Well, unfortunately I’ve now depleted my supply of post-operation painkillers, and came crashing down to earth around eight hours ago. Before the operation, I was bitter that I’d be forced to lay off the alcohol for a while, but these happy pills kept me in a constant state of happy beer buzz.

My hospital was in the Blue Mountains - they had a much shorter waiting list for surgery time out there. When I approached the building, it sure didn’t match the grand TV hospital drama-style towering monoliths of bustling health that I’d envisioned. It felt more like some sort of regional nursing home.

After signing numerous papers, I was then led to a waiting room which was furnished with only two options to kill time: the entire 1984-1985 library of Reader’s Digest or a clunky old piano, which struck me as odd. Tempted as I was to thump out a rollicking ragtime reindition of Roll Out the Barrel, I settled for the magazines instead.

It soon became obvious that there were two sets of nurses attending to me: the hospital’s nurses, and my urologist’s nurses (my urologist visited the hospital once a week to perform his operations). My blood pressure was taken twice. My weight was taken twice. My threshold for enduing pisspoor jokes about anaesthetic was severely tested twice. Although the first anaesthesist won points for sitting down and asking me, pokerfaced: “So, is this the first time you’ve had a circumcision?”

This is where the two sets of nurses began giving me dangerously conflicting sets of information. I sincerely believe the hospital nurses were totally misinformed as to what was going on. When I questioned one of the hospital nurses about the painkillers I’d need to take after my operation, they assured me that regular Panadeine would do the trick. I baulked at this, and asked one of my urologist’s nurses as I entered the operating theatre. They reassured me that I’d be getting a prescription for painkillers.

It was these little miscommunications that bugged me. However, it was one particular incident which occured after the surgery which I’m still rather angry about.

My weiner was wrapped up in many, many layers of cotton dressing after the operation. We’re talking at least five to ten centimetres thick. After checking me over, the urologist’s nurse declared that I was fit to get up and go home.

As I was doing this, a hospital nurse entered the room and pressed me back against the bed. “Where do you think you’re going, mister?” she boomed. “You have to go to the toilet first, to make sure you can urinate okay.”

So off I duly limped to the toilet. Not really wanting to look at my bandages, I dropped my dacks and stared straight ahead. Given her request, I figured that they’d wrapped my weiner up like a roll, so that I could still pee through the end. I strained, and strained, and strained - it felt like I was weeing, but nothing was coming out. This got me quite concerned.

Returning to my hospital bed, I explained calmly to the nurse that I’d really tried, but nothing was coming out. She firmly continued to state that I wasn’t to leave the hospital until I gave her the golden gift of pee.

Again, thirty minutes later, I tried once more after drinking gallons of water. The same feeling: I thought I was taking a slash, but nothing was coming out. In the end, I figured I didn’t want to be sitting in hospital all freakin’ day, and just told her that I’d managed to take a slash anyway.

As I left, the urologist’s nurse gave me an information sheet. I read this on the way home, and was extremely alarmed to read that I wasn’t supposed to urinate until I removed the bandages, 24 hours after the operation. What’s worse, when I eventually did take off the bandages, I realised they weren’t wrapped like a roll at all. I’d been peeing into a bandage and soaking it up around my wound - no wonder it friggin’ stung so much! This freaked me out - what if I got infected from this? I’m still really angry about the miscommunications at the hospital, lucky for me this wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.

One of the few good things about my hospital visit was noticing their choice of cleaning agent. They use PowerOff BAM! Tell you what, a household cleaning product’s name has never caused me to cackle so much before - then again, I was still wearing off a heavy cloud of anaesthetic. Most of the afternoon I spent lying in my hospital bed, muttering “PowerOff… BAM!!” to myself, and giggling insanely.

We need more cleaning products with violent names. Hell, it could even inspire me to clean up around here more. I’m proposing products to compete with PowerOff BAM! such as DirtyBomb BLEACHONITE!, ClusterCleansing RUDDOCK!, and FistFuck of Cyclonic Disinfection FURY!

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