Richy's Random Ramblings

It’s time again for my treatment in the Friday Group Therapy clinic. Due to personal reasons, Brian (who sets the questions for FGT) was unable to post last weeks questions on time, but he posted them on Monday – but by then I was too busy to check the site 🙁 So, technically a week late (so expect another Friday Group Therapy entry soon), is FGT: Hospitals and Testing.

1. Have you ever had a medical procedure performed that you were too embarrassed to discuss at first?
   Nope. I came close to having one that might have embarrassed the hospital though. I was having my ingrowing toenail (yuck!) removed when I was in my early teens and they put me in the children’s ward. I was the only one there over the age of around 3. The nurse came around and started putting patches on the back of everybody’s hands – I enquired what this was for and she explained that it was to numb the hand and arm for the general anaesthetic which we would have.

   I thought that it was mighty odd to have a general for something as “minor” as a toenail removal and I checked with my Dad who agreed with me. We then glanced round the ward, and there seemed to be an extraordinary number of “Jewish looking” families. Now, think for a moment what little Jewish boys normally have done to them which will cause quite a lot of pain and hence necessitate a general anaesthetic?

   Yep – I went in to have a toe nail removed and the hospital was planning on removing some skin from another extremity. I pointed, with some urgency, this out to the nurse who didn’t believe me and said she’d check with the Doctor. Around 10 minutes later she came back and said, yep, there had been a slight mistake as she had been informed everyone on the ward was in for a circumcision(!). She removed the numbing thing from the back of my hand (it took around 20 minutes for me to get full feeling back) and I then had my toe nail (and nothing else) removed.