Accident prone? Me?

My dad tells me that statistically, in this country anyway, redheads are more prone to accidents. Comforting news eh? Mind you, if you take my sister and I as examples, he's actually proved right.

She had her share of trips, falls, sticky plasters when she grazed herself and all the usual injuries kids are apt to pick up. I had permanently scabby knees when I was younger. I fell out of trees. A lot. I used to play on the beach and get stung by jellyfish, or wander about in bare feet and rip my feet open on the barnacles as I looked for evil-looking fish to catch in jars and take home to mum. When I was 17 years old however, I moved onto bigger things...

I made the mistake of saying once that I had never spent a night in hospital... After that, it was inevitable really that something bad was going to happen.

The first stay wasn't really bad. It felt it though. I had to have two teeth taken out under general anaesthetic because they were growing sideways instead of up and down like they should be. That was my first general, and it was yuk. I was supposed to just have the one taken out at the dental hospital, but when they x-rayed my mouth, they found another doing the same thing, so I was packed off to a proper hospital to get it done. When they take teeth out like that, you end up swallowing blood, and when you wake up from any anaesthetic, you should avoid milk because it sometimes reacts and makes you sick. I didn't know this and had a cup of tea with milk as soon as I was awake enough...

You can see this coming...

I predictably enough threw up. It was nasty. I felt better afterwards though, so it wasn't too bad really. It just felt it at the time.

So that was my first taste of hospitals. I still wasn't keen on them, but it wasn't anything bad. I knew I would have to do it again at some point as well, because they told me at the time that my mouth was too small (stop laughing! It's true!) and I'd need to have my wisdom teeth removed because there was no space for them, but they would do that when they really started moving. Something to look forward to when I hit my twenties. At least the two were on the same side and I could still eat on the other...

I tore the ligaments in my ankle falling out of a tree a couple of months later... More x-rays and I was on crutches for a couple of weeks...

After that I did something very silly indeed. I was playing darts with some friends in a pub owned by the parents of one of them. As I was 17 at the time, I was on soft drinks (because I'm a good girl... honest...) but they were all of an age that they could drink. One of them was fairly well gone and was making comments about my rubbish dart playing and decided to give me a hand... Well, a foot... Placed neatly on my behind, and a swift shove as I was about to throw a dart. I went down like a sack of whatever, and apparently, according to one of my friends, there was a very loud *CRACK* as I hit the floor. I think I was too busy being in pain to notice. One of them rang my mum who came to get me, and she decided that I needed to go to hospital. An ambulance was fetched and I got bundled off for more x-rays (I'm really surprised I don't glow in the dark now).

The result of the x-ray was that I had dislocated my fibula, the bone that runs from your outside ankle to the outside of your knee on my right leg. I'd popped the top out and it was bulging nicely out the side of my leg. "But you can't do that... You're supposed to break it before the top will pop out..."

Comforting words... really... But at least it wasn't broken. They decided to keep me in and send me to the hospital on the mainland to get it put back again the next day (did I mention I used to live on a Scottish island? It's a great place to grow up as a kid. So safe...). Everyone was still puzzled as to how I could have done it without breaking it, and lots of people did the double-take when I said I'd done it playing darts. It's a dangerous sport you know, darts... It should have a warning attached: "Danger: You can dislocate things you can't dislocate if you play darts with drunk people".

So there's me, stuck in hospital again, my leg all bandaged to stop me moving it about, waiting to go over to Inverclyde hospital and dying to go to the loo. I was supposed to ring for a nurse to take me, but I was damned if I was having someone watching me as I went for a wee. I could still put a little weight on my right toe, despite the achy-pain that the painkillers had dulled it to, so I hop/limped to the toilet and did what I had to. The pain was very dull when I was sat down, and I kind of forgot about it when I stood up, pulled my knickers up and twisted round to flush the toilet...

*CRACK* OWWWWWWWWW *pull cord to fetch nurse* (stop laughing!)

I'd only gone and twisted the bloody thing back into place... Nearly... But we didn't know that at the time. They sent me up to Inverclyde the next day anyway, and they x-rayed me and said there was nothing wrong with my leg. They had the old x-rays to compare it with anyway, and there was at least some proof that I'd done it, so they shoved my leg in a fibreglass cast. Lovely. It went all the way from ankle to the top of my thigh and it was the middle of Summer. Worse still, I was due to go on a school exchange trip to Germany with the school band. I went anyway and quietly ignored the fact that I was supposed to be using crutches. They just slowed me down...

Just after I had that, I noticed a mole on my left leg (not the one I'd had a cast on) was bleeding a bit. Bearing in mind that this was before it hit the headlines, I thought nothing of it. Mum kept puting plasters on it, something she and I are both horrified at now, knowing what we do after the fact. Eventually it got so bad that a trouser leg brushing over it would make it bleed and I was sent to the doctor. He said "Oh, yes. Its' nothing to worry about, but if it's bothering you, I'll get our surgeon to remove it."

So I was duly sent to see Mr Kapoor, the surgeon at the little cottage hospital on the island. He removed the mole under a local anaesthetic while I lay on my front and chatted away to him, peering over my shoulder so I could see what he was doing. The mole was on the back of my left calf, so with a bit of ingenious twisting, I could watch. Yes, I was a gory child.

Anyway. the stitches were to come out the following Monday, and by then, he would have the results of the biopsy. He showed me it in it's wee specimine jar and it looked so innocuous there, about the size of a garden pea, but very red and angry looking. I wasn't worried. I'd been told that it was nothing to worry about. Why should I worry? So I went back to doing all the normal things we used to do back then, although a little restricted because of the stitches in my leg. We went to Grandmas for a few days and came back on the Sunday to find that Mr Kapoor had been trying to get in touch with us. Since I was due in the next day to get the stitches out, we saw him then.

Result of the biopsy: Skin tumour. I was to go to Canniesburn hospital in Glasgow (leading centre for plastic surgery in Scotland) the following day and have my op on the Wednesday. A bit quick, don't you think? I still thought nothing of it, and went home to pack a few essentials to go into hospital with. We went in on the Tuesday and I got settled in. I made friends with a few people by the end of that day: Myrna, who was in getting her face rebuilt, another girl who was in getting breast reduction because they were damaging her back (I kid you not... she was only a tiny wee thing and had to have bras specially made at a size 32 Double I) and Sharon, who was in a wheelchair and in getting some sores looked at. Sharon was a great laugh and we used to mosey about together, following the surgeon's registrar, Phil Griffin, Tall, tanned, fit and Australian...Drool...

So... The day of my op turns up and I'm sat there on my bed on my own, in my wee backless number with paper knickers (how elegant), and the anaethsatist turns up and tells me I might not be getting my op, but that he's going through all the stuff anyway. We do that, he slopes off and about half an hour later the surgeon turns up with a wee nurse in tow.

He sat down and told me that I wasn't getting my op. They didn't have the right equipment at the hospital, but I was going to be sent to another hospital where they did have the right stuff. It wasn't very far and I was going the next Tuesday, so I could either stay or go home. I elected to stay, because it seemed silly to go all the way home then come back again in a couple of days when I could just go straight from the hospital. Bed space wasn't a problem, so it would be fine. He then went on to tell me that I would be having my op the following Thursday but there were tests and things to do first, which is why I was going in a couple of days early. I had skin cancer.

...

That's how he ended his spiel. "You've got skin cancer." Just like that. Dead pan, no fancy words round it, just that. I didn't know quite how to react to that. I'd probably have been fine if it wasn't for that wee nurse. I don't know here name, and I can't remember her face, but her words are something I will never forget as long as I live.

"Oh, that's such a shame. Someone of your age having cancer. You're so young. It's such a shame..."

If I hadn't been in shock, I'd probably have punched her at that point. I didn't. I sat on my bed in my gown and paper knickers and didn't know what to think. They left me on my own, and I sat there, my head empty of thought, just her words going round and round in my head. Sharon eventually came to find out what was going on, and I snapped out of it. There she was in a wheelchair, and I was fretting about... about what? Skin cancer? I'd never heard of it. I'd heard of cancer, right enough, but at that point, I had someone in front of me that couldn't do half the things I could. There was nothing wrong with me, except for that thing in my leg, and there she was stuck in a chair for the rest of her life. What was I thinking about? Sheesh... I got dressed and went back out into the ward and spent the next week having a laugh with Sharon and the rest of them, celebrating when the girl got her breast op done ("you should see them! They're ace! They took them down to a C! I love them! You should see them!... Perhaps not!" all said with her head stuffed inside the neck of her nightie so she could look at her new, smaller breasts.) and Myrna came out from her first reconstructive op that week too, with a nose! It was a good week, and taught me a lot about life.

I've since learned that a lot of Cancer patients go through the same thing: They look around and see others that are worse off, wondering why they are getting the pity for having cancer when there are others who have had legs removed, are stuck in wheelchairs, have faces that have collapsed when surgery robbed them of the soft pallete in the roof of their mouths that holds everything in shape... I was still in one piece. Why was I getting sympathy? Cancer? It's just a word. My doctor told me it was nothing to worry about.

By the time I went to Gartnaval hospital in Glasgow on the Tuesday, I'd already worked out that one of three things was going to happen: 1. I was going to lose a bit of my leg; 2. I was going to lose my leg; 3. I was going to be pushing up daisies. That gave me a 66% chance of success in my books. Good odds really.

I was taken by hospital car after a very emotional farewell to all my new friends with all my belongings, get well cards and my big, white teddy that my aunt sent in for me. (I still have him and he still has the tag the nurses put on him that matched my own hospital tag) I was settled into my own room on the ward in Gartnaval. 5th floor, ward C, a side room on my own. By the time I'd been in there an hour, I'd already made some new friends. People came to say hi to the new arrival, and one of them was Jack. He was lovely. He'd been in to get his lower right leg amputated, and he came along with Eddie, another amputee, both in wheelchairs, and both as nutty as each other. We got on very well right from day one.

Day two I had tests done. All the usual stuff of blood pressure, temperature, pulse, then they started the other mesaurements. Dominic was my surgeon's registrar for the day, another rather good-looking young man, and very personable. We had a good laugh as he got me to shove my leg into a bucket of water up to a line he had drawn on my thigh. The Archimedes principle: They wanted to know the volume of my leg to calculate drug amounts.

I was in the right place at the right time to have a malignant melinoma on my leg. My surgeon, Mr MacKay, had pioneered a new technique called Isolated Limb Perfusion. People still don't really know what it is when I tell them if they ask, even if they are medically trained. I'll explain it when I get to that bit of the story...

Anyway, after all the tests I was sent back to the ward, and I immediately went to find my friends. We had the usual chat and stuff, dinner trolleys came and went with the usual hospital fare, tea trolley came round and we all managed to get a cup, although the wee lady was reluctant to give me a tea, because she thought I was a visitor till I showed her my wrist tag. I was told no eating after midnight because my op was the next day...

I forgot to tell you... Jack's wife is Italian, and the best cook this side of anywhere. She broght things in for Jack, and there was always enough so he could share. A second portion was always broguht in for the nurses as well.

... So there we were, Jack, Eddie and I sitting at about eleven at night, stuffing pizza that Jack's wife had brought in. It was absolutely delicious, and a good thing it was as well. It was the last thing I actually ate for about two and a half weeks...

Thursday came round. Nill by mouth. I had to get washed and showered, shaved down there, because they needed to operate (The nurse came and did it... How embarrassing. At that point, I wasn't too worried, because she'd already done the suppositories...) I had the thing stuck in my hand so they could put a drip in or give me meds intravenously, and had a student doctor round to take some blood. My first time of having bloods done, and surprisingly, it didn't hurt at all. I had a pre-med, and went to sleep. I came round as they were taking me down to theatre, but I was still very groggy.

I don't remember being put under. I don't remember waking up in the middle of the night after my op and asking the nurse what was cooking. I don't remember jokingly telling Jack off the next day when he came to see me, because his wife had brought in Lasagne and he hadn't saved me any. I don't remember my friend's auntie, who worked in the WRVS shop coming to see how I was getting on. I don't remember my parents visiting me either, or their friend Ian Laing, one of the ministers from the island dropping by while they were there and having quite a conversation with him...

... I remember waking up on the Saturday, drip in hand, drain in groin, aching a bit, leg all bandaged but no real pain, desperate for a wee, in a different room, with a bright yellow chrysanthemum in a pot in my sink and a wicker parrot hanging in a hoop from my drip stand. I rang for the nurse, who got me a commode so I could wee, and afterwards, when she put me back to bed, she filled me in on the bits I missed. I had been moved to an IC ward (Intensive care), and was in my own room again right opposite the nurses station. The plant and parrot had been brought in by my parents. My dad having a warped sense of humour (I got it from him) decided a piratical parrot was what was needed since I'd had my leg done (Arr, Jimlad!).

I was bored. Very bored. In a room, on my own, not allowed to get out of bed on my own because I still had my drip and drain. The Surgeon came to see me and told me what they'd done. He'd explained it before, but they were a little hazy on the details. So I asked a lot of questions. Here's what they did (look away now if you're squeamish):

First off, once I was under anaesthetic, they had me on my back and made a nice slice in my groin area, at the top of my right leg. They took the glands out and sent them off for testing to see if the cancer had spread, and while they were there, they plumbed in chemotherapy drugs, circulating them round the veins in my leg instead of a blood flow using the main arteries as an in and out. They did that for an hour, then stitched and stapled me back together, flipped me over and began work on my leg. They sliced out an area approximately 3 inches in diameter round and right down to the muscle and stripped it out, sending that off for testing as well. They then shaved some skin off my right thigh/buttock area to use as a skin graft and stitched it into the hole then packed it out so that when it was bandaged, it would have pressure on it. I was in theatre for about three hours all told, but I was out cold for a lot longer. Pumping the drugs round my leg like that saved me from having the protracted, full body chemo that usually happens with cancer. For the record, I lost all my leg hair for months, and all the checks came back clear from the biopsies.

Having the whole leg done like that meant I had to have a transfusion as well, because they'd had a legfull of blood to get the drugs in. It swelled up like a balloon as well because of the chemo and I couldn't bend my toes. Also, because they obviously couldn't get every single bit of the drug out my system, I still had some of the side-effects. I felt a bit sick, and couldn't eat. Just the thought of food made me feel squeamish. I could still drink tea fine though, and never missed the tea trolley when it came round. Once they knew I was drinking fine, they took the drip out, and because it seemed to be healing fine at the top of my leg without too much bruise blood, they took my drain out as well. I wasn't allowed to put weight on my leg, so they gave me a wheelchair. Worst move they could have made really in hindsight... I was given a chair with a board that I could have my leg resting on so it was raised to help it come down from the swelling. That meant a lot of my weight was transferred to the right side... right on the scraped bit where they took the skin from. I also had staples in the top of my left leg... It hurt to cough, hurt to sneeze, and hurt like hell if I laughed, which just made everything funnier. I didn't care about the sore bits. I was Free!

After that, the only time they would find me in my room was when the tea trolley came round, or at lights out at bedtime. The rest of the time I was off in Jack's room, Eddie's ward, having a joke with Charlie, a double amputee who drank too much, up seeing Christine who had leg braces... I was surrounded by people who I percieved to be worse off than me. I'd just lost a bit of my leg, and here was a whole group of people who couldn't walk properly without artificial aid.

The nurses eventually decided I was more trouble than I was worth and had way too much energy, so they packed me off to Occupational Therapy. Once a day I had to go down there and do something, anything, to get me out of their hair. At least then they knew where I was. I had John as my OT guy. He must have been in his early fifties, had a wooden leg and was absolutely hilarious. We had such a laugh in his woodworking shop. I made a duck. I still have it. I used to beat his wooden leg with a grabby stick when he used to drag my chair around the shop. We were terrible together, and I had the best time.

While I was there, I was thinking about what I wanted to do when I left school, and being in hospital made me think about a career, perhaps doing Physiotherapy. I got a tour of the physo gym, and that's where I met Peter. He was learning to walk again, just older than me, and had been dragged into hospital a few months before with Meningococcal Septicemia. He had died three times before his 21st birthday and it had left him paralised from the waist down. He was learning to use his dead muscles again, although he wasn't very good when I first saw him. He was on the paralel bars and when he went to wave to say Hi, he nearly fell over. Silly sod. Anyway, so that was me had another one to visit.

Mum and dad came to visit one day. I wasn't in my room (no big surprise there really). The nurses said to them "Well, she might be up visiting Jack up the corridor. She could be in Christine's at the end of the ward. She might even be down with John in OT or up on ward 8 with Peter... You may as well wait here. The tea trolley is due in ten minutes. She'll be back for that." I was too. I was always back for the tea trolley.

I never let anything get in the way back then. My wheelchair was just an inconvenience really, although I did get stuck in a toilet once because it wasn't big enough. I also knew it was only temporary, but it gave me an insight into the life of the wheelchair-bound, and it's one I will never forget. My aunt took me out for lunch (after I started eating again of course) and I was in my chair. The place we went was just on the edge of the hospital grounds, but the waiter still looked over my head and asked my aunt what I wanted to eat, as if I couldn't think for myself. My leg isn't working and I have to use a wheelchair, so obviously I can't think either. Someone said you should walk a mile in someone's shoes before you make any judgement on who they are. I would like to add to that: Spend a day in a wheelchair. It's a real eye-opener.

The first thing I ate after my op was a slice of toast. My surgeon was up on the ward doing his rounds late one afternoon. He stopped on our ward and went into the wee nurse's kitchen that they have on each floor and made some toast. I wheeled myself over to talk to him, because by then, we had some good banter going on and asked what was cooking. He showed me the toast and asked if I wanted any. For the first time in ages, I was hungry and nodded. He gave me his slice and did some more for himself, and sat there and talked to me while I ate the toast and had a cup of tea. They all knew I wasn't eating, so he was probably making sure that I was OK after not having anything to eat for so long. I was fine, and started taking food again after that. Just a little bit at first, but it was a start. I lost three stone in weight in my three weeks in Gartnavel hospital. Forty two pounds in weight, gone, and I'd only been eight and a half stone when I went in. One hundred and nineteen pounds. I came out at Seventy Seven. I put it all back on again once I got back to normal though...

Anyway, that was my major time in hospial. Four weeks in all.

I had a couple of overnighters with concussion, one where I slipped on some ice and ended up getting scraped off the pavement by the ambulance guys. I think I was in for two days with that one, but it was a bit of a blur, so I couldn't say for sure. I got dragged into casualty once when I lived in Glasgow for a bit after fracturing my ankle at the ice rink too.

I had a few years where I was fairly accident free: just the usual cuts and scrapes, and then I had my wisdom teeth removed. They decided that the 20th December was a good day to do it. I was in overnight and came out looking like a hamster because it all swelled up. It took me an hour to eat my christmas dinner, but I was determined to do it. I nearly asked my mother-in-law to liquidise it for me so I could drink it with a straw, but I persevered.

A few years later, I had a kidney infection. They thought at first it was a UTI, gave me pain kllers and told me to drink lots. I ended up in casualty after nearly collapsing in town. Acute pyelonephritis (sp?). In for a week, on pethidine and major antibiotics on a drip, and they wanted to keep me longer. In hindsight I probably should have stayed in a bit longer. I still get twinges now and again, but apparently it scars your kidneys, and that's what I feel pulling every now and again.

I've twisted things, pulled things, put my back out and all sorts over the years, torn ligaments, pulled muscles, cut and briused myself by doing silly things like falling off stuff or tripping over things. I had my tonsils taken out when I was in my twenties too. Last year I made a neat slice accross my left index finger with a serrated knife, trying to cut butter, and now I have my balance problems. I bruse myself a fair bit by bumping into things, but I've managed to avoid any serious injuries so far. Give me time though. I'm sure I have something else coming soon enough.

At least I can say I've had an eventful life... right?