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01/20/2004: "Anatomy of a biopsy."
While in hospital I made notes about my biopsy. Events are listed in chronological order, running from the 17th-18th Of January. I attempted to edit the notes during and after my stay.
The saddest things in the hospital were the ‘Patientline’ units. Placed above each bed, they were comprised of a small LCD screen, a numberpad/control panel, a pair of headphones and a telephone reciever. Patients could watch TV for ‘just £3.50’ a day. Radio is free. If one wants to call out, one needs a Patientline card. Calling someone cost 20p per minute on-peak, 10p off. If someone calls a patient it costs the caller 49p on and 39p off-peak.
If one didn't want to pay there was still 'FREE 24-hour radio' and 'FREE one-hour of breakfast TV [daily]'. To get this FREE stuff, units have to be activated by Patientline's telephone operators. I suppose they'd try to sell callers the paid services.
One could buy top-up cards in the hospital shop or from ‘Patientline representatives’. My ward’s rep’ dressed to look like a nurse - as if she worked for the NHS. Stupid bitch's hawking of Patientline cards even woke me up. Selling shit to the sick; what kind of karma is she pulling in?
(Even if you don't buy a card, the unit's 'TV' button flashes on and off to remind you its there to fulfill your needs.)
The ward I was in once had a communal lounge/TV room. Not anymore. Once upon a time one could get TVs wheeled into a ward-rooms. Arguing about what to watch got patients talking, interacting, coping a bit better. Now there's no need to talk anymore. Just plug yourself in and shut yourself out.
See the notes by following the ‘More’ link. They're very long and confusing. Tenses change often.
My parents were in attendance at various times during my stay at the hospital.
http://www.patientline.co.uk/
Male nurse. Australian with ginger hair, pale skin and friendly eyes. He seemed a bit nervous. It was his first day in this particular hospital.
He brought me a pillowcase and a pillow that had a protective cover like a novelty condom. The pillowcase had bloodstains on, so I asked for one 'without other patients on it'. He brought two more, saying both were skanky. One had stains, the other a large, fraying, rip in it. I smiled and said I could handle tears but not stains.
A short, Cockney, Mediterranean patient was leaving. He was balding, dressed all in black, had a leather jacket and a gold earring. He’d been in for an iron infusion and told me, conspiratorially, “When I was.. making love with the bird.. I used to get tired”.
(He’s got a girlfriend and a transplant? He has sex? There’s hope for me yet. No, wait. There isn’t. I’m a freak. My beard’s so big my face is paying it protection money.)
Since the infusion he’s feeling fitter. He intimates he’s going to give his bird a good seeing to.
I had my biopsy at 1315hrs. A short Sri Lankan doctor did the biopsy. He had hairy hands and wore a shirt and tie that could have doubled as a 'magic-eye' picture.
He scanned the site of my transplant using a portable ultrasound machine, disinfected the area and applied a local anaesthetic with a needle. It was inserted to the right of my navel, went quite far in and stung occasionally.
The anaesthetic took about a minute to work. As the doctor was preparing his tools (clamp, swabbing, hacksaw) I asked him about pain-receptors in the brain and internal organs. I’d remembered a scene in ‘Hannibal' where Lecter cuts away part of a live man’s brain for sautéing. He comments the man can’t feel anything. I don’t tell the doctor of my question’s cinematic origins.
After another ultrasound scan, the doctor produced a small scythe-like scalpel. He started to cut at my skin, but found making a nick difficult. There’s scarring over my graft site; smooth to touch but hard to cut. It took the doctor a few slices (and me a few twitches) to make an incision suitable enough to take a tissue sample through.
Then came the biopsy proper. He produced a 6" long metal tube about the diameter of a fine knitting needle. Within this tube was shaft of metal that had a blade on the end. He attached the tube to a spring-loaded ‘gun’. He took tissue samples by inserting the tube into my abdomen, pulling the gun’s trigger and having the shaft of metal shoot out and snag some flesh.
The procedure doesn’t hurt, but there is physical sensation. As the tube is pushed in one can feel it penetrating the various layers of one's body. However gently it’s inserted, one feels a twang as flesh constricts around it: imagine pushing a blunt sowing needle through a bunch of thick, taut, rubberbands.
This most noticeable feeling is when the sample is taken. There’s a confluence of meat, movement and sound. An object inside one snapping forward accompanied by a ‘chunk’ sound like a car-door lock being closed violently.
I had two samples taken. I kept bunching my toes throughout the entire time. My left arm by my side, the other above my head.
The doctor cleans away some of the blood and fluid that’s seeped from the incision in my abdomen, places a bandage over the wound and starts to clear up his equipment. He says he hopes he didn’t cause me any pain. I say there wasn’t any pain, just sensation. He thanks for my co-operation. I chuckle, saying I didn’t have any choice. He thanks me for not shouting. Some people having biopsies shout when they feel something. Not when they are in pain, but when they feel. This makes the doctor hesitant; he doesn’t want to hurt patients.
Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learnt about life, I learnt from my father and I learnt in hospital.
Always look at the needle going in. Don’t complain until it hurts.
1655hrs.
I'm thinking about how to urinate without being seen. I’m armed with a specimen bottle and am prohibited from leaving my hospital bed. The bedside curtain to my right is forward enough to hide my torso, but not my groin. Were I to piss now, I’d appear to be some kind of disembodied cock.
A nurse has come in and drawn the curtain forward. I’m now concerned that my embodied cock will be reflected in the window to my left. I’m not worried about being seen from the window. I’m on the 11th floor.
Relief. Mission completed.
2010hrs My urine is now the colour of dark applejuice. Or dubious orange squash.
2043hrs Night nurse arrives. Jamaican woman in her late 50s. Cornrows. No wig. The day belongs to the Philippines. The night the Caribbean and Africa.
From the back of the hospital menu: Healthy Eating/Diabetic: This code shows which options are low in fat (and salt in the main course) and suitable anyone (sic) following a healthy diet, such as those with diabetes, heart disease or trying to loose (sic) weight.
2117hrs. Male nurse asks he can start a franchise for the company I work for. I text message my boss asking for a contact. I am probably too friendly and helpful. (My boss doesn’t reply.)
2241hrs bored. Dozed for several hours post-surgery. Am awake and hungry. If I had WiFi, a better computer and a set of headphones I could play Day of Defeat. I don’t, though. I’ve just got a laptop and you.
There are close to a thousand words in this document. If I keep typing your head will explode. There’s too much content here – and I’m hardly saying anything.
I can condense, filter and grind down. Limit this experience to its essence. You’ll have less to read, but won’t see as much.
I can see one star in the sky. Below it London is flickering. When I tilt my head to one side and look out of the window, it seems as though the horizon disappears, the city and its lights curving away into the distance like an illuminated cylinder in a music box.
London by night isn’t a city; it’s a symphony. Music that can only be appreciated from above
2300hrs. Just went for piss by the bed. As I was going… oh god, he’s just farted a wet one. ….. As I was going an old man in the same room as me went to use a communal handbasin at the foot of my bed. Thank God he’s a bit deaf or he’d have heard my tinkling and looked at me.
After using the basin, he went to use the loo – a loo 15’ from the foot of my bed. Unable to find a lightswitch, he left the door open to let ambient light in.
I was stepping forward to turn the light on for him when he positioned himself for action and started the stream. I shuffled as quickly to my bed as my socks would allow and took refuge behind my curtains.
2336hrs
The hospital air conditioning is on. I can hear airvents creaking. I have often wondered how ambient noise on the Starship Enterprise might affect people. Now I know.
0058hrs
I am unable to sleep properly. The universe is reminding me of what a tit I am. A man on the ward is moaning in pain. The overweight patient at my two o’clock is snoring.
At times like this my thoughts turn to women. It is annoying being able to perceive more than most men and not having a woman to share that with. The world is a feast for the mind and senses – it isn’t always pleasurable to dine alone.
0719hrs
Nurse came in to do some obs. BP first, then weight. The electronic scales show I’m just over 50kg. Amazing. I’ve dropped 20kg in 48hrs. Infomercials here I come! I let the scale reset to 00.00 and stand on it again. 70.70kg. Normal. Electronic scales have shaved seconds from nurses’ duties, but at what cost accuracy?
The city is covered in early-morning mist.
0816
Inconsiderate fat Greek guy at my 2 o’clock is reading a newspaper and, amazingly, watching TV at the same time. The TV is loud enough to stop me sleeping; a series of Yank kids' shows overacted and screechy. There seems to be one sample of canned laughter played over and over and over again. Listening to that shit is unpleasant; what must it be like for the dubbers that put it in?
If I’m going to be in hospital put me in with considerate people.
0842
Please God let some beneficent superbeing come down to earth and steal me away. The Greek has had the good grace to turn his TV’s volume down a mighty TWO button presses. Now the old deaf guy has powered his set up and is slurping his cereal while breakfast TV presenters gossip about Michael Jackson.
How have I entertained myself over the last several hours? By sleeping, typing and reading a Woody Allen book. No volume control required.
The tea lady came in, yelped "Breaaakfasss breaaakkfasss" and doled out cereal and bread. No toast. She pulled my curtain back to give me my food, but didn’t return it to its original position. What about my privacy? Heartless bitch.
The Greek has gout. What the hell is gout? I thought only pirates got it. I think it is because he is fat. He is, how you say, a ‘tubby bitch’.
1202hrs
Taken tablets. Shaved with rose shaving soap and applied a rosewater scented balm. I smell clean, but don’t look it.
All I can do now is wait for the doctors to do their rounds and tell me my biopsy results. Last time I was in this situation, they told me my kidney was irrevocably failing. I am prepared for bad news.
Knight Rider is on the old man’s TV. He’s asleep. Monstrous.
1244hrs Just eaten lunch. Chicken fricassee, mashed potatoes and carrots. The carrots were sliced, corrugated and terrifyingly orange. A Warner Brothers ideal of colour. They might not have been real carrot.
Dessert was an asymmetrical doughnut, the ‘jam’ carelessly squirted into one side. If that doughnut could’ve walked, it would have had a limp. There was no flamboyance in its presentation. Not even any bunting.
