Whatever the case, a surgical procedure was required to remove the hair and the surrounding infected tissue from my father’s buttocks. Although none of us knew at the time (maybe the doctor performing the procedure, didn’t even realize, either!) just how extensively that hair had travelled. The operation on my father led to the removal of almost a quarter of one cheek of his flesh, leaving a deep crater, instead. This huge wound had to be allowed to drain. So, it was packed with gauze, which had to be removed every day, to be replaced by fresh.
When John and I arrived home from school that day, we were surprised to see our father was already back at home. He was looking somewhat pale and frail, lying on a makeshift bed in the living room. Our mother was looking equally pale and somewhat bemused, though we didn’t know why. What had happened?
We didn’t realize at that point that my father had, in fact, had himself discharged from the hospital much earlier than he should have been released, by telling the medical team that my mother was a nurse, and that she would do the daily cleansing and dressing of his wound. Perhaps my father wanted to save my mother the hour’s drive, with us three children packed into the car, to visit him. I certainly remember going to see him only once in the hospital. My mother later told us that she had not been consulted by my father, so it was as much of a surprise to her as to us, when her husband was released. My father was simply delighted to be coming home earlier than expected.
The only problem with his plan was that my mother was not a nurse, had never been a nurse, and had always been very squeamish at the sight of blood and gore. Maybe my father didn’t know this about his wife at that time, though over the years we all soon grew well accustomed to this weakness in my mother’s make-up.
As soon as she had to do the dressing and saw the size of the oozing crater in my father’s rear end, she fainted clean away, dropping like a stone to the living room floor.
I don’t know who fetched our neighbour to the right of us, an Italian platelayer (responsible for maintaining the railway tracks), who, like my father, worked for the local railways. There were only our three “railway” bungalows in a row, each on an acre of land, so no-one else was available to help. The stationmaster on the other side of our house, which was in the middle of the three, would have been at work, I presume, whereas the platelayer’s hours were perhaps more flexible. Fortunately, he was at home that day. Who fetched him, though? I just don’t know. John and I were at school. Perhaps my mother came round and managed to stagger over there to ask for help. We didn’t have a phone, and I can’t imagine Peter, who was so young, being sent there on his own by my parents. My father was in no state to walk over there, either.
Whatever the case, our heroic neighbour arrived and, according to my parents, was very competent. In fact, he became my father’s nurse from then onwards, dressing and redressing that hole every day. He wasn’t in the least bit fazed by the sight of my father’s wound, claiming that, during WWII, he had seen much worse, and had helped many a wounded soldier, in his time as a soldier in Italy.
The only thing that worried me, and which I learned there and then, was just how much damage a single hair could cause to the human body, if it decided to grow the wrong way. I have never forgotten this, and ever since then I have checked my own shaven legs and armpits to make sure nothing was misbehaving itself, by growing inwards instead of out.
