before I’d be up to it again. Mary didn’t like to be outside her comfort zone and I wanted Leah to be a bit more daring. I’d been taking her on the best carnival rides since she was two. We headed off to the sky walk.
In front of us were two teenage boys. A steward fitted harnesses over their heads and led them to the first obstacle. Both guys chickened out and were taken down steps where they were unharnessed.
“I don’t think I want to now” Leah whispered to me.
I didn’t want to either but I wasn’t going to let that stop us.
“You can do it” I assured her.
We set off over, under and across the obstacles. I don’t know which one of us was more nervous but we didn’t chicken out. Beads of sweat rolled off my brow, disappearing into the space below before splashing unnoticed on the floor. When we finished we both felt exhilarated. She wanted to go again, once was enough for me.
On Monday I met the surgeon. He was professional to the nth degree. Sharply dressed, confident and honest. I immediately liked him. He explained what he was going to do. Much of the flesh of my left buttock was to be further excised. At the same time a radioactive indicator was to be injected into the area and then he could see which lymph nodes the blood was flowing through. Once identified, a biopsy of the nodes would tell if the melanoma had spread.
Lymph nodes are the body’s sewerage system. Impurities in the blood are filtered out in the lymph system; hence, you can have swelling in your neck glands with a strep throat for example. If the melanoma had spread, it was likely that it would show up in the lymph nodes first.
Beaumont is a teaching hospital. Ranks of upcoming doctors spend set periods learning by example from the best professionals the country has. It’s big and it’s imposing. Thousands of people pass through the doors every day. Visitors, staff and patients mill around the ground floor from early morning to late night. It is a place of routine hustle and bustle. On the day I was admitted, I was a bit overwhelmed. I felt out of place. I was not sick in the same sense as most that I saw. I didn’t feel ill, didn’t look ill and didn’t want to be there.
The room had enough space for six beds but there were only five. To the uninitiated that might not mean much, but it is the difference between semi-private and public to the bean counters. In each five or six bedded room is a small room in the corner. In there, is a toilet and wash hand basin. In the more modern rooms there is a shower cubicle, in the one I was in, there was not.
I was given a name band, a line in my arm and one of those stupid gowns that fastens at the back.
“Don’t go anywhere” the nurse told me “you’re on the list for later on and you have to go to nuclear medicine first”.
I’d never heard of nuclear medicine.
“The team will be around soon”.
I sat on the armchair beside the bed. I listened to music on an mp3 and waited.
The team came and went. Fresh faced interns gathered around the bed listening to the surgeon as he explained what was to come. I had no problem lying down on the bed and baring my ass. The surgeon traced his finger along the line of the incision he was going to make. He talked about using a flap of skin that could be closed over to seal the wound he was going to make. The interns hung on his every word, some took notes, the clever ones listened.
After a time a porter arrived with a wheel chair.
“Pop in there” he told me.
I put slippers on and sat in the chair. I’d never owned a pair of slippers before; I’d never seen the need. I’d bought them along with Pjs a few days earlier.
He wheeled me to the lifts and we descended into the basement. I was greeted by a small swarthy man in a white coat. He brought me through a door emblazoned with hazard signs and the words ‘Nuclear Medicine’. He was the chatty type which suited me fine. In the time it took him to get me ready I already knew he was from Malta, loved Ireland and was up to date on malignant melanoma. Moments later another man in a lab coat carried in a small steel box. The outside of the box was covered in yellow and black hazard signs. The Maltese man opened the lock on the box and took out a metal syringe. He injected the contents into my left buttock. A few minutes later a different porter arrived and took me back up to the ward. The nurse hung a sign on my bed. It cautioned that pregnant women and young children shouldn’t come near me. I was radioactive.
I wasn’t allowed to fraternise, I had to stay at the bed and wait. I watched people come and go to the bedsides of the four other men in the room. Two were elderly, taken from nursing homes to Beaumont for minor surgeries. The other two were younger. One, a man who drank his liver into failure, the other a guy who had picked up an infection abroad from which he was recovering. I listened to music and waited.
A tall bloke dressed in green with white clogs arrived with a porter. They had negotiated their way through the corridors and into the room with a trolley.
“Can you make it up there yourself” the gentle green giant asked.
I climbed onto the trolley using one hand to keep the stupid gown closed at the back. We chatted on the way down to theatre. The weather, football anything but hospital, cancer and surgery.
He parked the trolley in a room where everyone was dressed in green. A nurse came to my side with a thick file. She double checked the details on my wristband with the details on the file. Another nurse, older, matronly, arrived just as she finished.
“They’re flying along” she said comfortingly to me “won’t be long now”. She patted my blanket covered foot gently.
I thank god, or whoever or whatever runs the show upstairs for people like her. She knew not to engage me other than with a reassuring pat and a business as usual approach. It was what I needed. I lay back, closed my eyes and relaxed. I was almost asleep when she came back to take me to the anaesthetist.
The anaesthetist’s room was small. Just big enough for the trolley and a person to walk around it. One wall was covered with transparent plastic boxes, each labelled and filled with an assortment of tubes, syringes and other equipment. The anaesthetist explained what she was doing. She attached a syringe to the line in my arm. The liquid felt cold in the veins of my arm. That was the last thing I remembered before darkness closed in on all sides and consciousness was swept away.
I awoke back in the room with the green people. The matronly nurse was by my side.
“How’s the pain” she asked “on a scale of one to ten”.
“Six” I answered quickly.
Moments later pain relief flooded my system. The world closed in again and I dozed off. I was half awake as a porter brought me back upstairs and got me into bed. Early the next morning the team arrived. The surgeon pulled back the bandages and examined his handy work. I could tell he was more than pleased. If he was happy I was happy. A perfect question mark scar stretched from ass cleavage almost to hip. On the front near the hip bone a much smaller scar, the spot where the biopsy was taken. It was a perfect question mark dot and all.
I spent three or four days in hospital. The medical staff, nurses and doctors, worked long hard hours. The sheer volume of patients each was responsible for was staggering. Nurses in particular were always on the go. The one place where
