Porphyria’s Dance

Audio Trk: Serene Timing - Kevin Kearney

Porphyria’s Dance?

How I Survived the ‘Medical Profession’ by Kevin Kearney

Part One - Mmmm Italian hospitals eh?

I had been in Italy for around 4 months; my life was going well……then one day I woke up feeling really weird. I told my girlfriend I felt strange, she looked at me with tears in her eyes. "My god" she screamed, what have you done to your face. I raced to the bathroom to take a look in the mirror….I wish I hadn’t. I had huge red spots all over my face, neck and in my mouth. I was finding it hard to breath and I had this incredible pain down below. I lay down on the bed…..and that was the last thing I remember. I woke up in hospital with tubes stuck down my throat and a drip in my arm. I was told I had had some kind of attack and that they didn’t know what caused it, but I seemed ok after two days in the hospital, so I was quietly dis-charged….undiagnosed…..covered in red spots, and in a lot of pain.

A few weeks went by but it only got worse. Things got so bad another appointment was made for me to see a specialist in the local hospital here in Varese, it’s about 25 mins from our Village. Maria and I turned up at the hospital on time as she assured me there would be the obligatory cue and bureaucracy to endure. She was right, and a cue there was, a huge cue. I thought to myself ‘how sick am I?’ and can I wait another week? Maria was having none of it. We sat, unknown to ourselves in the day room for patients, it was opposite the reception and no one else was in there so why not. Anyway, Maria has shot off for a pee and two seconds after she had disappeared my name was painfully pronounced over the PA system by a rather sweet looking receptionist. I was a little unnerved as Maria my translator, was missing in the Toilet. I jumped up and said in my best Italian "Sonno Io" or that’s me. Looking around for Maria and following a nurse along a long hallway where I was shown an office door, I knocked and went inside. I was greeted by two young doctresses dressed in green surgeon’s suits who thought I was a local and started babbling on to me in Italian. After they had noticed the lack of conversation coming from my side of the table and after studying the name on my medical folder, I smiled and politely said, Scusa, Ma Sonno inglese, capito ma un poco Italiano. They both smiled and One answered "Oh’ so you are English" we all giggled after establishing the obvious as far as me and my very English name were concerned. Ill Dottori will arriva inna shorta time, ok? I was told.

At that moment, the door flew open! The two Doctorina’s didn’t bat an eyelid but to me it sounded like the ‘The Ole Bill’ on a drugs bust. A Man with lightning white hair, wearing telescope glasses and dressed in a white doctor’s uniform came staggering in, his two arms stretched out in front of him like he had been gassed with CS gas. I thought ‘What the hell is going on here, and who the hell is the Blind Albino staggering around like he’s been shot. The two young doctors helped him to his chair, which happened to be opposite mine….the chair I though a Doctor would be occupying. My folder was shoved in front of the blind albino who pulled a magnifying glass the size of a dinner plate from out of his top draw. At this point I just sat there in absolute astonishment, not daring to move as the Martians might discover me and operate immediately, removing my spine. His name is Professor Dr Rappazzini, and he is a blind Albino………and my new doctor, things are looking up I thought. He sat there squint eyed looking at the results of previous tests and doctors notes etc, he read every word of every page, didn’t miss one, it must of taken him fifteen minutes at least. During this time I was being examined by the two ‘Green Clad Babes’, which was quite nice. After everyone had established what they were doing and where they were sitting the doctor looked up me and said "Why are you here?" I laughed and sarcastically replied "An Oil Change actually, I meant, Is it not written down there in the notes?” He wasn’t impressed with my wit, so I said that my GP, one Dr Pini, had diagnosed me as having Porphyria. "Porphyria”!! He shouted back at me. No, I don’t think so; It is a rare disease but not Porphyria". I was glad to hear that, I didn’t want that shitty disease in my life or any other. He didn’t speak good English at all so one of the ‘Trainee Brian Sturgeons’ translated for him." I want you to come into hospital for 2 or 3 days, just for some tests and to clarify exactly what you have, as it’s not very clear is it?" he said. I really didn’t know what to think, an Italian Hospital was the last place I wanted to be, or just hospital in general.

BANG!! Maria burst into the room like a mother who had lost her child in a Shopping Mall, panic stricken all over her face and sweat dripping from her brow. She screamed in perfect English "Wair de fukka ju-go". After realizing what was happening and in whose presence I was, she embarrassingly excused herself and closed the door behind her. The doctor, who couldn’t see anything anyway, looked up towards the door, he probably saw a blurred image of a huge black fly holding a handbag, due to Maria’s size and hair color. He said in Italian, “please come in and sit down” Maria was not happy about being left outside where she had no control over the situation. To be honest, I should have gone and got her but the thought of two birds shoving their hands down me kegs on an exploratory mission was slightly more appealing. Maria had walked in when the term of my stay was being discussed and in tears said, "It won’t be more than 2 or 3 days doctor will it?" No, no, no, he laughingly said, absolutely not, it’s just a few tests………..NOW it starts to get funny.

I was told that I would receive a phone call within the next few days, Maria was surprised, It normally takes months to get into an Italian Hospital, if not longer she said. Yeah, but I’m special, I replied, I just didn’t know how special Ole’ Kev was going to be. Well, certainly the phone call arrived in time, in fact an hour after we arrived home that day, a bed was ready and waiting for me the following Monday morning. Poo dribbled, it was Friday. Maria packed more bags than I took with me to India for Six Months. I was totally embarrassed walking through the hospital so I made her carry them all, I was after all the sick one and it had been made official by my admittance into hospital. This was one I was going to milk, so I did, and I wandered through that place with ‘Eer Indoors’ following behind and cursing in the distance. Sick or not, it’s still a novelty being the only Brit in the whole Hospital (I checked). Plenty of curious Nurses etc were fussing around the reception area where I was being interviewed by a ‘real babe’ before being show my room etc. Of course I had the doctors and nurses in tears of laughter with splashes of English humor within minutes. They all seemed really nice and genuinely concerned about my well being, but interested mostly in my disease, as it was the first time this hospital had encountered Suspect Porphyria and it just happens to be the Medical University of Milan, wot a prize I was eh!

After the initial formalities I was taken to my room by two young nurses…..and a fuming Maria who had already decided that I had been miraculously healed and could come home that very moment. I just laughed my head off. They giggled in Italian to Maria enquiring what I was doing in Italy and what did I do. Maria very very begrudgingly told them I was a musician and screamed that ‘WE WERE GOING TO GET MARRIED’!! Well, that was it; they had a real English Musician in their hospital, with a rare genetic disease, forthwith to be known as ‘The English Patient’. The nurses left us Maria to unpack and of they went with smiles on their faces.

As soon as they were out the door Maria said "I don’t go home, I stay here all night, I know these bitches" and then proceeded to waffle on about how she would cut their throats if THEY touched me, or something like that, I wasn’t really listening, I was dreaming about the possibility of getting a blow job off a night nurse. I was lucky, my room was a double. It was actually a room for three beds but the middle one had been removed which gave the room a big feel to it. The other patient was having a operation so it was just me and Maria sitting there looking at each other. I felt sorrier for her than I did for myself. It did have a really sad side to it. Her man, her lover, the one she waited for, being taken away with some awful disease. Fed food by unknowns, abdominally touched by other women, possibly washed, OH!! It was becoming too much for our little Sardinian Princess, she left for home, depressed and in tears. That evening I went to bed early, the drama of the day had knocked me out. I was still alone in the room, the other patient had not yet returned from his operation. It was strange lying there in a strange room, a strange bed. It was very quiet, just the clanking sound of the ‘Bed Pan’ gently knocking against the bed frame, as I reeled one off, marking my territory.

I dozed off about 8:30 only to be awoken two hours later by the double doors to my room being crashed open, the lights turned on and a bed rolled in wired to all kinds of computers bleeping away. Obviously the guy had had his operation and was being returned in a rather clumsy fashion to say the least. After five minutes the room went quite, the nurses had all left, it was again dark. Although tired my curiosity got the better of me, I turned and rolled over to see my new room mate. Strangely, he was wide awake and was staring right at me, just lying there gurgling away, it was pretty eerie. The little red lights on the monitors flickered and their reflection could be seen in his pupils. I sat up and smiled at him. He was mid fifty’s, he looked quite small. "Ciao" I said. He moved his lips as to repeat the same. The guy looked sick; you could clearly see he was desperately hanging in there. He had a tube in every hole apart from his mouth, poor geezer. We both dozed off to the bleep of his heart monitor and the whirr of a computer.

The next morning about 4:30 I woke up to sound of my room mate crying. At first I pretended I was still asleep, I knew why he was crying, it was blatantly obvious. I took a deep breath, probably one of the deepest I’d ever taken and pushed back the covers of my bed and climbed out. He was facing the window with his back to me. I switched on the light above his bed and put my hand on his shoulder. He looked back up at me, his face full of tears and said "Sonno molto paoura” which means ‘I’m really afraid’. I gently whispered to him that I was English and that I understood little Italian. Through his tears he smiled back at me, I think he was just glad someone was there at that moment. I walked round to the other side of his bed and asked him, in my broken Italian, if he’d like something to drink. His firm nod suggested that the drink wasn’t required but the opening of the windows was, Fags were lit, windows were opened, new friends were made, and his name was Giuliano, a very brave man indeed. Our conversation obviously didn’t range much past my limit of Lama Latin, but I managed to find out where he came from, what he did for a living etc, you know, general banter. He told me he was diabetic, which obviously made any sickness worst, and that he was here having an infection removed from his spine. I told him I had no Idea whatsoever why I was there, apart from having a rash that gave me the permanent look of retreating paintballer, but nothing that really merited a stay in areal hospital, one with operating theatres’…… and pain, otherwise known as ‘Copious amounts of utter discomfort’. I know it wasn’t the best idea to give him a cigarette but I felt so sorry for him. He addiction to fags was obvious….and he obviously needed one. His tears slowly dried and I returned back to my Bed…this was all starting to become a pretty sad affair. Giulliano dropped off to sleep.

A couple of minutes later a Nurse came in and topped up two of the three bottles he had attached to him, smiled at me and left the room. Later that morning, or should I say, round about 8am, the breakfast arrived, a huge bowl of milky coffee and biscuits, not much of a brekkie but itwas served by a gorgeous Calabrian trainee Nurse, oh, and she had an oversized mate with her. Poor old matey next to me didn’t get a breakfast, well not one on a plate, his came through a tube, a most humiliating experience. Three nurses came in armed with all kinds of shit, towels, sponges & soap, washing bowls, flannels, bandages…………and needles & syringes, loads of em!. Then a trolley was wheeled in absolutely full of drugs, NOW were talking, lets have some anesthetics coz its all looking rather grim for a Monday morning, apart from the nurses flying round my room that is. The giggles and smiles were endless, nurses from every corner of the hospital had come to view ‘The English Patient’, bringing all kinds of excuses with them, like Bed Pans & Urine Bottles. I thought to myself yet again, poor c**t, he’s really in for it this morning. The nurses seemed to be having a dispute as to who was going to do what… then all of a sudden the trolleys split. The one with Towels, soaps and bandages went to giulianos’ side of the room…………..the one with bedpans, urine pots & syringes was heading my way, needles were being loaded as it rolled towards me. Being anal retentive regarding needles etc, I tried to muster up a kind of half smile as I realized the ‘Pain Trolley’ was all mine and that the sleeves being rolled up also belonged to me. I joked to the nurse that all this shit couldn’t be meant for me, I didn’t have enough blood to fill all those syringes. Flesh was revealed and needles were dug in. Gallons of my precious blood were being extracted whilst I lay there both arms stretched out, rendered helpless by the smile of the nurses. It is in hard trying to smile whilst gritting your teeth and attempting to hold polite conversation in Dog Italian.

I must of filled 20 tubes with blood. They then stuck this awful three way valve system deep into my vein, it looked like it had been used to extract spleens from pigs, then it was dragged down into the vein until it couldn’t go deeper….then I fainted. I was then hooked up to a bottle of Grappa substitute, understandably not the real thing, but the three way valve system gave my great ideas for later, when I get out. It was a fantastic system that consisted of a main tube/needle that was dug deep into the vein. The valve system stuck out the top. It had three small tubes projecting out with a switch on top which you could turn to open or close the tube, regulating the flow of drugs. There was another little ‘flip top lid thing’ which I later found out was for blood extraction, and on that occasion I opened it out of boredom and was immediately squirted in the face with a good glass of fresh Red Claret. I sat on my bed cross legged, absolutely soaked in blood. It of course had to be visiting time and the hallway was filling up with well wishers, chocolates and flowers. There now was a new addition to the hallway fashion and that was a blood soaked Englishman, squirting blood everywhere, being dragged along the floor towards the main bathroom. It must have been quite a sight to watch. The screaming was actually me laughing. The dragging, well, that was more of a stagger due to the huge Spliff I smoked previously in the bathroom and which had originally instigated the initial boredom. The two nurses holding me upright just added to the hallway drama/massacre. As I was rushed past all kinds of people waiting in the wings, I actually heard someone say, in Italian of course "Christ that guy looks pretty messed up! Look at all that blood". This didn’t leave a good impression on the doctors who were skating up and down the hallway in my blood, in fact everyone and everything was coated in Claret, it was hilarious.

The next couple of days consisted of me having tubes with little cameras’ on the end, stuck up my pooper and then down my throat, obviously after a good wipe with the surgeons hanky. Other tests involved three CAT scans, a huge Polo Mint shaped machine they sail you through and gives three dimensional full color x-rays. Most people shine like light bulbs for a few weeks after going through due to the amount of radio active shit they pump you full of, but apparently it’s all the latest in technology and you get the chance to be part of it, or it gets to become part of you. The space Gunk is supposed to be dispersed in you urine within Six hours, but I was still pissing neon blue slush for three days after. I wondered why the doctors were wearing Sunglasses when they visited me. Another little jolly test was a Biopsy, sounds painless enough as Local anesthetic was mentioned and solemnly promised upon my insistence. One little tiny spot was going to be removed from my back, for examination/ This was the only test of the day, now even I could handle that. Then came that day!

To be contuned………

Copyright 2006 Kevin Kearney