What Does the Doctor think this month - September

Last month's article, written at 3am from a hospital bed described a hip replacement which had gone horribly wrong and followed by two disclocations. I was confined to bed awaiting a new hip. Eventually, the new hip was fitted and two burly orthopaedic surgeons did their best to make it dislocate. This was encouraging but they did mention that, with my long and powerful legs, I might be able to dislocate it all on my own (11% chance, apparently). This operation, the fourth altogether, had invelved a great deal of tissue damage and they were at length to warn me how dreadful I would feel for weeks. They were correct. A couple of weeks of rigors (uncontrollable shivering) and drenching sweats confirmed that the body was trying to mend itself and, gradually, all that settled down, leaving me totally exhausted. Now, about a month later, I am still on two crutches, hands trembling and a memory which is absolutely dire. Yesterday, Matron was occupied for a time and I fancied some cereal so I went downstairs (part of the physiotherapy programme) and took my bowl back upstairs. No spoon! Off I went, downstairs and arrived back in the bedroom brandishing a large pair of scissors instead of the spoon. Another trip downstairs and I got back to the bedroom, spoon in hand but too nauseous to eat my cereal. My concentration is returning very gradually, so this article will appear. Enough of my problems – even I am fed up with them and you must be bored rigid by now. We could do a joke about spoons which is a little risque so you could put any lack of judgement on my part down to the drugs! A man and his wife were in a fancy restaurant. While ordering, they noticed that the waiter had a clean spoon in his shirt pocket, and after looking around, they observed the other waiters and busboys each had a similar spoon. So the husband says, "what's with the spoon?" The waiter said,"well, we had this company come in and evaluate our time management and they found that people drop their spoon 74.8% more often than any other utensil. So if we carry one with us, we can reduce the trips back to the kitchen by 3 hours per shift. The husband was impressed. Sure enough, he dropped his spoon during dinner and the waiter replaced it with his, stating, "I'll just get another when I go to the kitchen for something else". While ordering dessert, the husband noted that the waiter had a very thin string hanging from the fly of his pants, as did the other waiters, so the husband asks, "hey, there's a string on your pants!" The waiter tells him, "Not all my customers are as observant as you... the same company found that we can reduce the amount of time spent in the bathroom by 2 hours each shift if we tie a string around the end of you-know-what, and when we have to go we just unzip and pull it out with the string completely eliminating the need to wash up and saving time. The husband was impressed, but asked, "it's a good idea... but how do you get it back in your pants?".The waiter leaned close and whispered, "Well I don't know about the rest of them, but personally I use the spoon." Jack strode into ‘John’s Stable’ looking to buy a horse. “Listen here” said John, “I’ve got just the horse your looking for, the only thing is, he was trained by an interesting fellow. He doesn’t go and stop the usual way. The way to get him to stop is to scream heyhey. The way to get him to go is to scream Thank God. Jim nodded his head, “fine with me, can I take him for a test run?” "Sure, have fun!" Jim went on a gallop and was having the time of his life. "This horse sure can run” he thought to himself. He was speeding down the dirt road when he suddenly saw a cliff up ahead. “STOP!” screamed Jim, but the horse kept on going. No matter how much he tried he could not remember the words to get it to stop. “Yoyo” screamed Jim but the horse just kept on speeding ahead. It was 5 feet from the cliff when Jim suddenly remembered. “HEYHEY!” Jim screamed. The horse skidded to a halt just 1 inch from the cliff. Jim could not believe his good fortune, he looked up to the sky, raise his hands in the air, breathed a deep sigh of relief and said with conviction “Phew, thank God.” Best wishes to you all Ian Nisbet