20th April ‘O Lord you have searched me and you know me’

 

20th April ‘O Lord you have searched me and you know me’  

During the morning I received the wonderful news that my ‘chest was clear’, and told to get ready for the afternoon’s adventures.

(Because of the promised insertion of Pinewood Studios up the alimentary canal, I was spared EU type negotiations around the correct content of a ham sandwich, praise the Lord for small mercies—reader see the entry dated 15^th April for those fun and games.) 

Lights, camera, aaaaaaahhhhhhction!

The next forty minutes included the most interesting half hour of television I’ve viewed in years. The camera took us on a tour of what resembled a set from a 1970’s episode of Doctor Who. The experience was accompanied by the reflections of the most hale and hearty Doctor I have ever met: the sense of cognitive dissonance exacerbated by the knowledge that a man ordinarily destined for the comedy circuit spent his days starring into, literally, the malformed anal abyss of humanity.

Around the 15 minute mark we hit the ‘tumorous beastie’ and its ‘wee friend’. What a sight: the unholy union of a fatburg and gristle. “Let’s clear away some of the debris shall we?”… (the debris included not one, but two, ancient sweetcorn husks….and Sarah says this stuff is good for me!)

“…Lets,” I replied, as though the plates were being adios-ed for the cheese course.

“Mind you, Robert, we have to be careful not to rupture the intestine; that’s a big repair job”.

“Quite so,” came the most English reply in history, as though he were a mechanic discussing my car’s ‘big-end going’ (I’ve no idea what that actually is, but every driver in the 1970’s seemed perpetually concerned about that vehicular event).

Some “nice” biopsies were taken, and the reverse journey began. This was a more natural experience than earlier (which felt like pressing the slow-mo rewind button on poo-ing).

The kind nurse who had been patting my hand throughout, whispering consoling words, told me “what a good brave boy(!)” I’d been. I enquired as to whether I would get a sticker and lolly as a reward? The nurse looked baffled, Doctor Chuckle said “there’s no budget for that”. And with that we parted, and I somehow felt closer to the group.

For the next ten minutes, I lay on the trolley in a corridor waiting for the porter. It was that moment again, bringing to the fore the constant cycle of this illness; that after the test, there follows the result. The result... The waiting... What has been found? Have I been found clinically wanting? I hate the waiting, ‘Lord grant me the serenity...’

This brief melancholia was broken, for instead of some burly bloke in the hospital’s purple porter livery, the Italian ward sister – from day two of my stay the previous week (who shared my disdain for hospital instant coffee) – came to my rescue! I shouted “Ciao Bella!”, and she hugged me. 

My past was coming back to haunt me. At secondary school I was asked within a week of Latin to leave and go to the Art Room where my “time would be better spent”. A few weeks later, the French teacher gave me the same instruction, but with the accompanying command, “Chapman, take the waste-paper basket with you as well, it will be your constant companion”. 

On my honeymoon, I sought to impress Sarah with my urbane joie de vivre as I said to the waiter, “Je voudrais dix café au lait s'il vous plais”. The bemused waiter said, “dix!?” Sensing here was my Waterloo, I re-asserted myself, “Oui, DIX!” 

Lugubriously, the waiter held up both hands, scanned his digits, and with the disdain of my aforementioned teachers, enquired again, “dix?” Realising the entente cordiale was evaporating quicker than the steam from the espresso machine, I, like an infant, raised my hand and began counting my fingers, “un, deux…”.  I looked up, and with all the misplaced confidence of an Englishman abroad ordering egg and chips, declared with great aplomb, “Oui, deux café au lait s'il vous plais”. I couldn’t see Sarah’s reaction from behind her strategically placed menu, but I’m pretty sure her groaning was in approval and admiration. 

As it happened, this day’s ‘mountaintop moment’ was soon replaced by my trolley-top reality as the corridor draft whistled over my exposed back. The spell was broken, and I remembered I was a fat parson, in an open back nightie, on a trolley who’d just had five people seeing my least attractive feature... O Ward, ‘you have searched me, and you know me.’

Home, I think...