By Douglas Kruger
HAVE you ever tried to use the hospital wall-map to find a ward? As I stood before it, I remembered an old comic book called The 12 Tasks of Asterix.
Our intrepid Gaulish hero strives to complete a series of impossible challenges, the most daunting of which is to obtain the notorious “Permit A38” from the world’s most insane bureaucracy. In a sweat of mounting anxiety, he travels from floor to floor, lost, hopeless, fighting valiantly not to succumb to imminent madness.
Anyway, I found Robin Ward eventually. Not based on the MC-Escher-style map. But based on the advice of a lovely nurse who took pity on me somewhere in the bowels of the building, near the boiler rooms where Freddy Kruger stokes fires and waits for teenagers to fall asleep.
After that, the experience improved markedly. To the point where it became world-class.
We were there because my eight-year-old had to have a big procedure. The removal of no fewer than four teeth, in a single blow. He’d been dreading the day for weeks.
The procedure took place under general anaesthetic, and I don’t mind telling you it’s hard going watching your child’s lights go out as he counts backward from ten. Clears the sinuses.
But I cannot praise the staff highly enough. Every nurse, every doctor, everyone we interacted with. A class act to a person, and caring to a fault. They were so good to him, and to his nervous parents, that it transformed the nature of what could otherwise have been a very trying day.
When my son came to, wobbly and frowning, he was so woozy that he repeatedly asked us: “Am I really awake?” And wouldn’t take us at our word when we answered.
But he also emerged into a little cocoon of kindness. The outstanding staff at the Hospital were a swirl of ice cream, advice and kind words. It set me thinking back over the times I’ve been in hospital.
The first one I can remember was when I was five. I raced a cousin down a grassy hill, tripped over a shoelace and flew head first into the drainpipe running down the side of a house. If you’ve read my books, and shaken your head in wonder, this may go some way to explaining things.
My parents, who heard the howl echoing off the surrounding hills and came running, thought I’d cracked my skull. And for a full week I did have a lump the size of an egg on my forehead. But the only lasting results were the personality you will encounter today and a neurotic aversion to drainpipes.
I then took up skateboarding, and despite some five years’ hurling my frail body into the stratosphere above gargantuan half-pipes, never had a serious injury. For that, I had to wait until my appendix tried to burst.
I was 18, striving to impress a girl. Suddenly, something felt very wrong. But where a young man is concerned, embarrassment trumps niggling concerns about mortality, so I remained stoic, calm, and sweating at my hairline.
“You look green,” she said. “I think something’s wrong.”
“Ah, it’s nothing! Nothing at all! Just a tiny shooting pain down my… aaaaaaargh!”
Her parents rushed me straight to the emergency ward. They operated two minutes after I arrived. Our love did not endure. I think she works in real estate now.
The worst hospital trip I can think of was for my best friend. More specifically, his younger brother. We spent three days camped out at that facility after a break-in in Johannesburg.
My friend’s younger brother was at home with his mum when three men broke in at night, and shot at them both. He sustained a bullet wound through his chest, delivered point-blank as he slept. His mum ended up in a firefight with the intruders. She didn’t make it. He carried her to the car, under fire, and drove to the hospital, and only then realised that the blood running down his shirt was from his own bullet wound.
It’s been over 20 years, and I still struggle to talk about that one. It’s one of the reasons South Africans like me are so grateful for the non-existent crime rates of Jersey. We’ve seen things.
Then there was my best hospital trip. The birth of my son. And that turned out to be quite the adventure.
It was 10.30pm on a Sunday. My wife switched off the bedside light and snuggled back into her pillow. Then her eyes opened, and she exclaimed, “Oh s**t!”
And so it began. Panic stations.
To add difficulty to the endeavour, I had been booked, and paid, to deliver a speech at a corporate event the very next morning. We made it to the hospital some time before midnight, but were told the contractions were still far apart. There were hours to go, and that created a quandary. My wife told me to go and deliver my speech. She’d breathe deeply and think delaying thoughts.
I ended that live presentation by saying: “It’s been an honour spending this morning with you, but I have to go. My son is being born. Right now.” And with that, I literally fled the room.
I made it. And I got to hold my wife’s hand as our son entered the world.
Hospitals are markers, aren’t they? A place of life’s great milestones.
I’d like to thank the staff of the Jersey General Hospital for remembering that, and for treating us like a family going through something just a little scary. What a difference it made. We won’t forget.
Douglas Kruger is an author and speaker living in St Helier. His new novel, House of the Judas Goat, has just launched on Amazon, Audible, and in most book stores.
