How Hard Can It Be? - Part 1
Created | Updated Apr 11, 2010
This week I can guarantee no unnecessary puns, no erroneous definitions and no cheap shots at the marvellous editorial team, not one in the entire article. How hard can it be? Well, easier, I would imagine, than trying to get someone to deal with my nose. That's my link to the rest of the text, by the way, and if you were hoping for something slick then I am only going to disappoint. I apologise.
The University of Glamorgan
An esteemed institution which had the unfortunate and unenviable task of trying to educate me for three years, and got nothing in return but an edited guide entry. Oh, and every penny my parents have ever earned, but that must have been a small price to pay. Otherwise, they had first crack at sorting out my problem. I went to the health centre on campus, complaining about my hearing. The doctor had a quick look in my ears, presumably to check that I hadn't got a pea stuck in there or something. I guess she saw that sort of thing a lot — it was probably an instinctive decision as much as medical protocol. In any event, there was presumably no pea, so she looked up my nose and then referred me to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, ENT department.
I guess a word is needed on the subject of the ENT department, just in case you don't know. ENT stands for Ear, Nose and Throat, and are bundled together not merely because the hospitals have all run out of space, but because they are, in ways I don't really understand, interconnected. They affect each other. It is important that you understand that now — we'll come back to it later.
Anyway, right now I have to get myself to the ENT department at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital for their considered opinion. The first step is a train from Trefforest to Pontypridd. Then I have to get a bus in Ponty, which will take me to the hospital. Except that it won't, although this is not the bus's fault as such. It probably took other people to the hospital. Just not me, that's all. It was a long journey, you see. Long and winding and compounded by the fact the major road was closed for some reason I was feeling too ill to properly take in, and that any given area of Wales only has one major road. I sat in a sort of hunched-up position, trying not to allow the twists of the roads and the dubious quality of the bus's 'shock absorbers' shake up my digestive system to the point where it would become perilous for those around me. 'Get to the hospital,' I thought. 'They will have toilets. You'll be fine once you get to the hospital.' Well, I endured, and I stuck to this notion for maybe half an hour (time, in this situations, tends to drag, I find) before I could no longer cope. We slowed to round a bend and passed what I dimly recognised as a pub. 'Excuse me, I need to be sick,' I announced, standing up and heading to the door. Always a good way to get off a bus, I find, and off I got. I dashed straight into the pub, pausing only to ask if I might use the toilet1 and... well, let's move on to the point where I emerged, feeling better and vaguely hoping I might be offered a drink. I was not.
I had now to contend with the very real problem that, having got off the bus that was taking me to the hospital, I had no idea where I was or how to get to where I wanted to go, wherever I decided that would be. In due course I found a bus stop and, having phoned the hospital (I had my referral letter upon my person, you see) to lie about why I was going to be late2, I then managed to work out the number of a bus that would take me in the general direction of the hospital. Once on the bus and, indeed, passing the hospital on the left, I was struck, it being that sort of day, by the panic that this might be as close to the hospital as we got. So, despite the logical choice being clearly to ask the driver, I opted instead, for the second time that day, to prematurely disembark from my bus, albeit this time at a registered stop. Once I had made my way across the dual carriageway3 I realised that the bus looped back round and pulled up just outside the hospital which was still a good ten minutes' stagger away. I arrived in due course, fell through the doors, rejected the option of popping into the hospital shop for a badly needed drink on the grounds that I was already late and I could get one on the way back, and headed for ENT.
I sat waiting in ENT. My turn had, it seemed, not even arrived yet, despite me being over an hour late. As it turned out, I had enjoyed myself more on the journey than I would have done had I been sat in the waiting room. There was a child scribbling at some sort of colouring book, Teletubbies or something, I don't know. I was summoned, eventually, by a consultant. He checked my ears. Still no pea, so I guess that was good news. He looked up my nose. Nothing there, apparently. Then I was shut in a soundproof room (there were scratch marks on the door and blood on the carpet) and told to press a buzzer every time I heard a sound played through my headphones. Then, after another wait, I was summoned back to the consultant.
My hearing, he said, was fine.
On the way out I discovered that the hospital shop was closed.
I got the bus home and wrote an essay on Jean-Paul Satre's Being and Nothingness. It seemed appropriate.
Well, this wasn't the end of my ENT odyssey, oh no. I still have another country, two more hospitals, five more specialists and a lot more bus journeys to undertake yet. Maybe all my problems will be miraculously solved. Maybe someone will find a pea. Maybe the second half of this joyous story will not be printed in The Post4 and you'll never find out. Only time will tell.
Articles by benjaminpmoore Archive
