A life in letters: Hospital

I had a ritual as a young child about to go somewhere scary like visiting the dentist. I’d close a door in the house, letting my fingers rest for a few seconds on the handle. ‘The next time I touch this,’ I’d tell myself, ‘all will be well.’  I guess I was grasping for assurance that I’d make it through the experience.

As a child, I was no stranger to hospitals, as my father worked in one hospital or another throughout his career. Occasionally, I’d be taken along to his X-Ray department for Christmas coffee mornings where I’d be entertained by the team, and given rides on the X-Ray tables which could be remotely tilted to different angles.

I was hospitalised twice at the age of five, first for an emergency appendectomy, and later to have my tonsils removed. My father did speculate that my propensity for enthusiastic chewing of pencils contributed to at least the first of these health issues.

I remember being whizzed off in an ambulance in the middle of the night from our house in Westerton to the nearby Canniesburn Hospital – so there was no time for the fingers on the door handle ritual. I had been unwell for a day or so; our GP had assured my parents there was nothing to worry about. However my father was not convinced, and came regularly through my bedroom during the night to see how the symptoms were progressing.

Eventually, he summoned the ambulance, and as it turned out this was the right decision  - my appendix was on the point of rupturing. I was wrapped in a blanket and carried out into the alien vehicle parked at our front door.

I think Turn-the-handle-and-wheel-goes-round accompanied me to the hospital – if not, it followed with my parents shortly afterwards. This was a windmill-like structure assembled with a construction toy called Build-It. Build-It consisted of plastic struts and circular connectors: Turn-the-handle-and-wheel-goes-round was my descriptive name for my (or more likely my father’s) most recent creation.

My next memory is of lying on a trolley in the environs of the operating theatre. Someone has placed over my nose and mouth a rubber-smelling mask; I am aware of his gentle speaking and of a constellation of dazzling lights as I lose consciousness.

I spent a few days recovering from the operation in a big, airy private room, lying in bed with Turn-the-handle-and-wheel-goes-round on the locker beside me. It was the hospital catering at Canniesburn which resulted in my developing a life-long aversion to mashed turnip.

My parents came regularly to see me. It can’t be easy visiting a small child, but each day they’d bring one of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories, each in its own little chunky volume which my father bought in a newsagent at Temple, near Anniesland.

When I am released, and going home with my parents, a patient in an adjacent room calls out to me as I’m leaving, offering me something from his locker. Shy, I smile quickly and then look away, ignoring his kindness.

Later in the year, I had a scheduled admission to another Glasgow Hospital to have my tonsils removed.  I pressed my fingers to the handle of the living room door before we left. I was assigned to a men’s ward, and all its other occupants seemed to be very old.

On the wall above each bed, including mine, there was a set of Bakelite headphone through which you could access a number of radio channels.  I remember lying at night-time, when everyone else seemed to be asleep and the main lights had been dimmed. Dare I, I wondered, reach up and get the headphones down and over my ears, or would my movements disturb anyone and incur their wrath? I reach up cautiously; across the ward, someone stirred; I put my head back on the pillow, quickly.

To help me pass the time during that hospital stay, I was brought not Thomas the Tank Engine, but a comic book about Rupert the bear. I remember detecting a dark, sinister shadow in these strange stories about Rupert and his friends – they disturbed rather than distracted.

After these hospital stays, I required no further surgery until 2009, when on the last day of the year I had surgery to repair a macular hole in the retina of my right eye. I had the choice of local or general anaesthetic for this operation, and I opted for the former. It was slightly claustrophobic lying in theatre with my eye covered – one of the staff offered to hold my hand throughout the proceedings which was sweet of her, though I didn’t feel it necessary to take her up on her offer.

The operation involves injecting gas into the eye, which exerts pressure on the hole causing it to close. As the surgeon worked, I saw in the affected eye a spectacular display of light, colour and pattern. The theatre staff, talking about their Hogmanay plans and the terrible weather – there had been a deluge of snow – helped keep me ‘earthed’ during my time in theatre.

The worst part of the treatment is that for three days after the op you have to lie with your face towards the floor so that the gas continues to exert the necessary pressure on the macular hole. And so, as the bells and fireworks sounded out for the start of 2010, I was lying in the ward, head resting eyes-down on a little extendable platform attached to the foot of my bed. One of the nurses, a friend, came across after midnight and woke me with a gentle kiss on the cheek.  My wife Lorna struggled through the snow later that morning to bring me home in time for lunch – and another 36 long floor-facing hours.

In time, the sight in the eye was significantly improved, although some distortion remains.

Just before Christmas 2012  I had another small operation at the Day Case Unit at Raigmore Hospital. I was particularly apprehensive about this because a general anaesthetic was required. Much as I enjoy sleeping, the idea of being deprived of consciousness didn’t appeal.

What helped in the hours before both these operations was the thought that God was there, that I could entrust myself to God and was therefore utterly secure – whatever happened. With that knowledge I was able to walk calmly into the outer precincts of the operating theatre for my 2012 surgery, and climb on a trolley. There was no need for the old, fingers-on-the-door-handle ritual, although admittedly I did catch myself thinking ‘The next time my feet touch the floor, all will be well.’

I believe I was able to be calm not primarily because I trusted the medics – though I did, and they were brilliant – but because I was enabled to rely on God. Why was I so aware of God’s presence those days at Raigmore? Not because I had made a big decision to entrust myself to God. The sense of God’s reliable presence was there before the entrusting.  It came as a precious gift, perhaps an answer to people’s prayers for me.

It’s my guess that I should entrust ourselves to God in this way whatever I am doing, no matter whether mundane or life-changing. Even in the final act of feeling the fear and doing it anyway – the act of dying – we can entrust ourselves into the care of God:  in a sense all our lives are preparing us for that great entrusting

In my experience, hospitals are very special places where we encounter skill, gentleness and compassion, and where we find space to step aside from the busy current of life to reflect on our mortality, and to ask ourselves what really matters to us.