Читать книгу A Test of Patients - Martin Atkinson - Страница 12

The good old days

Back in the day when I first set out into practice on my own, I moved into the somewhat ramshackle old branch surgery that I’d bought from the previous practice. This basically consisted of two wooden outbuildings in the garden of a detached house, sheds you might call them if you were being unkind, although I would prefer to call them compact clinical units! It nevertheless quickly became a busy little one man practice. I was making a tidy profit that would soon be enough to pay for a purpose-built clinic to be extended onto the back of the surgery house, which was, at the time, also my family accommodation.

Nonetheless, in these days of plush practice premises, it is quite surprising to think what we could achieve with pretty basic facilities back then. We had to depend on good clinical skills rather than relying on several thousand pounds worth of apparently indispensable high-tech equipment to back it up and not being able to make a diagnosis without it (sorry if it sounds like the “in my day” soliloquy from a grumpy old man).

Needless to say, the health and safety considerations of my predecessors were not what they are now and, although they weren’t exactly sending little boys up chimneys any longer, matters like the storage of cadavers and disposal of clinical waste were not as paramount in their thought processes as they are in ours today. I inherited the infrastructure of the previous practice and set about changing procedures as quickly as was practical, but this took a little time.

Whereas my surgery has long since had a mortuary room with a large chest freezer, the bodies of deceased animals were then deposited in what really amounted to a glorified external coal bunker with no chilling facility. This was pretty standard procedure back then and was probably fair enough in the winter (we had real winters in those days!), but you can imagine what the smell of putrefying flesh was like after a week in the summer.

This was mitigated to some extent by the fact that the pet crematorium would collect rather more frequently in those days and didn’t charge quite so much for the privilege (more maudlin after the past). Nonetheless, this was unacceptable both to me and to my clients, who expected more care for their beloved pets once they had come to the end of their lives and was amongst the first of the facilities to be upgraded.

There was an arrangement for collecting and disposing of sharps and heavily contaminated materials safely, but X-ray chemicals went down the drain and lightly soiled items of clinical waste basically went out with the household rubbish into land fill, although the local council did charge for the extra bulk and classified it as business waste.

However, from time to time it seemed the best way to dispose of large quantities of rubbish was to light a bonfire in the surgery garden and burn it and, having performed a spring cleaning exercise shortly after taking up occupation of my premises, that is exactly what I did.

A pile of rubbish was duly accumulated into a pyre in the surgery garden, but first attempts at ignition in a steady drizzle were unsuccessful. Rather foolishly, I decided to use an accelerant on what appeared to be a dead fire (this is the ‘don’t try this at home’ bit), namely some petrol. This resulted in a significant flashback with me temporarily thinking I’d set alight to myself but, after realising I wasn’t feeling any pain and that the smell of burning protein was only my lightly singed eyebrows, I was relieved that it was just the petrol on my gloves and boots and the spout of the petrol can that had ignited.

A suitable conflagration was soon under way. I stood by the fire for some time, gradually adding more tinder until I reckoned it wasn’t going to get out of control, before I finally could not resist the need to empty my bursting bladder any longer. I slipped off my muddy boots and gloves, leaving them next to the bonfire and retreated to the house.

Then, as I stood in the bathroom responding to the call of nature, I heard a tremendous explosion. Thinking there must have been a road accident or even a bomb outside (these were the days of IRA rather than Islamic terrorist activity in the UK, but apart from the perpetrator’s cause, little else changes!), I looked out of the window and could see a shower of burning fragments descending from the heavens – an exploding aeroplane perhaps? After all, we were near to Heathrow airport.

I hurried back outside to find that where there had once been the bonfire, there was now just a blackened shallow hole and the appearance of a nurse who, having not seen me go indoors, was looking anxiously at my smouldering gloves and smoking boots in the spot where she had last seen me tending the fire. It was the perfect Tom and Jerry cartoon or Pythonesque comedy scene, which would have been complete if I had reappeared with a blackened face and tattered, scorched clothing. All around, for as far as I could see, there were small puffs of smoke emanating from other gardens and some burning debris, which had melted one or two small holes in a sheet of corrugated plastic that covered a gap between the two surgery buildings and was now also threatening to take a hold on the surgery’s wooden roof.

I’d at least had the sense (perhaps the only bit of sense in the whole situation) to connect a hosepipe in case the bonfire had got out of control and this was directed onto the roof to douse the burgeoning flames. Fortunately, the debris which had been spread far and wide by the explosion had clearly not landed on anything else inflammable and was quickly being extinguished by the now steadily falling rain, thus limiting the collateral damage. A second lucky escape indeed. But what could have caused such an explosion? Surely not the petrol I’d used, as that had gone off with a flash when the bonfire first ignited.

I concluded that other than the unlikely scenario of a meteorite landing at that precise location, the only possible explanation was that there must have been an unexhausted aerosol can amongst the rubbish going onto the fire. This was never proven as the debris had been scattered over such a large area. What would have happened if I hadn’t decided to wander off at that moment to answer the call of nature doesn’t bear thinking about, but it only served to enhance the sense of immortality that I had as a young man and that someone was looking after me for a purpose.

I do, however, now always check rubbish before I set light to a bonfire (not of course, I hasten to add, that I would use this means of disposal of surgery waste any longer) and I have learnt the lesson not to use an accelerant on recalcitrant flames – most of the time!