Lying flat on my back on an operating table, I stare up at the 1970s lights above me that are flickering dimly like the disco headlights of an old Lada. The lung machine next to me is being readied for action by a nurse with a fabulous chassis. Hiss, phweeee, hiss, phweeee. It wheezes a little as it builds up some puff, a slight smoker’s cough perhaps? We are in Sofia after all.
Naked apart from the green plastic operating sheet on my chest, I feel the effects of the anaesthetic kick in. Not sure what it is but in my stupor I imagine the ether to be some sort of rakiya gas. It is certainly 200 proof, whatever it may be.
My eyelids start to close when suddenly I feel a scrape on my groin. Another of the battle-weary nurses is wielding a throwaway razor over my nether regions. I raise my head up feebly to look. Her eyes catch mine as she starts to get cracking.
I am about to get a “Bulgarian”; in short, a full Brazilian, Balkan style.
It had all started off innocently enough during a fitness session in the gym with KK, my enthusiastic coach. An international rower, KK has a no time for wimps. He is a lifetime subscriber to the “what doesn’t kill you will just make you stronger” school of training. So, encouraged by him, I have tried to lift some huge, nay, Olympic, weights. And it all goes swimmingly until I try for the big one. Then I feel a sudden sharp pain in my groin and double up in agony. KK is appalled and orders an instant halt to proceedings. He eyes me fishily as I gasp in anguish. Maybe he has killed the expat after all...
The next morning the pain is still harsh so my girlfriend, the beautiful B, takes me to see a consultant in the hospital.
We are ushered into his room. She begins to brief him immediately. The medical guru quickly digests the information he needs and then abruptly waves at the B to stop with the explanations.
He pokes at my belly, low down. “Hurt here? yes? Good. Excellent! Hmmm... what about here? no? Bad. Hmmm. Better call in my brother.” His brother? Why?
“My brother big surgeon here. Expert. Genius!”
A whiz surgeon? Gulp. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
The brother arrives with a smile. Three minutes into the examination, though, the big grin vanishes. Mastermind declares an emergency.
“We must operate today. No, this morning. It is very urgent. We have no time to lose!”
The B looks worried. “Yes there is no doubt in my mind. Your appendix is about to explode Mr British man. Kerrrbooom! It is like a festering nuke power station. And if we don’t whip it out immediately, there is a good chance you could die. How you say it? Go six feet under?” His English is patchy but I sure get the picture.
The B looks even more worried now. She takes in our surroundings once more and stares at the surgeon in his white coat that is dotted with what seem to be faded bloodstains. Her expression says it all. Dicey.
Will my pasty white body survive such rigorous East European engineering? Will it end up like a Bulgarian road? Potholed all over?
She makes the sign of the Cross, eyes raised to heaven.
I am immediately rushed to a private room on the other side of the third floor of the tatty hospital. Of course I am a foreigner, only the best for me. But the best still means broken blinds, so private is actually quite public. A thought that hits home at once on the order of “strip”, as I look out at the hospital block close up and personal only 25 metres away out of the window. I take my clothes off in embarrassed, British silence, wondering how the blinds got broken. The last expat patient making a bid for freedom, perhaps?
I have no time to dwell on this for long, as the waiting nurse gruffly thrusts a hospital gown at me. Hurry please.
Hastily putting it on, I am bundled into a wheelchair with one wheel that sticks tight, making the contraption go around and around in circles as the poor nurse tries in vain to push it forward.
Muscle is called for. Loudly.
A male porter rushes to assist. But even he at 90 kilos has to fight hard with the wheelchair. I will the damn thing to co-operate. A “dead man wheeling”, I do not wish my last journey to be a farce.
He gets down into a heaving position and shoves with all his might. People stop to stare in a scrum. Will all this effort make him next for the surgeon’s knife, they wonder? Seconds pass before another porter grudgingly joins him. A jostle or two and at last we begin to move slowly out of my room and towards the lift.
Once in the lift, the porters gasp to regain their breath as the lift lumbers heavily up to the top floor where the operating theatres are.
Next thing I know, I am being interviewed by the anaesthetist. He is wearing a bandanna. I fear gang warfare among the doctors.
The questions come thick and fast. The B interprets, as this guy speaks no English.
“Been anywhere dodgey in the past few years?”
The B blinks. “Well yes; Afghanistan”.
“Ok, then, no need for my next question,” the anaesthetist says with a guffaw. It is whether I have ever taken any serious drugs before. He ticks a box on the form with a flick of his biro.
There is general laughter from him, the B and the surgeon who has joined us for one final look at the morning’s flesh for his scalpel.
All too soon, the questions are over and with difficulty I am trundled in the lame wheelchair five metres further down the corridor to the open door of the operating theatre.
The brakes are put on and I am left staring into the room as B and the surgeon have a last chance saloon chin-wag. Their voices are hushed. The atmosphere is morbid. GIs in Vietnam one and all.
I stare wide-eyed into mission control. Images of the Mir space station held together with string and sellotape flash into my head. There are many machines. All of them military grey, old and beeping mysteriously. I notice a screwdriver and a drill lying among the medical bric-a-brac. Last minute repairs or standard operating equipment? I pray to St George that it is the former and add as a desperate postscript a holy plea that there won’t be a power cut. Not now. Please.
The next day dawns early in hospital. It is spring and quite warm. I wake up and wonder where I am. Then I remember. Bulgaria. Sofia. Hospital.
I am still alive.
But so is the pain. It is excruciating.
Twenty seconds later the surgeon is in my room. Another man is with him. Older. Glasses and what suspiciously looks like a measuring tape in his hands.
They seem worried.
Is the older one in charge of coffins? Have they come to measure me up? Am I done in?
“There is a problem,” says the surgeon.
No kidding! Yes, there sure is a problem mate. I point to my stomach. “The pain is far worse today than yesterday,” I mutter.
He nods. “Yes we have crisis. Maybe no need to remove appendix after all.”
What? So no festering nook? Just a false alarm? Lucky I didn’t have minor chest pain from wind, then, isn’t it, I want to scream sarcastically. Because by now you’d probably have kitted me out with a new ticker from an old goat or some other farm animal from Yambol. My pain stops me from saying this out loud, though. In fact it is so awful it stops me from saying very much at all.
“Then perhaps a kidney stone?” is all I can suggest. I suffer from these every few years.
Hmm. That could be one option, he considers out loud.
By this time the old chap with him is poking at my fresh scar. Professionally. Does this a lot no doubt, I think.
“Best senior consultant we have here in the whole country,” says my friend the surgeon in reassurance.
Prodding over, the two confer.
“We are confused,” the surgeon announces at last. By his irritated tone it may be that I am to blame. My British body not falling into line with East European medicinal practices.
“So you don’t actually know exactly what is wrong with me then, Doctor?”
Of course not. He doesn’t say this. He doesn’t have to. His face does that quite nicely, thank you.
A few hours later and he’s back again.
“How’s the English patient?” he asks.
I look glum.
I rasp that the pain is still with me, as raw as ever.
“Do not worry my friend,” he says, eyebrows meeting in a frown. “It is easy to claim all hospital costs as business expense.”
He obviously believes my pain is financial.
I stare at him bewildered. Huh?
“Indeed. Put it down as spare part in company books. No problem. Anyhow, if any questions I have cousin in tax office. No problems. Not to worry,”
“Spare part?” I murmur.
“Of course. Appendix is spare part no?”
He nods and leaves, only to be instantly replaced by a nurse who comes to change my drip. She looks a bit wobbly on her pins and bumps against the bed once or twice as she fidgets with the drip pole. One vodka too many last night, I reckon.
As her shaky hands grapple with the needle, the B unexpectedly barges into the room with a clickety clack of designer heels. There is a huge smile on her face.
It is lovely to see her. She is a true sight for sore eyes. A ray of sunshine.
I beam back, but see that the B’s face has suddenly morphed into one of those looks she normally saves for the gory bits in a horror movie. Open mouthed she is pointing across the bed at something.
My head spins around.
Blood is gushing out of my forearm.
The nurse is panicking.
We have another emergency....
Welcome to Bulgarian healthcare I think to myself. No wonder the Japanese are coming.
