I Wish That For Just One Time, You Could Stand Inside My Shoes, The You'd Know What A Drag It Is To See You...

Again, long time no jib...

Sorry. If any of my dwindling readership are still trying, I'm sorry.

I've been a little distracted of late. Shroom's fallow period has ended.

I have a new object of my affection. And it is mutual! I'm not a stalker. My current squeeze, my babyluv may feature here more later, but not for now. I don't want to jinx it, and I'm not sure I have the right to publish her the way I do myself; yet...

Anyway; I have a few local interest 'pieces' to blog about, but they will follow. They're mostly me grumping about what's happening at work. What follows, since we were talking of stalkers (sort of) is the tale of Shroom's only stalker - to date.

I know I've alluded to this recently, but don't think I've covered the details.

The whole sordid affair took place years ago, when I was a Plastics junior in a London hospital. At the time, I had rotated on to the Burns Unit, which meant I spent my days there, but shared the on call rota with the other SHOs covering Plastics and Burns. One Wednesday night, I took handover, and did my rounds, as usual. On the ward was a patient who had been waiting for surgery for a few days. I'm not sure why he'd been waiting but it was a bone of some contention to him, and he already had a reputation as a 'troublemaker' among the nursing staff.

The duty Reg and I stopped by to examine him, and see if we could get the op done overnight.

As I recall, the history was that this chap had been in a house that had been firebombed, and in trying to escape the inferno, he had gone out of a window, sustaining glass laceration to the dorsum (back) of one hand. On exam, it was obvious that his injury was substantial. There was significant skin loss, tendon and nerve damage. The op would require complex reconstruction and full thickness grafting - well beyond the capabilities of the Duty Reg and I, and as no consultant had expressed an interest in staying on to do it, we had no choice but to tell him he would have to wait another day.

He was not pleased; as we continued on our rounds, I was summoned urgently back to the ward. The fella was screaming and shouting at the nurses. When I went to find out why, he turned his attention to me. His primary complaint was that too much time had elapsed before the replacement of his dressing. He claimed that his hand had been left undressed for half an hour, and he was furious at the thought of it becoming infected.

When I pointed out that we had only left him five minutes before, he changed tack; the most vitriolic stream of abuse followed, the gist of which was that nurse were "bitches in skirts" who should be at his beck and call. He expected them to fetch and carry for him, and, I kid you not, "peel me grapes".

As this, almost laughable, rant continued, Sister attempted to re4place his dressing - made more difficult by the fact that he was gesticulating wildly. It must have been uncomfortable, because he flinched, mid-diatribe, and i saw his (good) fist curl up, and he went to swing at Sister. I did the only thing I could think of, which was to step in the way, and place my hand over his fist.

I suspect, in my mind, I was Clint Eastwood - as the Man with No Name.

This is part the first... I'm mid edit - apologies