The Serial: A Rowan Tree In My Garden Day 55

Mr Smillie was very, very particular. In theatre he doubled the recommended time that nurses and surgeons took to ‘scrub up’ before an operation. He also doubled the time that instruments had to be boiled for in the sterilizers.

He turned his attention also to the gloves and bandages that were taken to the autoclaves: he wasn’t sure that they were always being properly sterilized and ordered that a vial be put in each container that would turn red if they had been.

Sometimes they would come back with the colour of the vial unchanged and then there would be hell to pay for the porters who did the autoclaving.

A lot of the instruments he used, for the various operations, were of his own design.

Sometimes they differed little from the conventional ones but we had to know them all intimately and when he asked for ‘my’ retractors, as pictured in ‘my’ book we had to know what he meant immediately.

He had no mercy on us during an operation; didn’t care what he called us.

After it was over, however, and he was satisfied with what he had achieved, he became a different man.

Full of praise

Then he was full of praise for his nurses, treating us like special people who had done a good job. After the list for the day was completed he would sometimes state: “And now, Sister, I’ll go fishing.”

It was a hard image on the mind, Mr Smillie sitting still on a river bank fishing hour after hour.

Because of my continuing lack of confidence, I wasn’t really the right type of nurse for working in a theatre, yet for some reason I got on better with Sister Marshall than I had with any of the other Sisters.

She called me Polly from the beginning which put me at ease.

I didn’t feel she had any animosity towards my shortcomings, rather she would laugh at them saying: “Oh Polly, not again,” or “My goodness, you have actually remembered the requisitions today”.

I think, however, she liked my conscientiousness. I could be relied on to follow the letter of the law, as far as sterilizing instruments was concerned, and I was willing to put my back into having a spotlessly clean operating theatre.

What I did like about theatre was its atmosphere of excitement and anticipation.

You never knew what the day would bring. Early in the morning the sterilizing room was full of steam from the boiling up of instruments and, next door, the surgeon, doctors, sister and nurses scrubbed up for the morning’s list.

Afterwards, those participating in operations, donned sterilized white gowns and stood with outstretched arms, like white cormorants holding out wings to dry, for the junior nurse to tie up the tapes at the back.

Then on went the rubber gloves as they made their way through to the theatre proper where the patient, anaesthetized and ready, would be on, or about to be transferred to, the long narrow white-sheeted operating table.

All was whiteness and brightness: an enormous round steel light was poised over the operating table to give maximum illumination.

Gleaming

Apart from the colour white, everything else was gleaming steel; steel table, steel trolley, steel instruments, steel basins and a steel rack for hanging up swabs.

The sounds were of steel ringing on steel in this echoing chamber and the muffled voices of masked nurses and doctors. The smell was a mixture of antiseptic and anaesthetic.

The anaesthetist would be sitting at the head of the table, monitoring the patient, often holding a mask over the patient’s face with one hand while tinkering about with knobs on his machine with the other.

I found the anaesthetists interesting people and mostly men.

The one I remember best had been around the longest. He was a revered and trusted figure amongst the doctors.

To me he always gave the impression of being a rather sleepy, absent-minded professor and I wondered sometimes if he was somewhat affected by his own anaesthetics. I named him ‘The Dormouse’. I enjoyed all the talk and banter that went on between the doctors before they got to the serious part of the operation, or perhaps afterwards when the patient was being sewn up. Through the muffle of masks they talked of many things.

I listened intently to tales of mountains they had climbed, lochs they had fished, and occasionally, of exotic places they had visited or how to make sloe gin or train a puppy.

What a wonderful world it was out there and what a lot I had to see and learn.

Unfortunately, not very long after I joined the team at East Theatre, Sister announced that she was going on a four day leave and that I would be in charge of Orthopaedic theatre while she was away. Me? Me in charge with Mr Smillie around! “But Sister?” “You’ll easily manage. There are no big operations in the offing. Mr Smillie may not even be here at all.” And with that she was gone. As is the way of things, however, she was no sooner away than Mr Smillie made a surprise visit to the theatre.

“Where’s Sister?” he asked immediately.

Intricate

I explained that she was off for four days to a family wedding or something down south. “Oh, I forgot. Can she be brought back?” “I don’t think so, Sir,” I said. The great man didn’t seem too pleased at this information. “Who’s in charge?” he asked. “I am,” I replied. “Well you’ll just have to do then. A rather intricate knee operation has just come in. It will have to be operated on tomorrow at the latest.

“I haven’t had occasion to do this particular operation very often, it could be tricky.

“I’ll need quite a few different instruments,” and he proceeded to instruct me on what should be boiled up.

“As well as the usual ones for knee operations, of course, but I’ll speak to my registrar. He’ll come round and see you; advise you on what I shall need.”

Apart from the registrar who seemed a little bit hazy about the operation himself, I asked everyone involved for their advice on the instruments he might need and boiled them up for more than the required time just to be on the safe side. (More tomorrow.)

By Margaret Gillies Brown