Thursday, June 29, 2006

Bedside manners

Well, Robbie, poor boy had his adenoids removed today. It wasn't exactly a pleasant experience for him, especially after he came round after the anaesthetic. I went with him into the operating theatre and stayed with him until he was under anaesthetic.

The anaesthetist dealing with him was a very nice older lady, with a great bedside manner. I've noticed that when doctors are about to perform some invasive procedure on you they start chatting to you about a totally unrelated subject to distract you. So as she was about to insert the IV needle into Robbie's arm she asked him about his school. Awkward pause as Robbie looks at me. "He doesn't go to school," I say, "he learns at home." "Oh, with you," says the anaesthetist, "That's quite rare here". Comments the theatre sister, "I read an interesting article about it in the paper recently."

Then the anaesthetist switched topics to soccer (always a safe one with young boys at the moment) and said to Robbie, "So are you looking forward to watching Germany play Argentina tomorrow night?"

3 comments:

Lady Liberty said...

Did you ask her what she read or do you just stay away from the subject all together?

Rina said...

No I didn't ask her. There wasn't really time to get into a discussion and I just assumed it was one of the articles that had appeared in a local paper about our friends in Bremen.

Rowena had her op today and there was none of this kind of talk, as she was given a calming medicine before she went in so she was totally out of it. I can't believe how much quicker she recovered from the anaesthetic. Dh reckons that the older you are the harder it is.

Lady Liberty said...

Yes, it does become harder with age.