Forgive me, but the talk today will mainly be of wee

26 July 2005

You may remember that this year I celebrated the May bank holiday by passing a kidney stone. I had an x-ray and that was followed up today with an appointment with the consultant. I’d received three appointment letters – two for the same time and one for five minutes later – and then not long ago I received a letter telling me I’d be doing a urine flow test at this appointment, so I needed to either turn up with a “comfortably full bladder” or come an hour early and sit there drinking in the waiting room.

My brother and I have a strange tendency to ignore the call of our bladders. Just how long can we sit here with our legs bobbing up and down before we finally chicken out and go to the loo? Quite a long time actually. Anyway, I chose to arrive with a full bladder, which meant that I couldn’t go to the loo before leaving the house. Something that went entirely against the grain as this is the final action of any Marchant before leaving somewhere. Except John. I drank half a litre of water on the way to Maidstone hospital, so by the time we got there, I was, shall we say, ready for a wazz.

Now to find the right department. We followed the signs to the urology outpatients dept, until they suddenly petered out and left us faced with either coming out the other side of the hospital, or going back the way we came from. One nurse suggested that our ward was upstairs, one consultanty-looking bloke had absolutely no clue and then another lady did a bit of asking around and told us we needed to go to the general outpatients’ clinic … way back the way we came from. By this time I was walking in a decidedly bow-legged fashion (yes, even more than usual).

Eventually we found the right place, Mum checked me in and I perched on a chair, in a waiting room full of old men and their malfunctioning prostates, right leg bouncing wildly all the while. Mum alerted the receptionist to the fact I was meant to do a flow test and she in turn alerted a nurse. After what seemed like five years left on the burning precipice of imminent bladder control failure, a nurse appeared before me. She told me I’d simply had a standard letter and a flow test wasn’t necessary, only a common or garden urine sample. She handed me a polystyrene cup, nattily labelled with my details and pointed me in the direction of the loos.

So, hands up, who here has left it so long before going to the toilet that, when they’re finally faced with the porcelain nirvana, nothing happens? The responsible muscles were like that Japanese soldier who didn’t believe the war was over; they weren’t about to relax, just in case this was a trick. What if we were still in the waiting room? No, keep holding it in, all these white tiles might just be a hallucination…

Finally I managed to fill my personalised cup – coulda done that four times over once I got started – and wandered out into the waiting room again, brandishing it proudly. I gave it over to a nurse, who said it looked like I was going to drink it … mmm, apple juice.

Another little wait among the malfunctioning prostates of West Kent and I was summoned to see the consultant. Not the most carefree of people, not one who would have it in him to stroke my foot were I to look worried like Chris Chandler did. The x-ray I’d had showed there to be another stone wandering about in my kidney – that explains the odd bit of discomfort and haematuria I’ve had in the past few weeks – and it will need to be removed under general anaesthetic.

I briefly saw my x-ray and caught sight of my shunt tube curling around in my abdomen – rather like an enormous, yet useful tapeworm. The consultant just about managed to hold the x-ray up for me to see when I mentioned it, but putting it on the lightbox a few inches away would’ve been too much trouble, obviously.

It might be a bit exciting getting the stone out cos my tubes are diddly, but I’m sure they’ll manage. With any luck, I’ll be in and out of hospital the same day, overnight at the most. But grapes and flowers are still welcome. You can start sending them now, if you’d like.

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And with regard to the neurosurgeon-god that is Chris Chandler, he’ll be on BBC1 on Wednesday 27th July. “Your Life In Their Hands” is following his work this week, so my family and I shall be glued reverentially to the television – as will all the other families in the UK he’s helped, I’m sure. It’s the accent you see, and the fact that when I asked if I could keep taking the cocaine after he took me off the anti-convulsants, he said that was fine. You see, Mr Kidney Consultant? Sense of humour.