up

Do No Harm

by Andrew Macintyre

Consider, if you will, tests. Now I've always been good at tests. Any kind of test, any time of year. At school, spelling, I was the champ.  By the time I got to Uni', I was a test-taking god. Of course they weren't called 'tests' anymore, they were 'exams', but I never suffered in the same way that my mates did when it came to the October crush. Once, I overslept and arrived for a morning exam still in my pyjamas and dressing gown. 

Course, it was only philosophy, so I think I got extra marks for it actually.

At school, I used to get so excited about a test coming up, that my knees would start to bang together. One time our teacher, Miss Green noticed my knee trick and came over to me right before a maths test was due...come on, get on with it, put the numbers up, talk to me later. See, the excitement soon became bile. It was the waiting beforehand. Once we were going, I was fine. But the waiting, the week before, the day before, ah, the moment before; that I hated. That was the worst. So when Miss Green came over, I was really annoyed. Jumpy. She was prolonging the moment.

Actually Miss Green was something of a scandal in Our Town. She used to wear these outrageously coloured jerseys and fluoro tights - a visual symphony - which concerned the town elders as to what effect this would have on our young minds. Teachers are supposed to be conservative, to look backwards, at what is known, not ahead at what is to come. I guess Miss Green was the threat of the new.

Anyway, I'm sitting there, knees doing their business and she comes up to me and says

-John.

-Yes, Miss Green? Come on, put the frigging numbers up!

-John it's OK, you can go to the toilet any time you want. All you have to do is put your hand up and ask.

So with all the kids laughing I had to leave the room and go to the toilet. The thing was, it made me wait even longer...but still, I remained a test prodigy. Maths, no worries. Spelling, make my day.

But here's a test you can't swot for. I went to see the family doctor - I still go to our old family doctor up here - Masters - even though I left home years ago, for this backpain I've got and a weird lump in my side. Now, instead of referring me to the physio and giving me some fun drugs to take, he sends me to this bloke in a white coat and a pipe ('Hullo, sit down'). A 'specialist'? Just what does that mean? That he only ever played fullback, couldn't make the move out to the wing when the selectors demanded it? Then there was the cunningly disguised office. It looked like Masters': framed diplomas on the wall, cute family photo on the desk, turned just so, so you knew it was there but couldn't quite see the faces right, eye chart, patient bench. And he says to me:

-I think we're going to have to run some tests, Mr Allen.

Tests? I'm good at tests. What kind of tests? Thirty yard sprint? Anaerobic breathing capacity? Knowing all the capitals of Europe?

-It's your kidneys that I'm concerned about, Mr Allen.

So he gives me a form and the address of this Medical Testing Laboratory, a sort of dog trial for body parts. But there's no running track, no map with blanks to fill in, just some middle-aged ladies wearing those natty white numbers that nurses the world over don't fit. Well, they got me to piss in a jar and then took some blood.

I had to wait two weeks for my test results...oh it was real fun waiting. And Dr Pipe sits there and says to me:

-The tests were inconclusive, we should do some scans, I think.

I've never understood a lot of these medical terms, even the little ones like 'scan'. Words are tricky that way. You get to know a word, get comfortable with it and then bang! someone steals it and it doesn't mean what it should. It used to be you could walk into a shop selling hardware and you knew there'd be hammers and nails and fun stuff like that. Nowadays you walk into a hardware store and you're more likely to walk out with an update for your hard-disk and a bad case of DOS. The medical profession has been stealing words for years. I mean, just what is a scan? A dose of radar, or a light frisking in the hallway?

So, after a brief high-tech nightmare, it's back to the good Doctor, 'Your scan results were inconclusive. I think we'll have to do a spot of exploratory surgery. A biopsy.'

There you are again, another piece of medicalspeak. Just what is 'exploratory surgery'? Something they've been dying to do but just haven't had some schmuck on which to do it? We'd like to explore this on you. Or am I going to get some goof with a scalpel poking around in me saying 'Scalpel...clamp...I always wanted to say that....I wonder what this does...ah, whoops. Pick that up for me will you nurse?'

Nope. Exploratory surgery is done at Middlemore, a fairly unimpressive collection of buildings in South Auckland that gets more unimpressive the closer you get to it. And there's nowhere to park. That's probably why they get you to check in the day before your operation, in case it takes you that long to find a space. Once you actually get inside, what's even more unimpressive about the place are the walls. Middlemore walls are green. Not your everyday garden variety green, oh no. Puke green. Green of the most hideous shade imaginable. I have a theory about the green of Middlemore. Way back in the mists of unrecorded time - say 1956 - Dulux, or whoever makes paint in New Zealand in unseemingly large quantities came up with one of the worst colours they'd ever created. And while the technicians who created Puke Green were doing the same outside, the snoozing middle-management upstairs misfile the formula and before you know it, whammo! They've got a 12 storey vat of the stuff. Now of course this presents something of a problem; with the very future of the company at stake, an Emergency Board Meeting is called. So while the managers are yelling at each other about whose fault it is, the chairman gets up and walks to the window. There, in the middle distance, is the answer to their problem: Middlemore. So Middlemore goes 'green.' Well, the place is full of sick people anyway. And if they don't feel sick, then all they have to do is look at the walls.

In the green admissions room, they have some cute forms for you to fill in. Name...date of birth...next of kin. There's a business opportunity for some young entrepreneurial lawyer that's just sliding by: tick-the-box wills. Then they give you a plastic bracelet, which you can only remove by cutting it off. I guess some will wear it for the rest of their life. The bracelet has your name, date of birth, and your patient number. BPC 12776. So now I really was just a number. When I arrived in Ward One, they showed me my bed - funny, it looked just like all the others - and promptly at 6.30, dinner arrived. Well, you don't want to know about dinner - just think of the walls. A nurse bustled in, all energy and smiles. Well, that wasn't so unusual, the place is just teeming with nurses. But she came right over to me and said:

-Mr Allen? Hi, I'm Julie, I'm going off duty now, but I'll be looking after you tomorrow,  so I thought I'd just come by and say hi.

'Hi', and then she bounded out, all tennis shoes and life.

The anaesthetist came to see me. Kindly old gentleman: grey hair, specs, clipboard. He asks me about my drinking and smoking habits (big frowns on both of those) and then he leans over to me and - in the nicest possible way - says:

-And there's a chance you'll die under the anaesthetic.

Forget about dying from the operation, or cancer, the word no-one wants to use, that's one word that no-one else is going to steal from the white coat brigade, because that's what they think I might have. You know, I had to look up 'biopsy' in the dictionary before it really hit me. Instead they say they're 'concerned' about my kidneys and say 'let's just wait for the pathologist's report before calling it...cancer.' No one would use the word. Well, forget all that. It turns out that I may not even clear the first hurdle on the way to dying from kidney cancer.

Maybe there's a bookie's office in the basement of Middlemore. Why else won't this guy give me the odds of my making it through the anaesthetic?  Maybe they're still subject to negotiation. 'And now, ladies and gentleman, we come to the next lot in today's proceedings, John Allen's chances of making it through kidney cancer. Let me start with twenty to one, who will give me twenty to one? Thank you sir...thirty, do I have thirty? Come on ladies and gentleman, the man drinks far too much, smokes like a chimney...thirty! Do I have thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty-five, forty...forty-five, forty-five, fifty! Fifty from the reckless young medical student who doesn't think Allen will live to see in the new year. Fifty, going once, going twice, sold! Fifty to one John Allen sucks the kumera...' Come on, just put the friggin' numbers up.

Of course the anaesthetist didn't just whisper this to me as I was going into theatre ('There's a chance you'll die but try not to worry about it too much, because you might be dying of cancer anyway.') Oh no. He tells me the night before the big day. So I can sleep on it.

They turn off the lights at eleven, but the place is relatively noisy until about one, when the last of the bedpan buzzers have gone off and the sonorous rumblings of the snorers have faded into the background and there's only you - and your fear - to walk the halls with, and to bother the night nurses. They're a talkative bunch, the night nurses. With their embroidery and their flashlights they while the night away in a time continuum that is completely different. And they talk.  Oh boy, could they talk...which was good for me, because I was in the mood to talk too, although naturally, not about myself.

The day came slowly. From the first glimmerings on the horizon to the full sweeping vista of daylight must have been only half an hour. I sat in the day room watching the creeping rays stretch golden fingers onto the trees by the carpark. A man came round selling the morning paper: he cooed 'Herald, Herald...' in a voice that was oddly gentle. I bought one and picked out movies that I'd go and see once I got out. I made a list of things I would change, of the phone-call I would make, of what I would say to her when I did.

Julie came by to see me. She was as relentlessly cheerful as she had been the night before, even at this hour of the morning. She gave me a pill to take, to dry up my mouth and tossed the theatre gown I was to wear onto the end of the bed. It was green. There was a sign over my door, it said 'NOTHING TO EAT OR DRINK.' I needed a smoke, so I went back to the day room.

Outside there was a group of joggers going by. They were all about my age and they were laughing about something that one of them had said and they were healthy and unconcerned and in their own eyes immortal and one of them was wearing a pair of shorts just like I used to own.  That, their health, and their lack of concern fucking pissed me off. I went back into my room, slammed the door, and I started YELLING and YELLING at how they could be so healthy and unconcerned - who gave them the fucking right? How dare they parade past with their health and their prospects when I'm in here. How could they?!

Then I was just sitting in the chair next to my bed, rocking and rocking... and rocking. And I talked, whether anyone was listening or not, I didn't notice. I talked about myself mostly. Well, you do.

I'm twenty-eight years old. I'm young. Not young-young, but still young. I'm a normal bloke. I drink normally, I smoke normally.  Normal young people don't get cancer. Normal young people don't die. Normal young people play golf and go to the pub and get laid - OK other normal people get laid - and have jobs and retire and bore their grandchildren with stories they don't want to hear. I have spent a long time - I have invested heavily - in becoming a normal bloke. And normal blokes live to be seventy-two and a half. It's in the New Zealand Almanac; I looked it up. Well shit. I've got forty-four and a half years left on the clock and someone's revoking my warranty. I need a lawyer.

At first the nurses thought I was having an allergic reaction to the pre-op drugs they'd given me. A whole phalanx of them came in and checked the vital signs: blood-pressure, heartbeat, hair. But then the truth slowly dawned on them. So they all trooped out again, leaving Julie, who'd obviously drawn the short straw. She smiled at me, kinda wanely I thought. She pulled the drapes - maybe that was supposed to calm me down - and just stood there. I felt sorry for her. I felt sorry for all of them. Nurse training prepares you for somebody with a broken body, not a broken spirit.

It was odd, but I felt separate, like my body was sitting on the chair and I was walking around it like it was a museum exhibit. The little tantrum had surprised me as much as the nurses, it was a wrenching that broke me into fragments. There was my physical self sitting there in the chair, now silent, staring. I found my anger and fear on the floor, with their parents lying close by. Uncertainty was behind it all. Not knowing how long I had left: six hours (not even that, now)? Six months? Six years?

Julie said something. I opened my eyes, and she said it again.

-Don't worry.

And I thought there'd better be a fucking good reason not to. Obviously Julie had stolen in and out of the room while I was in pieces. She had some tapes for me to listen to, to 'relax'. One was called 'Butterfly' by Jo Chiplin. Another was simply called 'Feeling Good.' Well if I was feeling good I wouldn't be here, would I? The flip side to that one was 'Sweet Dreams' by good old Jo. I guess Jo Chiplin must be something of a chart topper in the calming the blubbering multitude stakes. There I was, in a green room with my green gown and a nurse I'd met yesterday who said:

-I'll come with you if you like. Would that help?

I don't know. Yes. Maybe. If you like. Glad to see I was still as decisive as ever.

She left me alone for a while and then helped me into my theatre 'gown' - now there's another word they've pinched; this 'gown' leaves your ass waving around in the breeze - and she walked behind my bed as this orderly wheeled us down to theatre.

The theatre walls were blue. I'd say puke blue but I don't think anyone could upchuck this blue. I guess there've been other disasters down at the paint factory. The anaesthetist, kindly old gentleman: grey hair, specs, no clipboard, put this plastic injection thingy in my hand and a bit of tape over it to hold it in the vein. The room was bare and cold. Julie leant over and squeezed my spare hand and we smiled. I was ready. The anaesthetist picked up a syringe of something for the final injection and inserted it into the tube in my hand. The stuff was really cold and I could feel it spreading up my side. I started to fade, quickly now. I looked at Julie and her face could have been another, or it might not have been. And I said:

-Will you...