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Kelners Blog
Pissing Blood
By Martin "anal daffodils" Kelner
Sep 18, 2013 - 10:21:48 AM

Actually, no need to be too alarmed.  Let me explain. 

I have a friend who's going through an acrimonious divorce (tautology, surely, is there any other kind?) at present, and he's been visiting me regularly to entertain me with tales of outrageous demands, solicitors' letters and suchlike, but chiefly I think to see me in my weakened state, and hear about the latest medical horrors, which lifts him in a Schadenfreude kind of way.

When he visits, we settle into a kind of Misery Beggar My Neighbour or Top Trumps, where we each recount our latest issues and have a thoroughly depressing hour or two. 

Anyway, he arrived on Sunday afternoon to find me dozing through the second half of Southampton - West Ham on Sky TV, which was doing nothing to lighten my mood.  He told me he had just received 29 texts from the party of the second part in his divorce, whence I took great delight in blasting him out of the water with "Well, I'm pissing blood."

Booyakasha, if that's how you spell it.  Nothing beats "I'm pissing blood," which indeed I was and am, profusely.  Graciously, he conceded defeat, and as penance I forced him to watch the last half-hour of the match. 

With about ten minutes left he checked the odds on either team scoring, and noted that West Ham were 13-1 to get a goal, and put two quid on them.  I explained that West Ham had only managed three goals since the heady heatwave days of August, didn't have a striker worthy of the name, and were about as likely to put the ball in the net as I was to take part in the Great North Run.  I suggested Southampton at 5-1 might be a better bet to score.  So he put two quid on them as well.  Remarkably, had James Collins not blasted over an open goal he might even have won his bet.  As representative of the Racing Post, I felt it my duty to explain to him that that is sort of how gambling works. Ray Winstone isn't running a charity.

So he left, four quid lighter and with a phone-full of angry texts to read, but in our misery game still several notches below "pissing blood."

On that issue, I saw the urologist at St James's Hospital yesterday, and he assures me it is to do with a stent that was inserted in me during surgery.  Because my tumour - the size of a small sheep, remember - was interfering with bowels, bladder and all that stuff, it could not be removed without snipping a couple of these vital pipes which necessitated the urologist inserting a stent, a kind of coil joining the kidney to the piss pipe enabling me to pass water. (God, it's fun this, isn't it?) 

Apparently the stent begins to irritate after a while and causes bleeding, and because I'm on Warfarin to counteract blood clots, the blood is more profuse. 

The surgeon said he wouldn't worry about it.  I said, "No, I wouldn't worry about it if you were pissing blood either." I didn't say that obviously, because he's a top, top man, and not someone I want to antagonise as he will be removing the stent for me on October 1st.  Something to look forward to.

Because of the Warfarin, pulmonary embolisms and so on, they can't give me a general so I'm having a local anaesthetic.  He warns me it might be "uncomfortable," which is surgeon-speak for it'll have you screaming up the fucking wall.

While I was in the hospital, I saw a poster for the pay TV thing they now run in the wards.  The old days when you all shuffled off to the TV room in your dressing gown and slippers and made plans to put a daffodil in Wilfrid Hyde-White's arse are over, and some pay TV sharks offer you various "bundles" you can pay for with your card. 

I opted for the £15 bundle which is Channels 1,2,3,4,5 for three days, effectively paying £45 for the three Saturdays I was in there to watch Match Of The Day and those blistering Thatcher documentaries. 

It did amuse me, though, to see the adverts for the other bundles they were offering at inflated prices, especially the "movie bundle" where the top attraction appeared to be Johnny English Reborn, prompting the question: "How fucking sick do you think I am?"

(If you enjoyed this blog, you may be interested to know I have a book out in paperback called Sit Down And Cheer, available in absolutely no good book shops, but on Amazon and also available as an e-book.  Each purchase will raise a sum not unadjacent to bugger-all for charity but will aid the writer's recovery.)       

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