In 1998 I left the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) and took up a job with Petrotrin, the national oil company of Trinidad and Tobago. Petrotrin was recently shut down by the government and, with it, the hospital. This is a recollection of one of my longer visits and is dedicated to the dedicated and friendly staff who worked there.
They wheeled me into the operating theatre. I was wearing the back-to-front “gown” that all hospitals insist on, and nothing else. I have long surmised that the idea of the gown is to ensure that you know you are naked, vulnerable and totally in the hands of the doctors. The anaesthetist, surrounded by masked nurses, was in the middle of a joke about being so forgetful that he left home without any underwear.
It was the naked truth, he insisted. Even though the sedative they had slipped into me was already pulling me down into unconsciousness I remember offering the doctor my boxers, seeing that I had no need of them at the time. I had no idea what went on behind the masks so I could not judge the reaction to my offer. At the same time I thought that masks were a good idea for occupations like surgery and bank-robbery. They guaranteed anonymity and freedom from recognition if things went wrong. That was not a comforting thought.
The anaesthetist came over to me and said jokingly as he waved a hypodermic, “I am going to give you a little Viagra here.” Just before sinking into complete oblivion I remember telling him, “In which case please don’t put me to lie down on my stomach.”
As the surgery progressed, instead of my whole life flashing before me what happened is that a string of “doctor” jokes went through my head. Like the one about the doctor who told the patient she had acute appendicitis and she blushed, saying coyly, “You really think so, Doctor?”
There was the woman who told the doctor that her husband thought he was invisible. “Tell him I can’t see him,” the doctor snapped. “Next!”
There was the doctor who told the patient, “There is no specific cause for your complaint. I think it’s due to drinking.”
“In that case,” the patient said, “I’ll come back when you’re sober.”
A shopkeeper whose son had swallowed some twenty-five cent pieces called the hospital to find out about his son’s condition. “No change yet,” the doctor told him.
Then there was the doctor who failed as a kidnapper because nobody could read the ransom notes.
There is also the tragedy of the man who came home from a visit to the doctor looking very worried. When his wife asked him what the problem was, he explained that the doctor told him that he would have to take a pill every day for the rest of his life. His wife shrugged, “So what? Lots of people have to take a pill every day their whole lives.”
“Yes,” the man said disconsolately, “but he only gave me four pills.”
At some stage my mind brought up the fact that surgeons absent-mindedly leave bits and pieces of equipment in people. According to the Mammoth Book of Oddities, Dr. Hector Vasconcelos from Trinidad left surgical gloves, a surgeon’s mask and two surgical instruments inside his patient’s stomach. In fact, between 1962 and 1979 a legal insurance society in Britain reported 946 cases that involved leaving swabs, instruments, needles and other paraphernalia inside patients after their operations.
The leftovers have now reached about 4,000 a year.
At the Petrotrin hospital a “freelance” ENT specialist left a bandage in my wife’s sinus after surgery and had the gall to demand money for the second operation to take out the bandage.
*Tony Deyal was last seen saying that after surgery he kept seeing Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy in front of his eyes. It turned out to be a Disney spell.
