Daycase Diary (Part Two)

While waiting for the doors to the Operating Theatre to open, I seized the chance to lift up another prayer to God, a prayer He must've heard a hundred times from me that day alone: Lord, give me a Filipino nurse, please please please. Not that I didn't trust the Brits, but I know for certain that Pinoy nurses are world-class, in care, in hygiene, in going the extra mile for their patients. I should know, my own cousins are nurses here in the UK. And since it was my first operation here, I wanted a friendly face, a kababayan, in the room, making sure no one dissed me or got unprofessional while I was under.

The Operating Theatre doors opened and lo and behold! A Pinay nurse, all smiles in her neat scrubs. The other nurse left me and the Pinay nurse plopped down on the waiting couch beside me. "Pilipina ka?" she asked, and I said yes, with obvious relief. Her name was Len, she said, but the slippers on her feet bore an embroidered "Lyn." Len or Lyn? Ahh, Visayan, like my husband.

Len immediately chatted me up and told me not to worry, as there were two other Pinoy nurses in the Operating Theatre alone! There was Toto in Recovery, and another male nurse (whom I will not name, for reasons you will understand in a bit) in the OR itself. Wonderful! I asked for one and God gave me three! What a God of abundance and provision!

Anyway, Len assured me that since I was a fellow Pinay, and she knows how conservative we Pinays are, she and the other male nurse will make sure that NO GUYS WILL BE ALLOWED in the OR while I was asleep. Well, except for my GYN-surgeon and anaesthesiologist, of course. This came as a relief to me, as the surgery was of a highly intimate nature, and maintaining my dignity and privacy was, of course, a valid concern.

Len called the male nurse into the waiting room, and after he assured me that he will personally ensure that only female staff will be able to enter the OR during my procedure, something very funny happened: He offered me Filipino products. If he hadn't looked so serious, I might've thought it was all a joke. There I was, facing surgery in a UK hospital, wearing hospital slippers and a gown that was open down the back, being offered tocino and longanisa deliveries by a Pinoy nurse! How very Pinoy! Turns out that the male nurse's wife is unemployed and this was how they were able to make ends meet, with the high cost of living in England. So I said, yes, sure, just give me your number and we'll ring you when we need Pinoy products.

Len ushered me into the Operating Theatre and I walked towards the table. All the medical staff were smiling, eager to put me at ease, and very professional. They hooked me up to the monitors, and Len gave me an encouraging smile before she got to work in the background. Another nurse put a BP monitor on my finger, while an intern tried to put an IV drip on my left hand. “Good luck with that,” I joked as the anaesthesiologist came in to see how the vein-search was going. I have very fine veins, I said, which I inherited from my maternal grandmother (Tito Rogel’s mom), and which often collapse when needles are being inserted. “Send this one home!” the anaesthesiologist jokingly barked out. He was hoary and Asian (which is how Indians or Pakistanis are called here; Chinese, Pinoys, Thais, etc are not called Asians but Orientals) and looked like he did this a million times a day. I felt safe, and I thanked God once again.

They DID manage to get an IV in without too much poking, and with a smile, the anaesthesiologist injected the sleeping drug into my IV, saying “Now you sleep…” My last memory was of the nice British nurse smiling down at me, then off I went to lala-land.

I woke up ahead of schedule in the Recovery Room, and as expected, there was Toto, the third Pinoy nurse, taking care of me. He said to relax and that the procedure went well, and that I needed to stay an hour more in Recovery before he could wheel me back up to the GYN ward where O and E were waiting. As I groggily became aware of things, the male nurse from OR came and gave me a slip of paper, on which was his wife’s mobile number. I took it and smiled at him. Turns out that Toto knows some of the Pinoys in my RC parish, and we talked about our mutual acquaintances as I steadily became more alert.

Toto personally wheeled me up to my room, not leaving me to the brash, impersonal, white male attendant who was usually tasked to do this. My reunion with O and E was happy, and after I drank, ate, rested and gone to the loo, I was able to dress in my street clothes and was discharged without any problems.

All of the treatment I received that day was absolutely free on the NHS (National Health Service), which was great, since at least some of the exorbitant taxes we pay to the UK government trickles down to us in a useful manner. Unlike back home where, I’m sad to admit, we paid taxes but rarely got anything concrete or substantial back in return.

I thank God for O, for his support and love and prayers, for how he took care of E while I was indisposed that day, and how he encouraged me to have faith in God’s healing power. I guess I’m tougher, too, than I thought I am, because I walked out of that hospital on my own two feet and was strong enough to ride a bus instead of a taxi. O was insisting on calling a cab because he didn’t want me to walk home from the bus stop, so we struck a deal: We would ride a bus to town (half of the way home), and catch a taxi from the town centre so I needn’t walk up our long road. Once home, I rang up my friend and fellow Pinay schoolmum who was watching over B after school that day, and after she brought B home, and I’d given B a nice, long hug, I fell soundly asleep in my own bed.

Next day, as I was still shaking off the effects of the anaesthesia, she brought B home from school as well. Praise the Lord for generous friends like her! And praise the Lord for making mums stronger than they think they are, because once the anaesthesia was flushed out of my system the following day, I was back to my old routine once more, school run and all. I’ll say it again: Praise the Lord!