swoopingpterodactyl

Today it is 45 years since man first landed on the moon.

I was at school then, third class at Truscott St, and Mrs Law was my teacher. She was a stern sort of lady, unlike the warm cheerfulness of my favourite teacher of the time, Miss Springett, who taught me in first and second class. I remember that her first name was Hazel, because Mum struck up a friendship with her, and we went to see her in a musical put on by the Willoughby Dramatic Society. I don’t remember which one it was. She was my teacher when Kay Henderson decided that we should kiss like they did in the movies, except we did it in the playground, under the stringy barks by the benches that we would eat play lunch on.

I think I was secretly excited to be doing this with Kay. I recall that she had longish, blondish hair, and she was quite pretty, and I think I had a bit of a crush on her. But little boys and little girls are often poles apart, and the ribbing I got from my mates overcame any rush of passion that I may have felt. Besides, I was only seven years old. But I did like it, deep down, and I mean deep down, and I think she may have had braces.

I never ran away with Kay, but I did with Megan Richards.

I walked one mile to and from school every day. Warren Nicholls, who was sort of my second or third best friend (Martin Cooper was my best and most inseparable, but he had a short cut through the neighbours over his back fence), and lived in the same street, Lionel Ave. We would walk together to school. Our perambulation took us, on one particular occasion, along Morsehead St, when generally we would walk along Edmondson St. I think the fact that our route had varied meant that something was in the wind.

Somewhere along Morsehead St, Warren and I decided that we would wag school. We talked about it, but couldn’t quite get the plan to gel. We needed a third. We came across Megan, who was in our class – and I think may have lived in Sturdee St, which ran into Morsehead – and put the hard word on her. Would she wag school with us. We bribed her with the exotic promise of catching her a lizard in the patch of bush next to the bus turnaround.

I knew Megan, in fact she is the only girl I’ve ever proposed to. We were in kindergarten, I was Prince Charming to her Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty, or some fairytale belle that needed rescuing. I had brown corduroy trousers on, tucked into little black gumboots, with some sort of cape thrown over my shoulders. I don’t remember what she wore, except that it was pale, or white – becoming of a five year old princess. At the end of all the action, and I doubt that there was much, I fell to one knee, looked longingly into her deep brown eyes and implored ‘will you marry me?’ ‘Yes I will’ was her rashly considered response, and our characters lived happily ever after in fairy tale land.

So there were three of us now, a tiny flock with a mission. We went down to the bus turnaround for the lizard, but Megan preferred to sit on a rock and let the warriors do the hunting. How we mighty dragon catchers toiled, lifting mighty logs, rocks and branches, but no reptiles dared show themselves. After a long time, which may have been ten minutes, we returned empty handed to the waiting princess, little faces ashen with remorse. Naturally, being a princess, she forgave us.

The mission, though not accomplished, was over for now. We decided that we would attempt it again later, as it was obviously much too early for lizards to be out and about, and so our little flock seemed to head in the only direction we we felt confident about. School.

We got close, but we were wagging, so we couldn’t get too close. We hid behind some bushes on the nature strip – oleanders I think – where we could see the school, but they couldn’t see us. We sat there, probably wondering what on earth we were going to do all day, the conversation turning into a series of …….. We decided to have play lunch, as we could hear that the kids at school were out having theirs. I ate my little slice of packet mix chocolate cake, and as I had been ill with tonsillitis recently, had a swig of my banana flavoured antibiotic. Warren and Megan ate their playlunches as well.

I remember that the sound of an approaching car car alerted us to our plight, three five or six year olds sitting on the verge just out of sight of the school. What could we do to diffuse a potentially awkward situation? The driver might inform the principal of our whereabouts! I have to put up my hand for coming up with the solution. Lie spread eagled on the grass and pretend to be dead. As if dead children scattered on nature strips in Sydney in the latter 1960’s was commonplace. It must have worked though, as the car went past and didn’t stop at the school.

We decided to have another go at catching Megan a lizard, and set off back down Morsehead St, quite chirpy to have something to do. It was this trip that led to our downfall. Heather Lodge, one of Mums best friends, lived in Morsehead St and saw us. She called out my name as we walked past her house, but we took off as fast as our little legs would take us, back down to the bush by the bus turnaround.

I don’t recall any luck this time either, but I do recall feeling that I’d let Megan down, what with the promise of a lizard in exchange for her company. She’d met her part of the bargain, but Warren and I had failed to keep our side of the deal. And the fact that we were lousy lizard hunters bruised the ego as well.

We headed back up Morsehead St again, somewhat deflated. Then a brown Falcon stationwagon pulled up next to us. It was Mum. Mrs Lodge had phoned to say that she’d seen us. The jig was up, the carnival was over. We were taken to school.

Mrs Foot, the headmistress, spoke to us sternly and in no uncertain terms. I don’t remember what was said, but Miss Springett told Mum that I looked as if I wondered what all the fuss was about.

And so, after 45 years, landing on the moon would appear to be about as useful as climbing Mt Everest. Cross it off the list of things that are there. Still, it was a mighty achievement, and it certainly captured the worlds imagination. It signalled a possibility that with mankind, anything is possible. In itself though, apart from a few more successes (and a memorable failure), it has not been something that humanity has rushed to build upon. Why people would want to go to Mars and live there escapes me. How would they get back, it’s not like Mars has a thriving space industry to assist them. And what are they going to eat?

Somehow, Mrs Law had contrived to get a television set into the classroom – these were days when audio-visual was a high tech concept – and our class huddled around the flickering black and white images that were beamed from the moon. I don’t really remember the moment of Armstrongs feet touching the moons surface (although dozens of replays over the ensuing years have that moment indelibly etched), but I do recall the feeling of excitement shared by everyone present. Of course, that may have had something to do with the previously unknown thrill of watching TV in class.

Something else I remember is that I wore a grey or brown bomber jacket that I had. Onto the upper right sleeve Mum had sewn a cloth replica badge of the moon missions insignia that was a commemorative giveaway (from I think, the Sun Herald Sunday newspaper), and from memory, it had the image of an eagles head. I don’t know what happened to that, I probably outgrew it (in fact, that would be obvious).

It’s funny where thinking about the moon will take you.

It’s been a while, quite a while in fact, since I wrote anything on this blog. In fact, I haven’t even looked at it. I found it difficult to keep writing about myself. But things are afoot, and no pun intended.

A quick catch-up, I had the plastic surgery, and the result has been mostly good. The main problem is that a hole formed over a plate in the tibia that was right below a line of stitches – apparently skin doesn’t like growing over metal, and it has yet to heal over. It is getting smaller, but you’d hope so after six months.

I was released from St George on the 18th of December, with a portable drip called a Baxter Pump delivering Vancomycin, as well as a few regrets. They were, of course, the fact that so many of the staff who had looked after me were not farewelled, and that my appreciation of the care that they had shown me was not conveyed.

I did return on the 23rd, much to the surprise of the staff, because the hole in my leg had just begun to open. I was being attended to by the TACT team (excellent people to a man and woman) from Shoalhaven District Hospital, who would come out and change the infusion, and dress the wound (I still had stitches). My friend, Dr ‘Greg’ was visiting with ‘Chantal’ (a nurse) and her parents, and the combination of the three of them (‘Greg’, ‘Chantal’ and ‘Andrew’ from TACT) decided to confer with the duty Orthopod at St George, Dr Siva, because the plate was clearly visible. And so I returned.

My doctor, Prof. Harris, decided that further surgery would have achieved little, the combination of the plate and the still active infection made stitching the sides of the hole together pointless, it would not have taken. So I was released on Christmas Eve, one night back, and sadly, being in another area of the ward, didn’t see any of my regular nurses.

Getting home was a bit of an issue – ‘Greg’ had driven me up (and stayed to see that I was being looked after, before catching the train home) – but my sister and Kerrie organised it so that Fiona drove me to Mittagong, and Kerrie picked me up there.

So life really took on its pattern, at home, mostly in bed, gradually getting better. When I say better, it has been an incremental fight against the infection – Golden Staph is no laughing matter – to the point where next Friday I go in for a bone graft, perhaps six or seven months after I might have had it, had I not got MRSA.

More in much less than six months, writers block is over, as is the modesty.

I wrote this on Thursday night (15th Nov.)on a word processing programme, as web connection was not working. I found that I can email the document to the blog, but that it doesn’t open automatically. So please just click on blank doc below, should you be so inclined. Blank.doc
Sent from my iPad

I had managed rolling on to my side at some stage of Tuesday night, and at 8am the next morning was fast asleep with my back to the door. ‘Mr Sinclair, are you awake?’ well, that woke me up, but then I had to struggle and disentangle Sputnik from the sheets that had got caught up around it. I find my external fixation clamps to be appropriately gender neutral. Eventually I managed to turn to see who was bidding me the top of the morning, it was Owen, one of the Plastics registrars.

Owen had come to tell me that the plastics team would be here tomorrow morning to have a look at my wound, which is currently about 2 inches in diameter, and a bit over an inch and a half deep. Bits of broken bone are visible, as are sections of plate, and most disturbing, the threaded length of a screw. I say that this is disturbing because when I first saw it, due to its grayish colour, I thought it was some invasive, flesh eating worm. This wound is, to my eye, truly revolting, and I have been at pains to point out to my medical carers that this is not actually my leg. My leg is lovely, look at the right one: the practical joke one on the left with the scaffolding attached is actually a mirror image of that.

Owen deals in reality, and although he wasn’t going to be swayed by any of my denial rubbish, he had come with further news. The teams inspection on Thursday was to be followed by the graft on Friday. Well that’s what I’d come to St George for, and that was the best news I’d had since being told I could go home five weeks ago. I felt really happy, because the graft is important in so many ways.

It is, for my case, completely necessary for any healing to take place. The bone has no chance of knitting as long as the area is devoid of a blood supply. Ten weeks after the accident, they are still a fairly loose collection of lumps and fragments, although mostly connected by plates. The graft means that perhaps they will start to join up with each other, to become a structural whole again. The graft also means that the wound will be covered, that the great void there will be filled, and that perhaps some semblance of original form will be returned.

Owens visit was worth waking up for.

Half an hour later, Mustafa, one of the orthopedic registrars popped in. He had, he said, bad news. The background for this is that whenever I’ve been to theatre for a wound debridement and wash, they have taken swabs of the site to keep an eye on who’s in residence. Mustafa was here to tell me that there was indeed a new tenant, called pseudomanos. Ah! progress had been there to be touched, but the line had been redrawn, and I felt quite deflated.

He assured me, that depending on the strain, that it would not necessarily interrupt Fridays plans. He seemed to think that a couple of days of an antibiotic different to the one I’m already on would do the job. I texted ‘Greg’, old friend and doctor, who assured me that pseudomanos was indeed a ‘pussy’ bacteria that would be mopped up in no time at all.

I have to say though, throughout this whole ordeal, ‘Greg’ has been exceedingly positive. I think he may be a little bit Pollyanna.

Since coming into hospital, I have lived the most amazingly regimented period of my adult life. Granted, that although my life as an adult will never be celebrated as a model of disciplinary rigor, held up for young players as a shining example of the way forward, there have been periods, and there are activities, in which my application has been (and is), second to none. Being here has allowed me , probably for the first time since school, to be part of a remarkabley strict routine that dominates my day, whether I’m comfortable with it or not.

Mealtimes, observations, medications, washing and staff shift changes mark the passing of the day. The room in which I currently lie gives little clue to the state of play outside. The window is fairly small and my view is of the building opposite, whose windows are much larger than my one. The walls are pinky-beige, a colour that can be nobody’s favourite, but for some reason, is used ‘in excelsius’ in recent buildings of public significance. At night time, the lights are on, and I can tell that it is not a building of wards, but the two floors I can see could be laboratories. I have never seen anyone in there, either sitting down or moving, but important things must go on in there, because the lights are on all night.

Looking out of my window in the daytime, the tinted windows make every day seem overcast, and the ones that really are overcast just seem even more overcast. I can’t see the sky from my bed, but if you get up closer to the window you can.

So life is now lived with virtually no intrusion by what I would think of being the real, physical world. I have not had any aspect of my life directly influenced by the position of the sun, but those who enact the rituals of my day are.

I can usually sleep as much as I like, but must be awake early on theatre days to wash, and let the nurses change the bed linen. If I’ve got a spare set clean, I’ll change into a pair of my highly modified underpants. Modified? Not at all easy to get a normal pair on when you’ve something the size of Sputnik attached to your left leg. How are they modified? Conceptually funnier without an explanation. Breakfast is not allowed on theatre days, and neither is lunch or dinner either, unless the an anaesthetic comes first.

I had a chat with one of my doctors about the fasting for at least six hours before an anaesthetic rule, and he told me that it was quite an old one. Before the current crop of anaesthetics, it was not unusual for the drugs and gases used to cause nausea, which could lead to vomiting, and inhalation of vomit could set up no end of problems for the proceeding operation, and potentially dire consequences for the patient afterwards. These days the hazards are much reduced, and the rule remains as much for a continuing protocol as a necessity.

Mind you though, when I was in Wollongong, the bloke in the bed next to me had suffered from an inhalation of regurgitation, and had burnt the upper reaches of his lungs with his own stomach acids (ooh, the stories I’ve heard). He’d badly gashed his foot, can’t remember which one, and needed some heavy duty repair. Just as the anaesthetist was putting the gas mask over his nose and mouth, and after the first whisps of gas had been inhaled, he suddenly felt the need to vomit, but before he could alert anyone, he passed out into a deep sleep, which was the plan, and vomitted, which was not the plan. Well, that was his story, but I believed him, and all the nurses said it was true. It kept him there for about ten days, instead of the two that the foot injury deserved.

I think I’ll close this now, I do run out of energy surprisingly suddenly. Last week I had none at all. I did write three pieces, but lost them all in a late night fog. I find that nighttime is the best time to write, it’s quiet, even in a hospital, and I feel I can really own the time.

Daytime writing is impossible, the routine of the day, the routine and noise of everyone’s day makes this such a difficult task to concentrate on. In the day , when I think about writing, the pieces are short, wittily arresting morsels of pith, but by night, if I’m actually up to writing, they turn into long winded meanders through some very dodgy sentences. Oh well, it’s fun anyway.

On the 6th of September, I had a fall, from a height of about 4 meters. I fell as I had been standing, and the impact of the fall was taken by my left leg. This resulted in a compound fracture of the distal tibia, and fracture of the fibula. I knew that all was not right when I noticed that my foot was misaligned by at least 90 degrees, and that there was a suspicious bulge poking under my sock. We should never see our own bones, especially when they are smashed and misplaced, but I looked anyway.

An ambulance took me to Shoalhaven Hospital, where I was ‘reduced’, that is, the bones were returned to their natural positions. As Shoalhaven does not offer orthopedic services, I was that evening transferred to Wollongong Hospital, which became my home for the next 6 weeks.

Friday morning was the first of my appointments in theatre, when the doctors put external fixation clamps on my leg. This held my leg at the correct length, and oriented my foot to my leg, (so I wouldn’t end up pigeon or penguin footed).

Nearly two weeks passed before the soft tissue trauma had subsided enough for the doctors to operate. This time, they were able to pin and screw the broken bones together, a process not made easier by the absence of relatively large areas of bone, which were pulverized by the fall. An incision was made on the outside of the leg, giving access to the broken fibula, and the hole on the inside of the leg, where the tibia had punched through, was extended to allow repair of that bone. Everything was stitched up nicely, and it looked that a fairly fast recovery was possible.

After five weeks, I was allowed to go home, the stitches had come out, but I was stil in my ex fix frame. Monday was clinic day at W’Gong, and as soon as my surgeon saw my wound, he readmitted me. The compound wound, the site where the bone had punched through the skin, had broken down, a hole was forming and the skin in the immediate area was necrosing. I would need to be transferred to St George Hospital in Sydney for a skin graft, as there are no plastic surgeons at Wollongong. The doctors took a swab of the wound sight.

The following Thursday, I was moved from the ward I was in to a single room, an isolation room. I had MRSA, Golden Staph.

I was moved to St George the next day, to another room by myself. Over the next eight days, I had four general anasthetics as my new team of doctors debrided, cleaned and washed. I have been on powerful intravenous antibiotics ever since I arrived here. This morning, the registrar who often fills me in on progress, told me that a sample of deep bone showed the presence of MRSA. I cannot have the graft until I am on top of the infection. I maybe here for some time.

The above is a précis of my time in hospital, some salient points that have got me here, but hardly the story. It’s not even all of the medical stuff, but it’s a start, for me anyway. I can’t see it as being a straight narrative, firstly it would be too boring that way, and I would leave far too much out in the way of detail, and people. So I’ll just tell stories as they arise, it’s less daunting that way, and structure does not become so paramount. Loose and shapeless, just like the leg.

Some things seem to stay with you. You may not plan for it to be like that, but the filing system of the mind can have drawers that, when bumped the right (or wrong) way, spill their contents all over the place. Sometimes the memories that arise are of family, growing up stuff, friends and notable events. The swooping pterodactyl (common noun here) is one of those things that, I think, fomented in an impressionable 10 or 11 year old mind as a result of a TV show called Creature Feature. Creature Feature (CF) was hosted by what I can only now describe as a Frank Thring impersonator, named Deadly Earnest.

Now, I seem to recall that CF was on fairly late at night, like 10pm or 11pm, although that would seem unlikely, as there was no way in the world that my parents would let me stay up that late, and that was only the starting time. Perhaps I had glimpsed the lugubrious Earnest once or twice, and have since decided that I tuned in all the time (love your work, Deadly, never miss a show!). If you haven’t heard of CF, it was, as you might anyway surmise, a scary movie show. Expect Vincent Price, Hammer horror flicks, B grade 50’s sci fi and the like.

My favorite films of that ilk, and at that age, were in fact Japanese Monster Films (proper noun). These were made (in the main) by Toho Studios, which seems like the most amazing place, considering that they were also responsible for producing the films of Akira Kurosawa. Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Sanjuro… and many others, 180 degrees away from my interest at the time (Kurosawa came later), the Toho Monsters.

Godzilla is easily the most famous, an icon in so much of western culture, virtually appropriated from his Japanese origin (I have always assumed Godzilla to be male, though it is said that the female is deadlier). His name has been borrowed and bent to suit our grisliest needs, strangely, the female ‘bridezilla’ and ‘mumzilla’ come to mind first.

Godzilla, as we all know, was mutant T Rex sort of fellow, bent on wreaking havoc in Tokyo whenever the fancy struck, and often ganging up with, or against, other mutant monsters. There was Mothra, who was a mutant giant moth (hmmm), King Ghidora, who was a mutant three headed winged dragon, and of course, Rodan, who was a mutant pterodactyl. With this creature, we have my eponymous mascot, my talisman waiting for release.

Rodan, in Japanese, is actually Radon, and this taps in to the reason that the Japanese made these monster films in the first place, and that was the Atomic Bomb.

I have never been to Japan, and I have never asked any of the handful of Japanese people I have known about their feelings for the bomb – does it haunt them, does it have a presence in their society, in their national psyche? Well, I’d say, yes, of course it would, and that the monster films were an outlet for the concerns and fears prevalent in Japanese society regarding the mutative effects of atomic energy. I would say that many had indeed witnessed mutations in newborn people as well as animals, and that with this in mind, movie monsters were not just based on apocrypha.

Getting back to Rodan, as I said before, in Japanese his name is Radon, a radioactive element, but the transpositioning of the vowels fooled we punters in the west, no doubt to avoid having us feel any responsibility. I was only 10 or 11.

Now, I don’t remember anything in the way of plots with these films, although of course they had them, no matter how slender. I do, however, remember the monsters. Ridiculous by the standards of today, they were perhaps a combination of clay and real reptiles, with a bit of battle fru-fru glued on for effect. Reality be damned, to my decade old mind, this stuff was as good as it got, and the thought of a giant flying dinosaur swooping down on me, with some evil ray beaming from its eyes, created an image that just pops up, from time to time. I do find it amusing, you know.

I seem to be prompted by the blog setup to explain what this blog is about. Well, today is Sunday 28/10/12, and last Thursday marked seven weeks since an accident that, apart from a four day sojourn at home after five weeks, has kept me in hospital. So the blog, to begin with, is about what happens to a Hugh as he deals with serious injury and it’s ramifications, life in hospital and the process of institutionalisation. I guess a lot of other stuff will wander into it (it better), as this place turns into either a clearing house, or a repository for all the stuff that goes on in the mind of a longer term patient, a caper that I’m new to.