Page 6 - January 2021 BSTTW Community News
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CONTINUED From Page 5 “GRASS” will have to wait until some of your skin has
Sometime on the Monday, I was placed on healed and then use this to cover your
a stretcher and taken along the hospital more serious burns. We will operate in a
corridor. I was not appreciative of the tour, few days".
being shown all those ceilings. However,
when I saw the outside of the hospital I asked, "How many operations will I
building and then blue sky I did wonder have?". He said, "You will probable need to
what was going on. Apparently, road traffic have about thirty operations". I do not think
had been halted and cows had been he knew my name, either that or he called
herded up to the far end of a field opposite my by a German equivalent, but his matter
the hospital. A helicopter was waiting for of fact impersonal attitude was probably
me, and I was wheeled across a road trying to cover his own feelings of doubt
through a gate into the field. The helicopter about the likely success of the operations. I
was a special sterile transport ambulance started to shed some tears. They were not
booked to move me to Duisburg. I was lifted tears of joy or sorrow, just tears.
into the air ambulance and as ear mufflers
were placed on my head to deaden the Apparently, over the weekend I had died for
noise I looked up and said thank you to the four minutes. I was resuscitated and then
pilot. kept alive until I could be moved to the
special hospital. I had required over thirty-
I woke up in a bed in the special burns unit, six pints of blood. With all the painkilling
a sterile room which had five other patients. drugs I knew little of the weekend's events.
I still could not see very well, but could
make out eight bottles, four each side, The drugs removed much of my
hanging upside down and supplying liquid consciousness, this was the best means of
and food via drips, to my body. Apparently, alleviating the pain, but they did not remove
people who are badly burned die of my feelings of thirst. I was having small
dehydration. I was also wired to a digital drinks from a glass through a bendy straw.
thermometer. I could hear a radio or Anyone ill in bed can do no better than
television, the noise forced me to try and drink this way. I fantasized about having
understand what was being said, and this drink parties, with all sorts of exotic fruit
required effort, something I was lacking. I drinks.
asked if the noise could be turned down but
it wasn't. I also asked what was in all those I had to have a saline bath before my first
bottles, champagne maybe? operation. I said I would try to walk the five
yards to the bathroom. The nurse watched
The first person to speak to me in the new carefully as, after she removed the top layer
hospital was a doctor Brandt. Brandt is of foil, I got up out of bed and took a few
German for burnt, a coincidence. I could not careful steps. This was all I could manage. I
see his face. With my blurred vision I could collapsed into waiting arms. I was very hot
make out a blue surgical hat, a white face and kept saying, "It's hot in here, I'm so
mask and blue surgical coat and trousers. I hot". I sat in the bath and she carefully
later discovered that his shoes were also sprinkled water over me. I asked if I could
covered in surgical sterile material. I could drink the shower water. It was special
see his eyes but not his face. He spoke in spring water not from the mains supply, and
German but I could work out what he was tasted very different from the ghastly stuff I
saying. "You have been badly burned. We CONTINUED On Page 7 “GRASS”
