Father of Triplets

 

                                                                     

When I was a little freckle-faced kid it was considered healthy to get lots of exposure to the sun. 

So at the beginning of summer each year, I would get second degree burns under an ultraviolet lamp as an initial step on the road to a "healthy" suntan, then spend the rest of summer in the sun in my swimming togs.

Inevitably, the passage my adult life has been punctuated by the local excision of skin cancers, predominantly basal cell carcinomas, leaving me to resemble an enthusiastic perennial runner-up in fencing competitions.

In the latest reminder of my sunburnt youth, a biopsy-confirmed BCC had developed on the left side of my nose, a site which is not a suitable site for a simple excision by the local general practitioner. 

I was referred to a Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, who excised the lesion and reconstructed what was left of my nose by transplanting the top of my left ear to replace the missing nostril, then excising and transplanting part of my top lip to supply blood to the ear-nose transplant.

So far, so good.

I was discharged in great shape from hospital two days after the operation.

But the surgeon had prescibed post-operative oxycodeine, to be taken fourth hourly for post-op pain. (He must have thought that I was a girly-man who couldn't handle a bit of discomfort.)

As it turned out, he was right. 

Codeine is a famously effective opioid analgesic, but also a famously effective constipator.                      

At about 8pm two days after the operation I went into labour with what felt like twins. 

They reckon that men have no idea what it feels like to have a baby. 

Wrong. I do.

My wife took me, whimpering like a recently weaned puppy, to the local hospital. Four hours later, we finally saw a nurse, who sent me home with an industrial-strength aperient enema.

This time, with the relentlessly insistant encouragement of the industrial strength aperient, it felt like triplets.

(Basil Fawlty would have been impressed with my clenched-buttocks funny-walking on the panic-driven dashes to the toilet).