Brain Tumor Time

Date: Feb 8 1995

Ha! I survived the English Medical Profession. This ranks up there with Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey in the Bogusness rating of this adventure. Not for the faint of heart. If you are easily converted into a wriggling wimpified mass of terrified blobiness , stop reading now!

ps. don't be too scared. It's all over now and I'm still here to write this.

Ok, y'know how every time you move to a new country, they want to poke you, blast you with x-rays, and zap you for your health? Ok, so I finally get around to it since people don't really believe I'm a German resident anymore. So here's our hero (that's me) minding his own business getting nuked again when :

Ok, so now I have to go through the bureaucracy of the English Medical Profession, which if you haven't heard - sucks. Luckily I am a private patient since I have medical insurance. Unfortunately, it's in Germany. So it's finally settled that I pay for it up front, we have to negotiate a fixed price, and then I later try to get my money back from the German Medical Insurance Dudes company. Without being a private patient, I could wait anywhere from 6 months to years to get an operation. As it turns out, I had to wait only 2 months. During this period, there was evidence that the tumor was getting bigger.

My GP in Hicksville arranged that I see the Resident Surgeon on duty at Emergency at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge to check me out. All that became of that was that I waited a couple of hours in Emergency till I got looked at and then sent home. I think the reason was because the only person that can do the job properly is the dude I have an appointment with in 2 weeks (just to look at me), so I should just keep the appointment since nobody knows what I got.

Ok, so I end up finally one day at a private hospital. I got no sleep the night before in order to get up at 8am to eat the piece of toast I'm allowed and then be there at 10:30am. I take in the form already filled out they mailed that I was supposed to mail back - but they didn't mail it to me in time for return delivery. They hand me a different form asking for identical information and tell me to fill it out. After a hour wait, I'm put in my room. The first nurse that shows up comes and asks me the same questions again to put on her form. Then I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. I waited 8.5 hours. I'm starving. There was at least 15-20 different nurses who barged into my crappy expensive private room for various things. I lost track of them after #7 or #8.

Very odd things happened. I was asked to <censored> into a jug. Ok i say. Then I wonder which of these 3 containers in the bathroom is the 'jug'. No problem. Ask the next nurse that comes in. Turns out they didn't take away the contents of said jug until the next day after the hatchet job.

A nurse comes in and tells me to drop my pants so she can measure my legs?!?? They made me wear these anti-embolism stockings. I get worried they're gonna operate on my legs! But I find out it's just to make me look stupid. I think in all, 20 female nurses and 2 male doctors came to see me in my room during my stay. The doctors knock. The nurses just barge in. They've seen it all, so you don't deserve any privacy while doing naked war-dances on your bed wearing only the white stockings they make you wear.

So I rot there for 8 hours trying to amuse myself and finally a episode of Babylon 5 comes on TV, and of course thats when they come and take me away.

It's at that point I start asking why none of the letters, stationary or people refer to my doctor as 'Doctor' instead of 'Mister'. Lucky for me he actually does know some medical stuff (so I'm told). The story is that after you make it to Super-Doctor in the UK, you come Mr Dude again. hmmm. Well, I've heard of some martial-arts where you end up as a white-belt again after attaining 567-th Dan black belt. Ok, I buy it. And he did look impressive all dooded up in doctors stuff with wires coming outta his head.

I passed out sometime after 7pm. I came to at 7:30pm. This guy is fast. Hey! Wait a minute! My head thing doesn't hurt at all. You guys carved up my butt! ow ow ow.

So they show me a x-ray of my head showing me the same brain I had before and tell me I'm cured. ^!^*^* !!! There's no point arguing with them. They start using complicated medical words like pancreas, tracheotomy, slimy-gunk, brain-stem and stuff.

I had hoped to go home that night, but after coming to, I didn't feel like doing anything but breathe. Then at 6:45am, a nurse barges in and says
SO DID YOU GET ANY SLEEP !?
uuuhhhh dduhhh yeh, I just got to sleep right now...
She opens the curtains and turns on the lights. It's dark out. An hour later I get up and close the curtains. Another nurse comes in and opens the curtains. I'm sure they got a curtain sensor. The only time you're allowed to have closed curtains is when you're fully dressed and don't need them.

Anyway, I finally got outta there. The nurses wouldn't let me go and I had to wait till the Mister saw me and declared I was ok to get out.

When I was getting dressed, I found this 2 inch diameter thing glued onto my left side with a snap-on electrical contact. I figured I wasn't supposed to go through life wearing this so I started to peel it off. For a second I was real a'sceered since it looked like when I got it half peeled off that there was a one centimeter hole in my body under it. I thought my guts would fall out! But it was just the way the stick-on thing was built. They build them that way to scare you when you take them off. And they're real hard to peel off. I discovered a day later that they also shaved the top of my right thigh. Beats me why...

So I decide to be cheap and instead of paying for another 30 mile taxi ride back, I figure I'll walk into town to the bus stop. On the way, I see a girl get wiped out by a bicyclist. Cambridge is infested with bikes and this happens all the time. Some Good Samaritan runs out to see if they're all right. I started to, then thought, "They're lucky. They don't hurt half as much as me. How can things get worse than this".
Then I sprained my back somehow. ow ow ow.

Then after a 1 hour hellish bumpy bus ride back to Saffron Walden, I bend over to pick up a stamp I dropped. ow ow ow. I don't think those are my guts on the sidewalk. Must be somebody elses...

Anyway, I'm home again. My bogus Adventure is over. for now.