Yesterday I had to go into QA Hospital at 7.30am to have an operation involving a plate in screws or wire to fix my elbow.   The previous day had 9 people in to have fractures or breaks seen to.

Despite its large size and that it has gone purple-ish, I wasn’t in too much pain as it was set in a 90 degree angle in a sling.

Once in, my parents took me in as my dad wasn’t working that day, after a while I was given a bed, after various nurses, doctors and consultants all asked me the same questions, if I were right handed, if I had heart problems, epilepsy or diabetes or anything that could cause a problem during an operation, I had a big arrow drawn on with pen on my left hand, and got asked to undress and put on an NHS nightie.

I grew more and more fearful of what was going to happen, the last operation I had was in 1985 (when I was about nine) for a tonsillectomy.  The cheerful male nurse called Adam who was quite chatty told me he was born then, for me it felt hard to imagine not being concious before the op, and that something could go wrong with me waking up at the wrong moment or something like that.

Its worth mentioning QA hospital has undergone a big revamp with I think at a least £100m or so probably just for this new block.

So, at about 10am or so, I get wheeled down on my bed to the theatre.  Just before then I got a briefing from my surgeon who told me that they had a meeting and are going to go with the steel wire wrapped around the elbow to hold it place to make it heal.  Once on the corridor on the way I pass all kinds of exotic looking medical equipment parked in the hall, once I arrive in the theatre I look up to see the dreaded large medical lamps directly above me, although being new these use lots of ultra bright LEDs rather than fluorescent tubes.

I get introduced to Claire, who tells me she is going to be my anaesthetist today, and by golly she is very very pretty, with blonde hair and big blue eyes, its not just nurses that just have the feminine charm in medicine, I try telling her about when I worked for the Portsmouth trust I was working for as she injects me with something, and how more recently I was at the Southampton trust, as the also very new Lymington hospital in the New Forest has similarities to the block I am in and I notice I am losing the ability to speak, shes just tells me to put on a mask and breathe the oxygen deeply, I think I only got 4 breaths of this before I don’t remember anything else….

I wake up back in the corner of the ward I was in earlier.  I am in a nest of wires and tubes, well not that many, but I have sling with my bad arm in, a cord round my wrist with a handset I can use to press a switch to feed me with morphine if I have too much pain, my right hand has a stent with a tube which will feed morphine or plain water, I am a bit concerned about the tubes as they are easily pinched by me sitting on them or wrapped around the bars on the side of the bed.

My parents and sister are with me the rest of the day, but I drift in and out of conciousness that afternoon and evening.   By the next day, I haven’t slept that well but I am ready for breakfast and I get some porridge and toast.  After then I get some new pain killers and some coffee, so the strong effects of the tablets meant my coffee gets recycled back onto one of those cardboard plates provided for this purpose.  Trying to go for a wee in special paper-mache box under the bed clothes is also very strange and feels just plain wrong.   Part of the reason I feel sick is it is too darn warm in this ward, hospitals have this annoying habit of having the heat whacked all the way up all the time, whilst the bloke opposite me is out in a clinic for half and hour I use the time to stand by his bed next to the open window to get fresh air and to stop me being from feeling queasy.   I have half of my lunch (which wasnt all that great)  and my mother has come, I put my clothes back on, and I get the all clear to go home and three sets of tablets to be taken each day.

I haven’t dared looked inside my sling and bandages, but it appears the wires hold the two halves of the broken bone together helping the healing process.   The most risky part was damaging any nerves could impair or paralyse part of my arm, I have perfect control of my fingers and wrist so it looks like a complete success so far.

The other three chaps in the ward are much older, one of the two older gents both called Ken is 86 and has been there for a few weeks.

Things could of been worse, I could of landed on my wrist or shoulder which would of been much more unpleasant and harder to heal.  Also whilst I am typing this I just saw on TV about an American woman who was on holiday in earthquake struck Haiti who has had her leg crushed and amputated.

I am grateful for the progress God has made with healing of me so far.

I would request I need the wisdom to plan part two of my return to the holyland, this might seem like a big spanner in the works, but as I have seen three other volunteers go through bones fractures at some point, I know someone else that got in a plane with arm in sling so there is no reason why I cant do it either…

I might of previously mentioned here, in Israel its hard to find curry, there maybe an Indian restaurant here but it not anywhere near me or the old city.  At the same time if you want a make a curry, a simple jar of curry sauce from Tesco (even the dead cheap stuff is quite decent) and fry some chicken does the job nicely.   I have tried making curry here from scratch albeit with the flavours not quite what they should be.

Here in Israel I haven’t seen any jars of curry sauce, partly because most food is made from scratch and lazy shortcuts to make things are something of a rarity.   I am not sure how popular curry is with recent Olim (new immigrants to Israel) from UK or anywhere else but no one could accuse Israelis or anyone from the middle east of being wussies when it comes to spices, I have a ton of them in my kitchen mostly inherited from the previous volunteers before me.

One of nicest things to have in your sandwiches at work is Coronation chicken, its combination of Chicken breast diced into small pieces, curry sauce and raisins and finely chopped dry apricots is a winner in my books.  Of course regular curried chicken or some of the other related spicy lemon chicken is also pretty darn good.  You can get tubs of Coronation Chicken from Tesco for about #1 (or #1.50 for two on occasions, sorry stupid keyboard has no pound sign) although it has only a three day life span or so once opened.

If you take my dad, he always makes his sandwiches the night before work, this is something we should all do more rather buy plastic triangles of naff sarnies that lost all their taste somewhere on a long journey on a truck from the West Midlands, in addition to that the money we spend in the UK on lunch ad hoc from somewhere in a close radius of our work places could be saved and done it ourselves could mean you could have enough money after a year for probaby quite a decent holiday.   In addition to this as a volunteer in another country I have decided to absolutely not throw away any food in date and reuse and reheat anything and everything where possible and still usable.  I have a carcasss of chicken from Christmas Boxing day when I had a roast.

With a bit of imagination all the good quality bagettes and rolls that you can get from a sandwich shop can be done yourself, I decided to do research on how Coronation Chicken is made, I came up with this formula.

– medium tub of plain yoghurt (sorry cant remember how big it was, maybe 500ml?)
– fine chopped chicken
– spice powder – I used one teaspoon of curry powder and one of chilli.
– some raisins.

I know I ought to put in some measurements but will leave this up to your own preference.

Throw into a tupperware and stir thoroughly and spoon liberally on bread.   Actually today I decided to mix this with middle eastern food and dip some pita bread into it.  Next need to learn how lemon chicken is done.

Job done.  Lovely.