Waiting for the Surgeon.
When playing indoor 5-a-side as you do, I happened to be most violently slammed into the back wall face first into the brick work by an absolute cunt of a fat bastard.

Injuries included:

Broken nose, including a gash where the bone had cut through.
Front tooth smashed leaving a nice jagged tombstone.
Bottom lip completely sliced through by the jagged tooth.
Sprained wrist from holding out my hands to cushion myself.
Gashed knee including a lovely groove in my patella.

Off to hospital then I reckon. It's all rather mundane work for a Tuesday evening and everyone has had a busy day. I had to wait quite a while to be seen but hey, there's worse off folks and I'm a grown man. The triage nurse was lovely and gave me 3 types of painkiller whilst I awaited the consultant on duty, you see all my injuries except the lip were pretty straightforward to deal with, wrist just needed a brace, knee still worked so no probs there, nose needed an out patient appointment later on, but the lip....

Doc says 'Hmm.... it's severed right through and will need a few stitches. I could do it right here but the trouble is if I don't get it absolutely right then it might heal wrongly and your lip will be in two unmatched halves.'

I said 'Oh...'

Doc says 'I'll have to page the plastic surgeon, he might be a while, you'll have to wait.'

He forgot to mention I would have to wait 4 hours! The pain meds were really quite excellent so I get wheeled round to an ante room and wait for the surgeon.

When he finally arrived he was quite curt, bordering on rude but acted very quickly and decisively, looked at my notes to check my pain meds, then looked at my lip. He must have decided that extra anaesthetic was unnecessary and without warning just opened the cut again with his fingers and for good measure rubbed them in there to start it bleeding again. Then he quickly and VERY skillfully sutured me up. The whole thing took 3 or 4 minutes and whilst painful wasn't too bad.

3 or 4 minutes of his time and my face doesn't look any different, you can't see the join. Could have been quite different.

I found out the reason he was a bit curt once he had treated me, he had just finished sewing a kids face back on after he was savaged by a dog, after that my problem was a doddle and he was a bit knackered and wanted to get off home. It was 2am.

That put things in perspective for me that's for sure. He was awesome. Big up the NHS.
( TheFinch is getting to grips with the complex plane on, Tue 16 Mar 2010, 13:52, Reply)