|
 | |  | |
George Spenceley recalls his years as a long distance lorry driver, the friends he made and the incidents that happened along the way.
During my days working at ICI in Wilton we were all screened by a mass Xray machine for tuberculosis. The lad before me was having a joke with the nurse and on his way out said, 'I'll see you again'. 'Why?' asked the nurse. 'Oh because I forgot to remove my watch from my shirt pocket' he laughingly said.
'Get away with you' replied the nurse then turning to me said, 'I hope you're going to behave yourself'. Smiling I said, 'Of course, but I feel you haven't seen the last of me either for I know that I have some sort of scarring on my lung'.
'Aye pull the other one' she replied thinking I was kidding. 'Get yourselves back to work'. Sure enough a few days later I received a letter asking me to attend the clinic to be rechecked.
I thought it was just a formality similar to when I first went into the army, but on examining my chest and after asking many questions and taking blood samples Doctor Sheriff turned to me and said, 'I'm sorry to tell you but you've got a shadow on one of your lungs and it could be TB'.
I told him about the army and the trouble I'd had there. 'No its nothing to do with that' he said, 'I'd like you to attend the chest clinic for further tests then maybe a spell in Pool Sanatorium for treatment'.
It came as quite a shock to me. In the past many a joke had been at my expense when I'd had my chest measured, 38 inches normal and 38 inches when expanded, I suppose you can't help the way you're built.
I told the Doctor that I lived at home with my sister Olga and that if I had to go into hospital it would cause many financial problems. He sat back and considered for a while then finally decided that providing I promised to take the prescribed medication the ICI medical department could administer the daily injections of Streptomycin and Dimicin.
Every day for a year I received an injection and some very large pink tablets, they looked a bit like blotting paper and had to be soaked before being swallowed, not a very easy thing to do.
They kept a constant check on my weight to make sure that I didn't go below the nine and a half stone, my usual weight. In all the treatment went quite well.
George Spenceley, 2002
| |  | |  |
To add a comment you must first login or join for free, up in the top left corner.
|
|
