BETWEEN YOU AND ME

IT'S sometimes best not to ask too many questions. You might get answers you weren't expecting, answers that will make you appreciate (too late) the truth in those words: 'Ignorance is bliss'.

Take, for instance, the day last November when doctors reset my broken toe by pinning the little bones together with a small metal rod. For several weeks the rod protruded a few centimetres from the injured member.

Some friends found the sight amusing - "Can you pick up radio messages on it?" "It'll be useful if you're struck by lightning . . ." "Is that a new fashion in body piercing then?"

Others found the sight disturbing. It made them queasy to think about it, they said. One made what was a very salient point (sorry!) though.

"Is it going to stay in your foot for ever?" she asked.

"Oh no," I replied. "It comes out in January."

"How is it removed?", she asked.

Good question. How indeed?

So when I went for a check-up at the hospital in December, I asked the doctor.

"You don't really want to know that," he said.

"Yes, I do," I replied.

So he told me. They just pulled it out. Simple as that.

"I will, of course, be given an anaesthetic?" I said.

He roared with laughter. "Of course not!" was the answer, followed by that old chestnut: "You won't feel a thing."

Oh yeah, course not. There I am with a metal rod embedded in my flesh and I won't feel a thing when it's yanked out.

So the past few weeks have not been easy since I acquired this knowledge.

Every time I've looked at my toe and its metal spike, I've felt an uneasy twinge.

I mean if I was completely anaesthetised when they put the rod in, shouldn't I be in that happy twilight world when they take it out? Otherwise it will hurt.

Oh mummy don't let those nasty men in white coats tamper with my toes till I am well and truly out to the world.

"Don't be such a big baby," the mummy actually said when I told her my fears. "There was a time when people had major operations, even had their limbs amputated, without anaesthetic."

Oh whoopee, back to the Good Old Days again . . .

On Thursday last week, however, nature decided it was time for the alien object to leave my body - quite unexpectedly.

Standing on the concourse at Brighton Station, I glanced down at my foot and to my horror saw a long strand of sharp metal had worked its way out of my toe. It looked grotesque, it looked as if it belonged in some sub-standard James Bond-style movie - The Toe That Killed Me or Feet Of Fear.

And it was all quite unnecessary as the appointment I had been dreading, when the rod would be officially removed from my toe, was due the very next day.

I didn't want to spoil that day by removing it prematurely (no, let's be honest, it hurt when I touched it), so I wrapped the spike in Elastoplast and tried to look unconcerned.

I also spent an uncomfortable night trying to sleep with my foot on a pillow, the spike protruding through a slipper.

The next day the rod was removed - swiftly, easily. And, you may not believe this, but I didn't feel a thing.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.