How Stitched Is Your Kipper?...

...Paul Merton prefers, one gathers, 'done up' to 'stitched up like a kipper' to describe being, as it were, shafted. Either way it is a compelling image, though its origins are pretty vague and unresolved it seems.

Its apposite usage can range from the fairly mild protest - out-thought by a cunning opponent in a hard fought game of bar-billiards - to the pretty sharp. Though not any comfort, perhaps, to the victims of the Bernard Madoff scam, they might very well remark in truth that their fate is much like that of the esteemed smokie in question - quite hung up, or out, to dry.

My lament today, however, is precisely the opposite. "Ten days, Rector," said Head Nurse I/C post-operative instructions, "and then go and have the stitches out." (H was there at the time and is able to confirm the accuracy of that reported statement. Signed affidavits available on request.)

Seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, not least having the weight of precedence that being the very same prescribed interval for stitch-removal with the first surgery. Being a fairly steep affair this second pass of the scalpel, steri-strips, gauze, bandaging et al., had been applied on top of the wound completely masking it from view. (Hence the earlier reported remark of same Head Nurse that it would be sense of smell not sight the guide to any infection!)

So down we pop this very morning, to Dr. P's den, for the appointed day and hour of stitch removing with his Head Nurse (another creature altogether from the aforementioned of the species). If one were to say that this was something to which one had not been looking forward with any joy in the heart, but rather a deeply nauseous churning in soul and belly both; that just indeed said, you might riposte 'What a wimp!' and I'd not attempt to disagree.

Were I, though, to be charged with mounting any self-defence, it would run along the lines of compelling childhood traumas re-visited. Were you to press me for details, then one incident long-ago and never yet forgotten would be called to give witness. Thus the evidence-in-chief:

Lying in a hospital bed, a lad some ten years of age and two days post-operative, two jolly and chatty nurses are come to change the linen. (Sort of thing that happened in those distant days. Hardly likely to occur now of course.)

Being chatty, their minds were not entirely on the job in hand - and quite as one would now find it still, one hardly need mention - so in flicking back the bedding without a care in the world, what did they inadvertently accomplish other than to catch one of my stitches with the top-sheet thence to whip out said stitch, re-opening the wound causing consternation and pain all round?

The pain of course was mine alone, though the consternation more generally applying. Attending physician being summonsed to attend, a new stitch was on the instant threaded in with no 'by your leave' requested or flesh-numbing injection offered.

Now tell me that such a dire experience leaves no indelible impression on a growing boy, and I will advise you not to take up any career requiring any empathetic understanding of human nature or humane psychology. Allowing, though, that you are fit for more than bottle-washing or hole-digging for a living, you'll fully appreciate that from then on nurses, stitches and I have not enjoyed cosy co-existence. Taken separately I can tolerate all of the constituent elements - even my own self most of the time - but put the three in a room together, as it were indeed, then my stomach turns and my heart races.

So there we all were, this very morning, my whole self a-turning and a-racing waiting for esteemed Head Nurse to get stuck in. Mini-scalpels were made ready, hands - hers not mine - duly scrubbed and gloved, antiseptic swabs to gloved hand, blood-catching towelling as needed on stand-by, and so forth. And so off we go.

Only to report that when it came to it - when all bandaging, gauze and other dressings were finally removed, all bloodied steri-strips peeled away - behold there were no stitches waiting to be removed at all! Not one solitary one on view or offer! Whatever frantic sewing had occurred on the day [see earlier] had been entirely subcutaneous, with just the multiple layers of said steri-strips holding the surface wound together.

Now I am not one for randomly or unnecessarily critiquing decisions taken by surgeons. If no stitches were decided to be needed, then so be it. But when one is then given duff information about the management of the wound, with phony protocols provided for removal of phantom stitching, then I begin to baulk and to protest.

Setting aside any consideration of the internal battles one has had to fight in order to gear oneself up for an illusory nurse/stitch combo ordeal, I have also allowed myself to be perhaps somewhat more mobile than I ought these past ten days, confident that some stout thread was holding me in place. Well of course it hasn't and the upshot is that the wound has not properly closed, more steri-stripping has had to be applied with stern instructions given for another week of sofa rest and no - repeat no - showering.

Three weeks then it is to be with only a strip-wash between me and perfect, parish pariah status. One does what one can not to come over higher than a rancid kipper, resorting not merely to the finest deodorants known to man (Paul Gaultier is good) and eaus-de-Cologne (Chanel for me mostly), but also whole-body sprays of which there is not one decent brand I know of fit for a gentleman.

All very well in their respective ways, but not totally efficacious one can perfectly tell. H is beginning to take wider and wider sweeps around self by day, and even the cat is looking some askance before shifting quite to the further end of the bed at night. Phone calls are being received informing one that one's presence is not strictly necessary at parish council meetings, and if post and milk personnel are not actually depositing their respective items at the end of the drive before fleeing, one strongly senses that they wish they could

I am quite, then, the wholly unstitched and utterly undone, unhappy kipper. Never has been a favourite breakfast dish of mine. Don't now much care if I never again look one in the eye. Only room enough in this Rectory for the one of us is my final, unswerving view. Here I stand - well all right, lie on the sofa - I can do no other!