hernias, mixed wards and chav women
A couple of years ago I had an operation to repair an incisional hernia. The previous year I had an operation on my stomach, leaving a 9 inch scar right up the middle, and a hernia had burst through where the incision had been made.

The morning after the op, whilst taking a dump, the hernia repair came apart. I felt it 'go', and realised I needed to get myself straight back down to the hospital. Once there I told the receptionist in A&E what had happened and I was sent straight away to the Surgical Assessment Unit for, ummmm, assessment.

I was given a bed in the SAU and for the rest of the day various doctors came along to prod my stomach, which by now had swollen up to the size of that of a heavily pregnant womans, and turned that blue/purple colour of a bruise (internal bleeding, they told me, wahoo!!!). I was scheduled for another operation the following morning, but by now any movement was incredibly painful, so I just had to lay there and wait it out.

The SAU was a mixed ward. Opposite me was an old woman who kept offering me a distressing view up her gown, and a young teacher who had taken a full on 'field goal' type kick to the bollocks from one of his pupils (including run up). After talking to him for half an hour I began to sympathize with the pupil, and if I had been able to get out of bed I would have booted him in the scrote myself.

Anyway, this is all scene setting for the next part of the story.

That evening a middle aged chav woman was brought into the ward and put into the bed next to mine, adjacent to the window. She was a great fat beast of a woman, all home-done tattoos and gold Argos jewellery, with dark bags under her eyes and a right shitty attitude. Her fat chavvy family were with her, 2 teenagers in shell suits and the obese husband in ripped oily t-shirt and filthy jeans. She was constantly shouting about how much pain she was in, the painkillers weren’t working, the nurses didn’t give a shit, the doctors were useless, why didn’t they give her more painkillers, no one cares, and so on, and so on. All the while her family and various nurses were trying to calm her down.

"I’m sorry Mrs Pond-Scum, but you've already had the maximum amount of painkillers that the doctors have prescribed."

"Well the doctors are fucking useless then, cos I’m in soooo much pain, I NEED MORE FUCKIN' PILLS DONT I"

"You can’t have any more, I can give you a sleeping pill but no more painkillers"

"What fucking good will that do, I want MORE PAINKILLERS! No one fuckin' cares about me...."

And so on.....

This continued for a depressingly long time, until she decided that she needed to be a little more persuasive in her argument....

"Look, if you don’t get me some more painkillers RIGHT FACKIN' NOW, I’m going to THROW MYSELF OUT OF THAT FACKIN' WINDOW, YOU SEE IF I DONT!!!"

An awkward silence descended on the ward, broken only by the sound of her incessant sobbing. After a minute her husband, who up until now hadn’t made a sound, said in a gentle voice...

"Don’t throw yourself out the window love...... its only 3 foot off the ground"!!!

Laughter didn’t come easily when I was in such pain myself, but I managed. Sure enough, in the daylight of the following morning, I saw people walking along the footpath right outside the window. By the way, she took the offered sleeping pill, snored like a warthog all night, and as soon as the nurses woke her the next morning, she started off again “I’m in so much pain, I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night....”
(Lionel Tiger, Thu 11 Mar 2010, 15:23, Reply)