Mercy me!

I don’t know what I expected as my daughter and I entered the hospital … the figure of a stout matron in blue starched uniform with starched face to match was in the back of my mind; a reminder of a short stay in a military hospital at Woolwich, England in my 18th year. But this was totally different; this was the angiography unit at Mercy Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand.

The matron who met me at 7 am was nothing like the Woolwich matron; this lady was a youngish motherly type who greeted me with, ‘Mr Crompton?’ in a voice that was warmly reassuring, calming my pulse which had threatened to move into a higher gear at the sight of a stethoscope or hypodermic needle: ‘Yes please!’ … I almost blurted out in reply.

Formalities were attended to and then it was up to my room on the second floor. A short explanation was given as to the over-sized nappy-type male knickers with tie-strings on both sides; they lacked any sense of style or appeal and brought a cheeky smile to my daughter’s face. Someone had to have had a sense of humour to have dreamt those things up.

Still, for the staff who had to cope with all manner of things, they covered in a practical way the range of male appendages which lay in the path of the tests the patient required. Although a gown with an opening down the back covered the lot, it still left me feeling vulnerable whichever way one looked at me.

Instructions were given that certain body hair should be removed; a ticklish job requiring steady nerves and an equally steady hand, a job I tackled myself, in fact. The result resembled a fresh piece of pork; soft, pink and with a baby-like texture.

Wow! I thought. I must have looked like that when I was born, on a smaller scale of course. You’ve no idea the thoughts that kept whizzing round inside my head as I walked around, clean-shaven for the next day or so. What would anyone think if I’d had an accident?

I won’t bore you with all that followed; suffice to say that things went smoothly in the angiography department, transferring from bed to table successfully, without as much as a hint of my ludicrous drawers revealing themselves. In any case, they were whisked away as neatly as you like almost before I realised they’d gone. Just as well, I’d have hated to have pictures of those being leaked to the media.
For the next half hour I watched the procedure on a monitor, with someone on the cardiologist team explaining to me the various steps being taken, which I found very reassuring.

This is a light-hearted view of the way I saw and experienced my ‘check-up’ that day. From the welcome at the door at 7am, to the goodbyes at 5pm, everyone helped me feel that my welfare was their concern and that I was important to them; I couldn’t have been in better hands. The hospital is well-named (Mercy Hospital), and this quote from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure aptly fits the staff there:

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become with them one half so good a grace
As mercy does.

They must have done a good job, because I’m still here; bless them.

Dennis Crompton © 1997