Sandy Thorne - Bedpan Blues

The rails would stay up until Dr Chang gave me my leave pass from BedpanWorld. Oh, God! How bloody awful.

There are no words strong enough to describe how much I hated having to use one, and how difficult it was to get on and off the bloody thing. Even worse was the fear each time that someone would see methat a doctor would arrive, or a curious visitor would peep through the gap where the two sides of the curtain met. Then there was the utterly appalling situation where, when Id deposited Number One or Number Two, the ludicrous-looking container had to be placed on the metal table that swung over the bed with my food on it! I learnt to keep a newspaper in a drawer and would cover the tables surface first, with several sheets. If a nurse had forgotten to bring a cover to place over the pansimply dreadfulId put newspaper there, too, and tell them when they collected it: Dont let anyone wrap up fish and chips in that, will you?

It took me a couple of days, but I worked out and perfected my bedpan routine, details of which I wont go into. Now more than ever, nurses amazed me. For a thousand, even ten thousand dollars, I would not pick up and carry a pan full of someones piddle oraaarrrggghhh!poo. These girls waltzed off with it as though they were carrying a tray of nice sandwiches. Unreal!

One nurse told me, when she saw the massive effort I was going through to wash my hands thoroughly after a bedpan episode, that some patients dont bother. God almighty, I wish she hadnt told me that! Makes you want to be a total hermit, away from the rest of the human race.

When you are perched on a bedpan peering through a smog-encrusted picture window at the Harbour Bridge and the city, you cant help wondering about what everyone else out there in all those buildings is doing right then? Id imagine that if I had x-ray vision, I would see people reading the Herald or Womens Weekly on their nice comfy porcelain loos in perfect privacy, couples of all shapes, colours and ages bonking away in bedrooms, showers or spa baths, people cooking beautiful or bloody awful meals, children doing their homework or sneaking a ciggie out in the cubbiehouse, cats curled up on beds, oldies with their television sets blaring When the city lights came on at nighta magical sightI could imagine, on each floor of the skyscrapers, harassed late-working secretaries and sales managers slaving at desks, cleaners busy vacuuming.

You win some, you lose some. After the poopy bedpan news, I was suddenly presented with a fabulous tray of fruit, beautifully wrapped, sent by my wonderful friends in the Lightning Ridge Rotary Club, of which Im an Honorary Member. It contained all the expensive fruit which I had really missednot a pear, apple or orange in sightwith strawberries and tiny bunches of gorgeous grapes in between everything. I draped my towel over my chest immediately and ravaged one of the mangoes like a rabid dog. A piece of Queensland, my home state, which I missed so much. Id pulled my curtain around so the others wouldnt be jealous. Buggerit. I wasnt sharing. They all had constant visitors to bring them stuff. Oboy! I was going to enjoy that tray of fruit. Next morning, another beautiful surprise: more utterly gorgeous flowers from the good ol boys of the Lodge. Spoilt bitch to the max! I dont think they even knew that my dad was a Masonor did they? Whatever, it was so nice to think that all these people, far away at Lightning Ridge, were thinking of me.

The fourth person in the ward at that time was an Indonesian woman whod been brought in during the previous night with bags of blood hanging off her bed. Bizarre! Like Violet, she couldnt reach her buzzer ,so I became her buzzer-pusher during the night. She was in a bad way, waking me up a lot with her cries of pain. The next day, and the day after that, it was dj vu, la Miriam and her constant horde of Lebanese visitors around her bed. Half of Indonesia swamped the ward all weekend, carrying in plastic chairs from the tv room, as they planned on staying a loooong time! I am a tolerant person, but my patience was stretched to the limit with the deafening yabbering of the mob, without a break, right next to me, for an entire two days. All talking loudly over the top of each other in their harsh-sounding lingo. The poor patient was far too ill to talk to them. That this is allowed to happen where people need their rest, and where patients are having to use a bedpan with just a thin curtain for privacy, is absolutely ridiculous. Insane really.

How is this allowed to go on? I asked one of my favourite nurses, a big, blonde, super-efficient Kiwi who loved a joke or two. She was also a very straight shooter.

Political correctness. Whats going on here is a big issue in Sydney hospitals with all these wog cultures that dont have, or respect, our standards of behaviour. That poor patient is so ill. She absolutely should not have all that racket happening around her all bloody day.

Trapped in my bed, the loud, ignorant visitors chatter penetrating my earplugs hour after hour, I was nearly driven to breaking point. I kept my curtain around me and forced myself to focus on writing the story of Lesley, an ace female helicopter mustering pilot whod broken ground then set really high standards for other females in that previously blokey field. It was bloody fortunate Id brought all my interview notes with me. Id almost left most of them behind, thinking Id be home within a week. Thank God for my writing. I was able to semi-submerge myself in another world, far away from the zoo right beside me. In hindsight, I dont know why I didnt attempt to get a note to someone in authority, requesting the noisy visitors only be allowed in two at a time, which is how it should be.

You think youve seen and heard everything, especially having been beside someone like Chantal for nearly two weeks, but there was a bigger shock to come from one of my current fellow residents. The day my fruit tray arrived, I fell asleep after hours of typing. I went into a deep, dreaming sleep, having had very little during the night. When my eyes opened, I looked first, as usual, at my view. Oh, goody, the Harbour Bridge was still there, not blown up by Muslim terrorists who had been shown, on our national television, where to place their bombs. Then I looked at my beautiful blue flowers, keeping on keeping on with their daily dose of Panadol I put into the vase. How I loved them. Next, I looked at my magnificent fruit tray. Hey, somethings not right. Well, bugger me dead. Someones pinched some of my beautiful fruit while I was asleep. UN-REAL! Had to be a nurse. Who was on? The Blimp hadnt reappeared, thank God, and she was unlikely, anyway, to go for fruit. Shed be a choccie girl. I found it hard to imagine Ann and Sylvia, the Korean girls, doing something like that. They were lovely girls, so kind to me and so dedicated. This was a sly, nasty thing to do to someone who was crook, stuck in hospital, eating hospital meals every day for weeks.

I didnt know very well the other two nurses on with the Korean girls. They seemed nice. I always say, though, that you do not know someone really, until you either work for them, or are married to them. So they were my prime suspects, unfortunately. Being a very light sleeper, I was awakened that night by the sound of cellophane rustling. The fruit tray was covered in cellophane. A rat was obviously at the lovely fruit, meant for me. I opened one eye and was astounded. The rat was Gertrude, the Hungarian yapper.

I was at my restrained, refined best. All the money my parents spent on private schools was justified, as I sprung her with a very classy, You thieving bastard! Oh, the careful, sterling brilliance of thought that had gone into that statement! Retrieving her hand from under the cellophane, she scuttled off back to her bed without a word, grapes and avocado in her light fingers. If it had been a mango, I would have stopped her by hurling my waiting bedpan at her head, but an avocado? I wouldnt eat one for a hundred dollars. I was brought up in Queensland where everyone had a avocado tree in their chookyard, and the chooks were welcome to them. She pulled her curtain around as if to shut me out, and I said angrily, Gertrude, I would have given you some if you are that desperate, and if youd asked. She wasnt desperate. Her family brought her everything she needed. She said nothing.