Low life
The joy of nursing
Jeffrey Bernard
he hospital I am in is unique. In the middle of the sticks and in the Avon area, it was originally built as an American army/air force base. The 30 wards and other buildings were barrack rooms and so Ward 17 is like an elongated bungalow. I am lucky enough to have a room of my own, a side ward, and there is a patio out at the back, flowers and a sprinkling of garden furniture under a small unidentified tree. Yesterday I was sitting there in the sun nursing a drink and for a moment I could have been on holiday until a nurse approached with a syringe asking for blood. I still felt as though I was on holiday. It was really no worse than a French waiter approaching with the bill.
I thought you might be surprised at the fact that I was nursing a drink on hospital territory, but the business of having the diabetes restabilised here is like nothing I have known in the big city hospitals. I suggested that it was ridiculous to take a man out of his environment, change his way of life and metabolism and get the balance of insulin still correct after being discharged and disgorged into Soho again. That is like twisting a graph. The good boss here agreed with me and that is why I am sipping a vodka on the patio.
The nursing staff are very caring. Yester- day evening the ward sister glanced at the bottle on the top of my bedside locker and, looking most concerned, asked me, 'Mr Bernard, are you sure you're drinking enough?' You could marry a woman who talks like that.
The other reason for being here, other than being restabilised, is to gain some weight and strength. Ten days ago in London I had to ask a man to help me across Shaftesbury Avenue. I felt so weak and feeble I thought that if I fell down in the road I would drown in the traffic. So they are stuffing me like a Strasbourg goose here. At lunch yesterday a nurse ticked me off for not eating more ice-cream with the strawberries a visitor brought me. The improvement has been remarkable and rapid. The belt has had to be loosened a notch. I am not yet doing cartwheels or handsprings on my way to the patio but at least I don't have to hang on to the walls for support as I walk.
There is a rather odd night sister of Sicilian extraction on Ward 17. She re- buked the sweet thing who looks after me during the hours of darkness yesterday. Apparently she told the Sweet Thing, `Don't come on duty wearing that perfume again. You'll excite him.' Could perfume be a medical breakthrough, I wonder? Brought back to life by Chanel or Joy?
Apart from my own boring case there is the usual collection of oddballs that is always to be found in a hospital ward. The ones I go to anyway. There is a 19-year-old boy who was stabbed in a fight in Bristol. It seems to have affected his mind as much as his guts, but he was obviously in some sort of trauma before that. Now he is nearly gaga and it's very sad to see. Colin has a frightening hole in his head where he was operated on because of a tumour. He seems quite OK but come the evening he is lost in every sense of the word. I watched the first day of Royal Ascot with the `Colonel'. He, poor chap, is a total physical mess. He groans terribly and a lot of his groans coincided with the finishes of races and you might have thought that he was losting fortunes.
But I had to bite my tongue right off yesterday to stop myself from laughing and thereby being accused of being a racist. A giant of a black man, built on the lines of a Joe Frazier or Mike Tyson, was admitted wearing an oxygen mask. He looked to be spark out. Just as I was about to hold his hand and offer him words of good cheer and comfort he suddenly whipped off the mask, leant over to his locker, grabbed a banana and ate it in two gigantic bites. We are now sharing my oranges but not my vodka.
It's a funny thing this business of being allowed to drink in hospital. It seems to mystify the nurses. They aren't exactly whispering in corners about it, but they are certainly puzzled. Could that be why they are treating me so well? One of them has seen me on television so I get a little VIP treatment for that as well. They are all lovely, the one exception being the solitary male nurse on the ward. I don't like male nurses. They are like ducks out of water and not nearly as funny. This chap is a parsimonious, judgmental prig. I asked him to bring me in some cigarettes on his next shift and he screamed like a poof who has suddenly and unexpectedly been groped. He said, 'I couldn't possibly. I deeply disapprove of smoking. You've asked quite the wrong person,' and off he swept. Why does the medical profession attract so many judgmental people? The good doctor here doesn't keep telling me what's good for me, but then he is a Spectator reader.
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