Two weeks ago I used a bedpan for the first time EVER. Even when I had my appendix removed I didn't get to use one - the nurse brought me a commode and I had a meltdown when a boy in the next cubicle peeked through the curtains at me. I was naked (why, I don't know.) I was 9 - they don't care about segregating you by gender when you're little. This time I was in my own suite at the private hospital. I got to choose food from a menu and my sheets were changed on a daily basis, whether they needed it or not.
I wake up from my op at about 1830. I'm cold, so cold. The nurses are talking to me and they blast a hairdryer down my front which is the best feeling I have ever had IN THE WORLD. I go to sleep. I wake up again in my bed. The hairdryer has been turned off and two white pads pummel my calves. They are attached to the bottom of the bed. I'm attached to the other end by oxygen to my right and fluid to my left. It's like a pleasant version of Misery.
Come midnight I need a wee. Like, really need a wee. I can't move - even lifting my hand to have my blood pressure checked is such hard work the nurse has to do it for me - so she suggests a bedpan. The thought makes me go cold, remembering episodes of Casualty where the patient has a cold stainless steel pot slipped under their hips. But this one is cardboard and environmentally friendly. She pulls back the sheets and expresses surprise that I am still in my "knick knacks". Not for long! With one deft tug she sees more of me than anyone has in seven years. The bedpan is slipped in place and I am left alone relaxing with my thoughts.
I
literally
can't
go.
I am stranded on my bed in a half-bridge position like a desperate whale. When I was very little I had bed-wetting problems. And when I was not quite so little, if I'm honest. (I mean 10-11 not last year.) The horror of that I'm-on-the-loo dream and waking up to find out you're really, really not has never left me. Now I'm entitled to pee in the bed, nay encouraged, and I can't. My good manners and upbringing refuse to give me the release I need.
The nurse, Rosa, comes in. She is foreign - that is all I can figure out in my morphined state - with very tight shiny brown curls and a glossy pink mouth like an exotic flower. She mumbles something kind at me. I mumble something back. She goes away. Twenty minutes later she comes back. She mumbles something again and I bleat my distress at her. "It will come, it will come," she says phlegmatically, as if predicting the arrival of the second Messiah.
An hour later, she comes back in, walks into the bathroom and runs the tap. That does the trick. Boy, the trick is done. "Heavens, you can pee," she says, visibly impressed, as she staggers under the weight of my bladder. Please God, I pray, don't let her bump into the fit anaesthetist on her way out - and please God don't let her TRIP.
