Nursing in the 70s Part 2 - A Pain in the Guts

The pain in my stomach had got increasingly worse and by the time I got home it was almost unbearable. I was working as a bus conductor on Southdown buses as a summer job and had just finished a late shift. The company provided a mini bus to take the late shift home and I had just been dropped off at my parents house at Langney Point at about 1130pm. I have some vague memory of getting up to my room & my worried mother asking me what was wrong. She must have thought I'd been to the pub or eaten a dodgy curry or both.

The doctor was duly called and in amoungst the mutterings downstairs after he'd examined me I heard the words 'hospital', 'operation,' 'probably appendicitis'

These words would eventually form a significant part of my vocabulary in the years to come but at that time they just frightend the life out of me. I was 19 had never been in hospital before and didn't want to start now. Nevertheless I was carted off to St Marys hospital in the middle of the night and admitted to Alfriston Ward.

Part 3