Watch this spot

My first visit to Addenbrooke's, for the pre-op assessment. BP, bloods and ECG, and groin swabs for MRSA. It used to be arm-pit swabs, but too many people now use deodorant which throws their cultures. A doctor marked the scar with a pen, then on to get a photo. The spot is back - but this time more like an indelible line.

A German boy, boarding in the UK, was in the clinic with a nurse trying to reassure him. "Lots of people lose their thumbs," she said. "At your age you soon won't even miss it. You'll stand out from the crowd and people will say, 'there's the boy with no thumb.'" He didn't look over-convinced and the bandaging looked serious.

Wives not allowed

Next day, Edwin left us at the hospital, to walk a long corridor for cream and a dressing to the ear to numb it, then an even longer corridor to the Department of Nuclear Medicine for my radio tracer injection. The technician was a burly man who seemed to take relish in giving me four separate injections into the tiny fleshy lobe. They contain Technetium-99m in a new colloidal suspension used in USA but new here. He said it would be too much for a single injection, but it stung like four wasp bites despite the cream. Then down to the radio-imaging department, and another long session waiting for the tracer to move to the nodes, with the rotating cameras brushing my nose to take 360 degree 3-D images of my ear and neck. The final images looked magnificent though, like an anatomy model of the lymphatics.

CT Scanner ready for the ear

Finally, back to the Plastic Surgery Unit, where an Irish trainee consultant moved a gamma-ray probe across my neck to map the hot spots. I asked about the drainage of the ear, and she went into a long spiel about the complex embryology of the pinna. I asked where she had trained. "Cork Hospital," she answered briefly. "Ah - I trained at St Thomas'," I rejoined, "but it's a long time since I learnt about brachial arch embyology." She looked sheepish then, and said, "I didn't realise you were a doctor. It should have been in the notes! I'm sorry I talked down to you." But she was much more sympathetic then, and didn't patronize me.
Now I've ended up with three more black spots for the surgeon to aim at tomorrow.