Even in the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown, starting in early March, I was able to enjoy pleasant walks around the neighbourhood. These days I usually only walk a kilometre or two, but it keeps me in touch with the blue sky, the flowers, birds and the occasional dog.
However, sometime in May, I found that after walking about 200 metres, I got a pain in my lower right calf. It was not an excruciating pain but it did make me hobble along like an old man. Even though I am 82 years old I do not like to hobble along like an old man.
If I stopped walking for a couple of minutes, I was able to walk pain free for another 200 metres or so. I concluded that poor circulation was the cause of my problem. My GP confirmed this when he applied various tests and pronounced that I was suffering from Claudication. He sent me off to have an ultra sound on my right calf.
I made an appointment at a nearby medical imaging centre. I was sitting, quietly relaxed, in the reception area when a young brunette called my name and asked me to follow her, which I did. We chatted pleasantly as she led me down a long corridor, before pausing in front of the door leading to her work area. She opened the door and invited me in to a rather dark room that had two quite large TV monitors in it alongside a hospital bed.
“ Take your trousers off,” said the young lady as she closed the door just after I had entered the room.
“OK,” I said to her, “but I do not even know your name.”
“It’s Sam. Now lie down on the bed.” So I lay down on the bed in my underpants and a shirt. She started unbuttoning my shirt.
“ Er, uh..,ah… It is my right calf that is the problem, “ I said as the young lady undid the last button, pulled my shirt open and started pushing the top of my underpants waaaay down low.
“Correct,’ she replied with a slight laugh, “but your calf problem could be caused by a blood supply blockage in your abdomen. So, I will give you an ultrasound of your abdomen and your right leg.” She was very good at her job. Eventually told me that I had a 90% blocked artery behind my right knee.
Two weeks later I was in Day Surgery being prepped for the insertion of a stent in the blocked artery behind my right knee. I was having a knee by-pass. After I had put on my ill-fitting hospital gown an attractive young, blue eyed, blonde, Irish nurse helped me fill in some forms. She explained that I would need to have my groin shaved and asked me to follow her. I knew the drill as I had had my groin shaved by nurses a couple of times before when I had surgery for a hernia operation in 1998 and in preparation for and angiogram after a heart attack in 1993.
However, I was surprised when she led me into a Gents Toilet where she placed a towel on the floor. Then, like Mandrake, she produced a verydainty, feminine looking electric razor and proceeded to demonstrate on the outside of her hospital issue slacks how and where I should shave my own groin.
Shave my own groin! This is not how I remembered it. After
her brisk and business like demonstration, the nurse left to me to attack myself
with the electric razor. Naturally, I took extreme care and found the task more
difficult that I would have imagined. With a pile of pubic hair on the towel on
the floor and the mirror above the wash basin reflecting a rough looking Brazilian, I made my way
back to my Irish nurse. She took my word for it that the job had been done and showed
no inclination to check my handiwork." What has happened to Quality Control, I thought?
Later that morning the surgeon cut into my left groin, inserted a special needle and eventually placed a stent behind my right knee. They gave me a needle to calm me down. However, I was conscious throughout the thirty to forty minute procedure and watched the whole thing on a nearby TV monitor. Afterwards, I had to lie still for four hours to ensure the entry wound into the artery in my right groin was sealed sufficiently for me to get up and go home. Around 4-30 pm the room nurse gave me the all clear and I walked away with no pain whatsoever.
A walking miracle of modern medicine.
As the Covid-19 lockdown eased in the second half of the year some previously postponed events came back on the agenda. My wife, Lesley, and I subscribe to concerts at the Concert Hall and His Majesty’s Theatre. In August I received an e-mail from His Majesty’s Theatre informing that a concert that had been postponed was now going to be staged.
The e-mail explained that because of Covid-19 spacing requirements, only a maximum of 500 people could occupy the various seating spaces in the stalls, the dress circle and the upper dress circle. We were informed that to spread people around, our reserved seats in the stalls had been switched to seats in the upper dress circle and asked if we were happy with that?. Well, we were more than happy and looked forward to the concert which featured stars of WA Opera.
We arrived at His Majesty’s about thirty minutes before the concert was due to start, making our way up three flights of stairs to the upper dress circle. I was surprised that the people sitting in the dress circle were not "socially distanced" at all. I expected every second row to be empty, but that was not the case. About 500 people were sitting elbow to elbow in the rows with no spaces between the rows.
I found myself sitting next to an elderly lady and her daughter. I say she was an elderly lady but she was probably ten years younger than me. About five minutes before the concert started I felt the need to blow my nose. In the middle of a pandemic I wondered if blowing my nose in a crowded theatre would cause the same sort of panic as if someone shouted “Fire!”
I leaned towards the elderly lady and said in hushed tones, “I am going to blow my nose. I do not have a cold. I do not have coronavirus. I have an allergy. It gives me Post Nasal Drip. When that happens I need to blow my nose. I am going to blow now."
The lady put her hand on my arm and said, “Oh, my Dear, I am so glad that you said that, as I am going to blow my nose, too.” Which with both did.
Thankfully, nobody panicked.
