realthog | I took my groin to the party, but nobody wanted to play

So off set

pds_lit and I to the hospital this morning, Pam complaining about how early it was and me with a mouth like the bottom of a parrot's cage because I hadn't been allowed any liquid since midnight. Good cheer by the bucketful in the car, as you'll understand.

We got to the hospital.

We signed in.

We did all the paperwork.

We were put in a room to wait.

I changed into a backless gown.

We waited.

The very sweet nurse (it was Popeye's day off) came and tried to put an IV port into my left arm. My vein declined to cooperate. She successfully put an IV port into my right arm. (The failed attempt was not her fault, but my vein's. She was one of the most skilled IV-port-putter-inners I've come across, giving me almost zero pain.)

She hooked up the IV. Now at a state of dehydration that had me hallucinating unguarded toilet bowls, I faced a plump bag of clear, clean-looking, cool-looking liquid not three feet away from my parched lips.

We waited quite a long time longer, Pam doing her knitting while I read my book (Christine Wicker's Not in Kansas Anymore [2005]: recommended).

The nurse reappeared to give us the good news that the surgeon was ready to take me through to the theatre. He'd be with us soon to talk us through the procedure. In the meantime, could I possibly accoutre myself with a Texas catheter?

My jaw dropped painfully, me having visions of a Texas catheter being like a normal catheter except blowhardishly twice as long and three times as wide. Not at all, she explained. A Texas catheter is kind of like a thick-walled, open-ended condom, to the open end of which can be connected a urine bag; this saves the (male) patient having to undergo the traditional agonizing impalement.

With thoughts of Texan dimensional exaggeration still rattling around in my mind, I fretted as to whether I might have to confess in embarrassment that thoughts aren't the only thing that can rattle around in overlarge containers, but I needn't have worried: the roll-on part of a Texas catheter is coated with a fairly powerful adhesive, so there was no question of me falling out of the thing.

My worry abruptly shifted focus.

Pam, very decently, forwent the temptation to laugh like a drain at her husband's concerns, and carried on knitting.

We waited a while longer, me by now too nervous to read my book. Instead I read the face of the clock on the wall. Fun stuff.

Finally the surgeon appeared! Everything was about to swing into hi-tech motion! The next few hours would be a bit of a blur for me, as the morphine did its stuff! Tonight I'd be home, bionic in both legs! At last the waiting was ov . . .

"Do you have any open wounds?"

"Wha-wha-wha-Sorry?"

"Do you have any open wounds?"

"Just the hole in my leg where the surgeon carved out a mass of necrotic tissue."

"Let me have a look at it."

So I peeled off the elasticated bandage and gauze pads I've been wearing (well, not these exact ones, but you get the idea) for the past few weeks, and we looked at the hole. It marks the place where the bypass crew yanked out leg veins; that wound failed to heal properly, leading to the heart surgeon later having to scoop out a dollop of dead flesh about the size of a half-golfball. The wound's healing nicely, but there's still a hell of a lot of hole to fill in.

"I can't operate on you when you have an open wound like that," said this morning's surgeon. "If there's the remotest chance of infection, it's crazy ever to implant stents. Getting them in's the easy part. The surgery to get them out, should they go septic, is a nightmare. Just for a start you'd be on an IV for eight weeks . . ."

He'd convinced me.

As we chatted, he explained there'd be no problem leaving my stenting another few weeks, until the leg wound has properly healed: the arteries concerned have each about an 80% blockage, which is grim, but it isn't life-threatening -- although, of course, the situation can't be left as is indefinitely or it could become so. He said he'd have another look in four weeks or so; when I pointed out this'd clash with our hoped-for mid-September trip to the UK to Fantasycon, he happily postponed further, until early October.

Since the real big obstacle to making the trip was whether it was wise to expose recently implanted stents to pressurized cabins, it now looks certain we'll be at Fantasycon -- yahey!

Off went the surgeon.

There was still the matter of the Texas catheter, which likewise had to be off.

"Would you like me to help?" said Pam in her very best dulcets.

Images of the celebrated Christmas Cracker Effect filling my inner eye, I chose to undergo the struggle on my own. The sound was as I imagine waxing sounds. I couldn't do the manly thing and shriek piercingly because by this time, on the far side of a thin curtain, another patient had been wheeled in to fill the second half of the room. He must have wondered if I were pulling up the floor tiles.

Then, with one final mighty sound, I was free!

Is this how Laurell K. Hamilton gets the ideas for her vampire novels?

The device now had a beard.

The Texas Catheter Massacre?

I may have limped faster in my life than I limped out of that hospital this morning, but I cannot recall having done so.

Of course, the whole incident is profoundly irritating. For me, the major part of the entire operation is the steeling of myself for it in advance -- and quite a lot of steeling is required by this poor wee tim'rous, cow'ring beastie. Then there's the necessity to dehydrate for 11 or 12 hours beforehand; not easy for someone who normally drinks as much liquid as I do.

Both of these things have to be endured all over again. Grr!

A further cause of irritation is that not one of the other medical types I've seen over the past few weeks thought it could be worth mentioning to Pam and me that we might want to check in case the hole in my leg would outlaw any stenting attempts until it had fully healed. Nor had any of them noted to the stenting surgeon that I had this great, gaping, echoing, suppurating chasm in me. I saw the folk in the hospital's very own Pre-Admission Testing Dept. for a checkup just a few days ago, and they didn't see fit to mention anything to either ourselves or the surgeon. Double grr!

Well, at least it means I ought to get some work done this week . . .