HOLIDAY IN HOSPITAL

Hokitika Guardian, 25 October 1930, Page 6

HOLIDAY IN HOSPITAL

A WORKER’S REST. WOMENS’ SER VICE. ts.s.) The man who reaches his early seventies without encountering any worse physical ill than n measles, whoopingcough, chicken-pox or mumps, a tendency towards rotundity, a certain langour about the knees, or such knocks and bruises as are inseparable from the wholesome outdoor life, has reason to rest and he thankful. He .must not assume, however, that the last test of his mettle has been applied or that no further physical ills may assail him. There still .may be many ordeals for him to endure for the good df his soul and the guidance of posterity. Let us, therefore, take my own case—-since there is no other I can analyse with candour and assured impunity from reproach—to show that the adventures of youth do not immune mature age from the ravages of time and disaster. By flood and field, by travel and adventure from mere childhood to three score years and ten I had faced practically every adventure save war, known to the off spring of the early pioneers without suffering any grave mishap. Alv undoing came with the first game df the Rome footballers in the capital city last season. How gladly we all hastened to greet our stalwart visitors and to speed them on their way. And what a glorious game they gave us with its ups and downs, its fortunes this way and that, its flowing and its ebbing, it was a game to be remembered, and L am remembering it as if it were an incident in history. And I have reason for doing so. Within a couple of hours of my leaving the football ground a very capable young doctor stood at my bedside explaining in the eheeriset manner possible that 1 had to undergo forthwith “a simple operation” in order that a worse obligation might not overtake me. He did not suggest any alternative to me, hut was prompt, cheery, as all doctors should be, and efficient. If this young man receives his deserts one of these days he will be Surgeon in Ordinary to His Excellency the Governor-General, or at anyrate first physician to the Mayor of the Capital City.

THE PREPARATION. '

Then another magnician— a big burly fellow who took my hand and shook it as he might have done had he found a long lost friend, —appeared on the scene. He looked for all the- world as the harbinger of good news, his eyes glistening and his smile expanding, as if to charm away all the misgivings my plight had- suggested. My impulse was to apologise for having brought a busy man so. far from his consulting room at such an inopportune hour. But lie forstalled me, this man with the alert eyes, telling me of the pleasure he had in coming and of the arrangements he had made for my removal to a city hospital to which in due course I was conducted with a becoming measure of speed and a superfluity of comfort. 17 was the first -step in a worker’s wholesome and enjoyable holiday. A couple of days were sufficient to satisfy me that I would not be my own master again for two or three months,, and this proved to he the case. The discipline, however, was so obviously necessary and so . tactfully administered that any sane patient would accept it as inevitable and speedily regard it as helpful and beneficient. This, it is scarcely necessary to say, is ' the triumph, not of the doctors, who are engrossed in their profession before everything else; but of the Matron, who, suported by an efficient bevy o"f fully equipped attendants, directs the affairs of her establishment with a tact and a thoroughness it would be hard to find in any institution, of this kind oi- another, administered by mere man. Practically the whole of mv first month in hospital was occupied in adapting my somewhat robust frame to the needs of an impending operation. Towards the close of this period—every day of which I enjoyed more or less—--1 was introduced to the Operating Theatre, where my kindly doctor, and bis assistants, demonstrated to me by means of the X-Rays (for their own information, of course,) the character of the experience that was awaiting me. Strangely enough—for in the hunting field I liked the other fellow to smash the top rail—the display occasioned me no apprehension concerning the approaching ordeal. THE ACHIEVEMENT. My first experience of surgical treatment—apart from an attempt made by a revered aunt some sixty odd years ago to charm away a crop of warts which had beset my hands—was a visit, at the request of my doctor, from a highly qualified specialist who did not give his name. His mission he explained briefly, was to “test my blood,” and so far as I may judge lie discharged it with a kindly tact and astounding rapidity. I shall not easily forget. It was the usual practice, lie told me as a preliminary, for his patients to turn their heads from the operation, but if 1 bad any curiosity about the matter T was perfectly free to watch the proceedings. I.ike the small boy at the pantomime, 1 wanted to get as much as I could for my money, and to-day 1 am in a position to say testing blood is neither an alarming nor a painful proceeding. As for the operation itself, a day or two later, it was a full dress assembly in which I alone was excluded from its tinsel and glamour. It is due, however, to the other participants in the ceremony, of whom thete were quite a number, clad from head to foot in white linen, to say that their .sole concern seemed to be for my comfort

and safety. A distinguished practitioner, wnu.,: i suspect o>l' -having administered the anaesthetic long before 1 spread myself out on the table, engaged me in cheery converation for quite a time before the world left me and I was at rest. My awakening two or three hours later may have been less composing than my sleeping, but it was as far as 1 remember, entirely painless. Then, all unexpectedly, 1 was consigned to a live or six days fast, and found the ordeal, whatever its purpose may have been, wholly undisturbing. Shortly the austere doctor relented and on the sixth or the seventh day one of mv several good “sisters” brought me half a glass of warm milk and two meal biscuits of the dimensions of new halfcrowns. As the days passed the grace of the doctor expanded wider and wider until at the end of a week or two I was drivne to seek refuge from the abundance and delicacy of my fare. THEIR VOCATION.

It is when the doctor has finished as far as he may the mending of his crippled and broken patients that the worth of the Matron, the Sisters, the Nurses and the little lady who burnishes your room six times a day becomes apparent. The doctor then looks in just to see how his patient is doing, perhaps feeling the patient’s pulse with a busy thumb, and listening to a sister’s recital of progress, delay or retrogression. It is the Sister and the uur.se who are in constant demand for one purpose or another, and yet, during my experience, .extending over a long and tiresome period, never did I hear one hasty or thoughtless word from any member of the staff. . Frankly I cannot claim so .much forebearance for myself. Lying on your .back week in and week out with strange decorations in metal dotted about your frame is not conductive towards pauence or serenity; but when the Sister comes round to bathe you night and morning and tuck you up in bed for the night or day, as your mother did decades before, you at least must smile back the smile she includes in.her ministrations. It is the mother 'instinct that draws women into the nursing profession, and it is a strengthened mother instinct that keeps them there. Among my cheery, tireless, capable attendants 1 found a granddaughter of a fellow pioneer with my own father, a granddaughter of one of the earliest settlers in Ashburton ; the daughter of one o>i

New Zealand’s war heroes ; the school companion of one of my own nieces and, of course, in the Matron, who cheerfully turned her hand to the needs of any of her flock, a :iie of one of New Zealand’s foremost politicians. One would like to know that all hospitals in this country were as this one is in thoroughness, attention and sheer devotion. Maybe it is a matter o>f money that prevents many of the public hospitals reaching their own ideals of succouring the .sick and injured; but there is an atmosphere that can be created without a great deal of money and it should be even more the lot of the suffering poor than it is of the unfortunate rich. This 'clearly is an instance in which State.effort should not be lagging behind private enterprise in efforts to alleviate the suffering of stricken humanity.