Hello
It's been a very long time since I last posted an edition of The Autolycan and I must say I've missed it. When the pandemic struck I found it very hard to summon the enthusiasm to write the sort of stuff I generally do - in particular it struck me that whimsy might go down very badly if it arrived in someone's inbox in time to coincide with some truly dreadful news. I was considering whether to restart the blog when something else intervened. This is the story of that something else, how it began and where it had taken me after about one week. I won't say I hope you enjoy it because it's not really that sort of thing - it's rather different from my usual style! - but I hope you find it interesting.
BREAKING NEWS
I open my eyes and look around. I'm in the dentist's waiting room. Familiar surroundings. As comforting as a dentist's waiting room can be. A bit busier than usual. I wonder why. Someone in a white coat and wearing a mask bustles silently past with a clipboard, then bustles silently back again. Odd. The receptionist is always very chatty and not given to bustling anywhere. New? No matter. Must be some time since I last went to the dentist because procedures have clearly changed a bit. Don't remember them taking your blood pressure in the waiting room before, but another masked figure now looms up and does just that, looks briefly concerned, asks if I would like a sandwich and when I say I would says she'll see what she can do. I've never got that far before, not even with the chatty receptionist. More figures hurrying purposefully, some with clipboards or iPads, some with mysterious bits of equipment. What's that about? Never mind.
She returns. 'I've brought you an egg mayo and a cheese and tomato.' She watches approvingly as I eat. As I do so I look round and notice for the first time that the waiting room is larger than I remember and there are several beds round the walls; some of the dentist's other patients occupy some of them. A man with a stethoscope round his neck approaches and asks if I'm feeling OK, nodding sagely when I say I am. 'Good' he says 'we'll have you back on the ward just as soon as your blood pressure has stabilised. It's been a bit low, you see. It's why we wanted you to eat something.'
At long last it dawns on me this isn't the dentist's waiting room and I try to think back through clinging fog about the last few days. It must have been a week or so ago – Friday 19th November - that Olwen and I had caught the train from Hull to London to go to see our daughter who lives in Croydon. This includes walking through from King's Cross to St Pancras to transfer to the Croydon train. Somewhere near the taxi rank I caught my foot, tripped and fell, my right side bearing the brunt of the fall. I felt a bit shaken up but there was no real pain. Had there been an ominous cracking sound though? Humanity sometimes gets a bit of a bad press for being callous or unfeeling but the admittedly small sample of it that immediately rushed to my assistance was anything but. One man took charge of the situation and wouldn't let others help me up until he'd satisfied himself that I wasn't in pain and was ready to make the attempt. Several strong arms then hauled me upright and supported me as I gingerly attempted to put weight on my right leg. I couldn't.
A wheelchair materialised from King's Cross and when we said we were on our way to St Pancras I was wheeled across to their first aid room. I had fallen between the two stations and a lively debate now ensued as to whether King's Cross or St Pancras should take responsibility for me. St Pancras lost, whereupon King's Cross triumphantly demanded his wheelchair back. I was transferred from one wheelchair to another and began a long wait for an ambulance. Four and a half hours, they said, so it was a relief when one turned up after only about three and a half. Anything but a relief though as the realisation hit me that pain or no pain I was completely unable to move my right leg.
I liked the ambulance crew. Professional and sympathetic they splinted my right leg to my left and were alarmed by the way the right foot wanted to roll outwards. I got an accurate diagnosis there and then from those two. 'I don't think you've broken your hip,' one of them said 'I think it's something else. Could well be your pelvis.' I might have blanched a little at that, and he immediately changed the subject. 'By the way,' he went on 'I hope those aren't new or expensive trousers because the nurse who prepares you for X ray will probably have to cut them off.' But she didn't, and when I mentioned the crew's warning I was rewarded with a huge grin. 'They didn't know you gonna get Mary!' she chuckled.
Following an excruciating couple of hours when I was manhandled between wheelchairs and stretchers for X rays and a scan I was admitted to University College Hospital's A and E ward for the night, an enlightening experience had I been in the mood to appreciate it. A woman opposite spent most of the night groaning, calling for help and declaring that she was going to die. A young man in the next bed had a loud consultation with doctors in the small hours during which he confirmed that he'd been having intercourse when the accident happened. Involuntarily, I boggled. I boggled a bit more when they asked if there was a lot of blood and he agreed that indeed there was. It was then their turn to boggle when they asked if he was taking any prescribed medication and he replied 'yes, methadone.' Another young man in the corner who looked scarcely capable of movement of any kind was being closely guarded – well, guarded – by a couple of bored-looking prison officers who spent the entire time fiddling with their mobile phones.
Happily, I was soon moved from the A and E ward and wound up in a single room where the main distraction was a frequent loud crashing sound which could be heard at any time of the day or night and which I eventually discovered emanated from an ancient dumb waiter protesting at being coerced into service. Its joints sounded in worse condition than mine. I stayed there for a couple of days, during which time two young doctors breezed in, excitedly clutching a mobile phone . 'We've got your X rays here!' they announced, gesticulating at the screen in a most animated fashion. 'Impressive!' They pointed to what they claimed was my pelvis although it could equally have been a blurred map of the London Underground. They grew confidential. 'Fascinating,' one of them breathed ' you normally only see that as a result of high speed impacts like car crashes. Not from just falling over.' I had visions of being Stunna of the Week on the cover of The Lancet. They interrupted my reverie and brought me back to Earth. 'Sorry,' they added 'it'll be a long job.'
The hospital which specialises in this kind of repair work is the Royal London in Whitechapel and I was duly transferred. Think of the Blind Beggar pub just down the road - the haunt of the Kray twins who specialised in invasive procedures of an altogether different sort in the 1960s. Building work at the Royal London meant that the crew who took me were briefly unable to find the way in for stretcher cases and I spent some minutes on my back in the car park contemplating the night sky. Once they'd found the right lift – not easy in the Royal London – I was taken to my own room where a day or two later I was visited by a man who was clearly regarded in the hospital as some kind of deity. 'If you were going to do this you've chosen the right place to do it,' he intoned, as a row of breathless acolytes behind him took awe-struck notes. 'We are the leading hospital in the UK for this type of injury' he went on, not entirely modestly, 'and in fact get surgeons visiting from all over the world to see what we do.' I didn't feel especially lucky although in a way I suppose I was. He confirmed the ambulance guy's diagnosis. 'You haven't broken your hip' he said 'you've forced the femur up into the pelvis where it's smashed the socket' - he peered indulgently over his glasses, '- we call it the acetabulum – that it's supposed to fit into. We've developed a two stage process for dealing with this – firstly we go in and repair the acetabulum with plate and screws, but this will promote arthritis in the hip so to forestall that we go in again a week or so later and conduct a full hip replacement.' I hadn't previously realised that your head can spin and your mind go blank at the same time.
The first operation was scheduled to take place about a week after the accident during which time I could probably have come close to despair, not least because I was quite unable to get out of bed. I got through it thanks to constant love and support – and visits, COVID notwithstanding – from my family and seemingly endless messages from friends both in this country and abroad. My phone and my tablet became absolute lifelines. Olwen began clocking up the first few hundred of what must eventually have turned into a couple of thousand or more miles on trains.
Around lunchtime on 26th November – except it wasn't lunch time for me having been nil by mouth since the previous evening – I was wheeled down to the operating theatre. To my surprise I was awake until I was inside the theatre itself and could see the table, the lights and a battery of bafflingly incomprehensible equipment. A kindly anaesthetist ambled across for a chat and I recognised him as the one who'd come to see me earlier in the day. He'd stunned me then by asking if I'd like to be sufficiently awake during the operation to be aware of what was going on. I'd mulled that one over for very nearly a nano-second before telling him that I didn't think I was as brave as that and was relieved to discover that most people felt the same. He smiled. 'Look away now' he murmured gently as he slid a needle into the back of my hand. I did so and blinked.
I open my eyes a split second later and look around. I'm in the dentist's waiting room. Familiar surroundings. As comforting as a dentist's waiting room can be....
