in my right groin. He decided to write a letter to the Surgical Assessment Unit at QA hospital there and then to get me antibiotics given IV. As I had a final dress rehearsal that night and an opening night the following I was trying to calculate whether I could postpone the hospital visit until the Monday break in performances or indeed until after the performances finished. However Dr K said I must go straight to SAU and only to pick up my overnight bag on the way through.

At the SAU my details were taken by Staff Nurse W, who had been one of my pupils at Trosnant Primary School. She described me as being a "lovely teacher" and such an unsolicited testimonial made me swell with pride. While we waited long hours in the Treatment Room - not designed for long stays hence my Left Buttock complaint of previous posts - I was visited by another nurse whose son DB I had taught at Waite End School ( I believe her son had done some work on the construction of the new super hospital in which we sat).

More importantly we were visited by a very good looking doctor who was doing the assessment in the SAU. He looked like a taller version of Dominic Cooper (said teh best Beloved). It was he who answered my problem about dress rehearsals and first nights by saying "send in the understudy" and that I would be lucky to be back performing after the weekend if all went to plan. Fortunately for the Bench Theatre and "What the Butler Saw" we had the remarkable and very talented Mark Wakeman as director. It was he who stepped in as understudy with a script on stage and earned a brilliant performance accolade in the press reviews. Having seen the play all the way through he knew the moves and situations and was familiar with the lines - he needed the script though because even he was defeated by Orton's ornate language (see previous posts). That was one burden off my shoulders and all I had to concentrate on was my abscess.

After Dr. Dominic Cooper look alike came the surgery team dressed in scrubs led by a female registrar, female surgeon and male assistant. By now abscess was throbbing but if left alone didn't cause too much pain but he didn't like the attention and probing and prodding. The surgical team agreed with Dominic's assessment and i was added to the CPOD list for that day. This is the emergency list to fit in amongst the already scheduled theatre appointments and you can get shuffled up and down the list depending on priorities.

Eventually in the evening I was moved to a small one bed room in preparation for my procedure whenever a theatre became available. Best Beloved departed after a very long day thinking my procedure would take place at 2100. However I was moved down the list because another patient took priority. I was visited by an anaesthetist. This was the moment I dreaded as at my bypass they had had to do a tracheotomy in order to get air into my lungs during general anaesthetic. If they had to do that again I knew my voice would be ruined as the tracheotomy took longer to heal than did the bypass operation scars. The anaesthetist suggested another method whereby a tube was introduced up my nose and then down the back of my throat. This sounded horrible as well and I knew that if my throat was damaged or made sore it would take a long time to heal (If I am about to catch a cold or such like, it is the back of my throat which goes first).

Anyway I am dozing off having watched "Spooks" on the bedside TV when at midnight a porter and a nurse arrive for me. They trundle me down lengthy empty corridors to the theatre, where I am greeted my surgical nurses and the star of the day, the anaesthetist in charge of my operation. He was bonhomie personified and I am ashamed to say I didn't catch his name. Mainly this was because he had come up with an alternative approach for the operation. Instead of putting me under a general anaesthetic, he suggested the use of an epidural, an injection in the spine which would immobilise the body below the belly button. I agreed to the procedure and was injected in the back doing a Rodin pose under my own steam. Then followed the weirdest sensation - I could feel if my lower limbs were touched or moved but had no sensation of pain and was unable to move them myself. He introduced me to the "Oh yer Bugger" moment. This was achieved with a cold spray which had no real impact on the deadened areas but achieved the OYB moment if it sprayed on to the upper torso. The point was to monitor that the epidural worked in the area required and not higher up, which on reflection was a good thing. A NHS screen was rigged up of a blanket between two drip feed stands as I requested not to be able to see the surgeons at work. I am a physical coward and didn't want to see scalpels near my crown jewels.

The surgeon popped her head round the screen at one point to explain what they were doing and to apologise that they hadn't given me a bikini shave. The anaesthetist kept me entertained throughout with anecdotes, summary of the procedure and health advice. he did warn me that my bladder needed to work by 0800 next morning otherwise the epidural might be having too extended an effect and I would need help urinating.

I am delighted to say that my bladder worked as normal the next morning!

Finally I am indebted to the beautiful blonde District Nurse from Leeds with obvious Norwegian ancestry named Ingrid! Two Ingrids in one room was a total delight. The District Nurse ripped off the elastoplast on my dressing, came up with a less painful solution for covering the wound that will become a scar. I am now midway through a fortnight of seeing a nurse each day for changing my dressing. The usual comment on seeing the wound that will become a scar is "Oh, how impressive!"

I think that must be my summation of the brilliant NHS staff I have met during my latest medical procedure is "How Impressive!"

MLB 2

MLB is an inbuilt device for measuring how long I have been sitting and waiting. Wednesday was one of those days when my ability for sitting several hours staring blankly into space was severely tested although I seem to have had a lot of practice since retiring. MLB became so pained at my lack of movement that it threatened to part company with the rest of me and no amount of shifting, rubbing or raising it off the seat would placate it.

I had been carrying a slightly aggravated cyst in my right groin for some time but it chose Sunday of the get in and technical rehearsals of my current production with the Bench Theatre, "What the Butler Saw", to begin to flare up and to start causing problems and pain. I had already seen my GP on a previous occasion and had antibiotics standing by for such an eventuality. However on the Monday I found myself confined to bed (TG I don't work these days) - this is something my body seems to do if I am sick - and I realised that I was exhausted as well as having problems with a cyst. Dress rehearsal on Monday night was done with gritted teeth and on masses of adrenalin. I always quote "Doctor Theatre" at my girls and do believe that as long as you can get on the stage adrenalin will carry you through. Unfortunately this production of adrenalin does have a payback as you tend to exhaust even further your natural resources so Tuesday was also spent in bed in considerable discomfort. The dress rehearsal that night was marked by an increase in the pain level but I took that as a sign of improvement (on what grounds I am now unsure). However a look at the site when I got home was sufficient to convince me that I should see the GP in the morning. The cyst wore a perpetual darkened frown and the surrounding area was infected and sore.

Suffice it to say that I found myself in the G.P.'s surgery next morning. He took a close look at My Problem and then promptly sat down to write out instructions for the hospital while carefully explaining the situation to me. I would need antibiotics intravenously and some surgery so I was being sent to the Surgical Assessment Unit. There was a surreal moment when I tried to work out if the appointment would arrive after the production or whether it would fall on the Monday break in production before the Tuesday performance which starts the run of last five performances. The GP looked at me bemused when I asked the timing of all of the treatment he was suggesting. He said I had sufficient time to go home for an overnight bag before taking the document and file to the SAU at the hospital. An hour later the Best Beloved and I sat in the Treatment Room of the SAU awaiting assessment.

My Left Buttock

I have just had a surprise minor operation this week which threw my plans and those of my friends into a tailspin. Thanks to excellent treatment by NHS staff and good drugs, superlative caring by the Best Beloved, and the support of friends and family, I am making a remarkably speedy recovery back at home with the Wound which will become a Scar. I am slightly shuffling in motion as I accustom myself to actions which are unwise to execute at this stage but which I used to be able to do before the operation. I am hoping however to be able to announce myself recovered enough to take up playing the part of Dr. Prentice in the Bench Theatre production of "What the Butler Saw" for the five performances of the run from next Tuesday. The part has been played brilliantly in my absence by the director, Mark Wakeman. Some may say too well as he and the production received a glowing review in the Portsmouth News. He may not want to give up the roar of the make up and the smell of the crowd.
All of this in the course of three days and the main casualty is not my Wound which will become a Scar but my Left Buttock!

Missed Chance

I had the chance of a part with another company that I have tried to join on a number of previous occasions. They offered me an actual part because the original actor had gone down sick. I was gutted to find that it clashed with the performance dates of "What the Butler Saw" so I was unable to accept the chance. However perhaps now they have thought of me once I might get another offer.

My agent texted me about the possibility of taking part in a Lurpak commercial but the casting director didn't firm up the offer so I missed out on a day's filming on Tuesday.

I am spending hours daily cramming my head full of the lines for "What the Butler Saw". I don't know how I found time to do it when I was working. Perhaps my technique was different then or my memory cells were better organised or just younger! It is hard work and not helped by Joe Orton writing in such ornate language that wouldn't go amiss in a Restoration Comedy. You feel you have to get every word and syllable in the right place or order otherwise it just doesn't sound right and the rhythm of the lines is lost. I have just about reached that stage where the lines are finally in my head and coming out of my mouth on cue and in the right order. However there is an awful lot of tricky stage business, which then threatens the memory cells and the links between sections. The worst effect of a "dry" is that you end up not remembering which play let alone scene you are doing. The stage business needs to become automatic and reliant upon muscle memory rather than conscious thought. This means rehearsing the stage business endlessly so it becomes an automatic part of you. The trouble with that is you need the actual props you are going to use and they will need replenishing constantly. It may only need a dozen roses for each performance but you have to multiply that by the number of performances and then by the number of rehearsals. One piece of business is so complex it has 33 different actions and at the moment I am miming each action so by the time I get to action 12 or 13 even I can't remember what the mime represents let alone the actress awaiting her cue. Another of the problems is that you can't get to handling the props unless you know the lines and don't have the book in your hand any more. Learning the 33 actions for that one sequence of stage business is harder than learning lines. We have taped the dialogue and it would be a good idea to use the tape for those sort of sequences.

I am amazed to find that time has flown so rapidly and we are already approaching Get in and technical rehearsals while I am still in the process of over learning the lines. This is the process where you hope to learn the lines sufficiently that they don't entirely rely upon conscious thought and free up part of your brain to use in performance and rehearsal over and beyond the mechanics. I was taught that there are four stages of learning a skill: you are unconscious that the skill even exists; you become conscious of the skill and the fact that you don't have it; you consciously use the skill and it takes all your concentration to use it; you unconsciously use the skill. The best analogy is learning to drive a car. Well I think it can also apply to developing a performance in a play.

At the moment Best Beloved is helping me to develop one of the pieces of stage business needed for the play which involves female underwear, shoes, roses and a vase. We think we have solved the problem with the roses but need the vase and under/foot wear in order to work it all out before we start rehearsing the muscle memory! Tell me again how many years I have had this theatrical hobby.......46?....is that possible? or desirable?