I rolled the dice… at last. Three years after being told it was the end of the road treatment wise for the knee, the Easter incident finally irked me sufficiently to book an appointment with the consultant suggested by my RevACLr surgeon to get that second opinion - if nothing else, simply to put my mind at rest that there really was nothing else doing.
Two consultations, one MRI, one x-ray down and now a CT to go and there are wheels turning (which I’ll update in a separate blog in due course) but I think it was the right decision…
Anyway, I’m sure I’ve mentioned previously in this blog that if you can’t see the funny in some of these situations, you really are in trouble, so I’m just going to share the most ridiculous Monday I’ve had in a long time (involving consultation #2) in this post, just to put it out there for my memory banks and also, maybe, give a few readers a bit of a laugh along the way.
Monday was my eldest’s birthday - she has been counting down the days for weeks now and was very excited. I’ve been counting them down for somewhat different reasons and was kind of hoping (illogically) that a follow-up knee appointment on that auspicious date would deliver lucky news.
Having dropped the kids at school and largely-successfully focused on work for the morning, I arrived at the hospital mid-afternoon, somewhat anxious about whether I was going to hear what I wanted to or not. As Adrian Chiles rightly points out in his book about following West Brom You Don’t Know What You’re Doing, "it’s the hope that kills you…" Anyway, during the course of that consultation - fortunately towards the end - I absent-mindedly scratched the outside of my nose, resulting in a steady drip drip drip of blood dropping down my face.
With no tissues to hand, I did my best to stem the flow and wipe any blood away while maintaining the illusion of following the conversation but ultimately failed and was handed a box of tissues by the consultant. Just a small scratch, I figured, I’ll take one, hold it to my nose and carry on. Except it didn’t stop bleeding and every time I took the tissue away, it just started streaming down my face again. We were wrapping up anyway so the consultant handed me another form for imaging, thankfully spotted I had blood running down my chin so sorted that while I juggled the form, my notebook, phone and keys in one hand while trying to keep the tissue to my nose with the other, and off I trotted, somewhat flustered.
Trying to open the door with no free hands was a challenge but I figured I’d just get into the waiting room as quickly as possible and sort myself out from there. God knows what those waiting must have made of the bloodied, slightly wild-eyed person leaving the consultation room but hopefully it didn’t put them off!
Having established that a short sit down wasn’t going to cut it - and in need of more tissues to stem the flow - I headed to reception to get directions to the loos while trying to avoid dripping blood onto the scan form. Safely esconced in the ladies, I sat waiting for the bleeding to stop. Seriously, it was barely even a scratch - I didn’t even feel it when I did it - but the bleeding would. not. stop. Maybe I caught a capillary or something but every time I thought I must have waited long enough and released the pressure to check, it bubbled up again without a moment’s pause.
As if sitting on the loo, tissues pressed against my nose wasn’t surreal enough, the lights were on a movement-triggered timer so every few minutes, off they turned, leaving me to either sit in the dark or get up and jig around the room again to get them back on (not helping the ‘stop the bleeding’ campaign)
What to do:
Sit there indefinitely?
Would someone come and knock the door if I didn’t reappear?
Where to put the growing pile of bloodied tissues in the absence of a suitable bin?
Maybe I should try a paper towel as they’re more absorbent (but I can’t flush those down the loo)?
How long is too long to sit here waiting?
Can I get a tissue to stick to the cut so I can at least drop the imaging form in and get back to the car while rocking the ‘shaving cut/tissue stuck to face’ look beloved of so many bleary eyed men of a morning? Oh no, the blood just pours straight through any tissue I try to apply...
After 25 minutes, something had to give so with fresh supplies of tissues and paper towels tucked under my arm, hand still pressed to nose to stem the flow, and scan form, notebook, phone and keys balanced in the other hand, I skulked out of the bathroom and across to imaging to at least get the CT booked in. Thank goodness for button-activated doors is all I’m going to say.
The poor lady on reception took one shocked look and asked if I was okay. I just laughed, explained I’d scratched my nose and felt ridiculous, but needed to book a scan and handed her the form…. before promptly walking into (and kicking over) the board next to her desk 🤦🏻♀️
Having been advised that they would call me to get the scan booked in, off I scurried, back to the car. Safely inside, my nose was still bleeding and showing no signs of stopping. I figured getting het up wasn’t going to help - and I only had another 15 minutes before I needed to be able to drive to get my eldest from school - so I kept the pressure on the nose, tried to calm my breathing and lay the car seat back to limit the impact of gravity on blood flow.
God knows what anyone walking past the car would have made of it had they had the temerity to glance inside. The body of a middle-aged woman lying in the driver's seat with blood running down her face and (I realised with retrospect) all the way down my neck too. Like something out of a low-budget horror show.
In reality, that middle aged woman was busy contemplating how the heck she was going to get the bleeding to stop in time to be able to drive the car, whether or not she could drive one handed (it’s an automatic car so no worries about manual gear changes but steering might be dodgy) or would she be better to just let the blood stream down her face during the 15 minute journey instead and arrive at school looking like she’d been attacked. Finally, which ‘phone a doctor friend’ might be the lucky recipient of a ridiculous last-minute ‘help’ call to figure out what to do.
Vote:
A for Haematology
B for A&E
C for GP, or instead
D for a bloodied trip to the chemist to buy emergency plasters (which would entail leaving the car and walking into town still holding piles of tissues to my face and looking even more of a div than I already felt!)
Absolutely bloody ridiculous, the whole thing. As luck (and perseverance) would have it, the bleeding finally stopped with two minutes to go until drive time. A gentle sit up, a quick clean up and off I went, collecting the eldest bang on time and with no-one any the wiser.
As described to a friend next day, it was like a series of scenes from a low-grade TV comedy; Ridiculous, funny and embarrassing as fcuk all at once. Not as good as Colin from Accounts but still, if you can’t laugh about it all….
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