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A routine hospital visit- The Royal London and Whitechapel

Wednesday, 28 August, 2019

I use a CPAP machine – I should talk about that some time – and, while it helps with some pretty severe symptoms such as night terrors and sleep paralysis as well as having a desirable effect of no snoring, it does mean that I’m never truly comfortable while sleeping. I’ve chosen the most minimal mask to wear but I just feel trapped behind it and I’m confined to certain sleeping positions. So when my sleep doctor asked me if I’d like to try a dental device instead, I thought it was worth my while to at least check into it. Reports from the CPAP users that I asked weren’t very favourable but I’d go see for myself.

I got a letter asking me to come to the Dental building at the Royal London Hospital and that’s not so far away. Today was the day. Except I woke up feeling groggy and shaky, and obviously not that thrilled with the thought of rousing myself and getting down there.

I had my tonsils out at the London Hospital (at Whitechapel). I was six years old and while my memories are interesting, they aren’t good ones. I was in a huge ward for about a week, walked down in a group of other lucky surgical victims, tricked into inhaling ether, or whatever they used to put me to sleep, dreamed a long dream of a bright star spinning in inky black space, and woke up to pure torture.  If you’ve ever had your tonsils out, you know exactly what I mean.

Archival image of a ward at the London Hospital
Archival image of a ward at the London Hospital

Before the surgery, they’d teased me with descriptions of all the lovely ice cream I’d be eating while my throat was ‘sore.’ It sounded all right! Now I knew the truth. Swallowing even my own saliva was more than I could tolerate. Ice cream? No way! I can even sort of remember the terrible, raw, soreness of my throat or can I?

Then a nurse kept coming by as I pulled out of my groggy just-anaethetised state, ‘Are you feeling sick?’ ‘Do you want to be sick?’ At the tender age of six, I found myself thinking ‘Hm, I think they’re telling me I’m going to be sick.’ And soon enough, I threw up a bunch of burning bloody stuff that made my throat feel even worse, if that was possible.

I think I must have struggled with a few sips of water at first. And then some time later, maybe a day, who knows, they came around with the food trolley. I was handed a plate, on which was some buttered bread fingers and many slices of orange. Orange! I knew instinctively that I could not eat those.  I protested and was told to be quiet. I looked under the plate where they’d always put a label with the patient’s name, and read ‘Janice Solomon.’ She was the little girl in the opposite bed in for a broken arm. ‘This isn’t mine,’ I said, ‘It’s for Janice Solomon. I can’t eat oranges.’ I was shushed and told ‘Eat it!’ I’ve fortunately forgotten what happened after that but I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.

For a week I could have no visitors. I’ve always had separation anxiety and imagined my family had abandoned me. One sadistic nurse even hinted at it. Then finally I got to go home and put the whole horrible thing behind me. As you can tell, I haven’t ever forgotten it.

Some years ago they closed the hospital and built a brand new hospital complex. Instead of the old brown brick ones, up went some blue glass towers. a few of the old brick ones remain here and there and still serving people. It’s strange that they’re still needed but it’s sort of comforting to see them there. They say that the Tower Hamlets council has bought the old main hospital building on Whitechapel Road and will be using it for a civic centre. It looks like they are keeping the old building and adding to it. I’m glad it won’t look so different from the road.

For some reason, I forgot to photograph the old hospital behind the hoardings but I did wander along the market, which we called Whitechapel Waste in my childhood days. It was a large Jewish market and now is completely Muslim

 


The new dental clinic at The Royal London
The new dental clinic at The Royal London – inside it was modern and bright
The old emergency dental clinic at the Royal London
The old emergency dental clinic at the Royal London – I went once and it was archaic and dark
Looking past the corner of the old dental clinic
Looking past the corner of the old dental clinic, you can see the many blue towers of the new Royal London
One of the remaining old buildings of the RLH
One of the remaining old buildings of the RLH – still in use
From the orthodontics clinic window
From the orthodontics clinic window – a long queue for one of the old buildings

I’m going back to the clinic later in the year for more investigations – I’m not ready yet for the device they want me to try – but I’ll be back in Whitechapel again many many times before that.
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I’m only a pretend groupie

Wednesday 24 April 2019

It all started when I was a teenager. I discovered that if you just assumed you could connect with someone ‘famous,’ you usually could. Of course, those were different days. And  somehow I was born not being too awestruck by authority or whatever. I treat everyone more or less the same. Now, people in authority sometimes get bent out of shape when I call them Jenny instead of Dr Smith, or suggest I’m a peer of any description. But at least in those young days almost every ‘famous’ person I met was happy to be treated ‘normally.’

My first famous person is probably Roger Moore. He was a guest at a Unilever Christmas party for employees’ children – and I was one. He wasn’t yet a big star but he had some national following from ‘Ivanhoe,’

Yes, this dates me! While all the other children flocked around to get an autograph, I chose, as Roger bent down to connect with our smallness,  to ask him, ‘Is it your real hair?’ (For those days of short back and sides, his was rather long as Ivanhoe. He laughed and said ‘Touch it and see,’ so I gave it a tug. This probably cemented my future as a pretend groupie.

Skip forward some years.. I’d go to the BBC shows at the Playhouse Theatre in London and let it be known I’d like to go backstage. No question was ever asked. I’ve forgotten some of these adventures but I do remember meeting Tommy Roe, who seemed remarkably tall, and my girl crush, Connie Francis
who sat looking perfect and beautiful on a make-up chair. I must have spoken to her but I don’t remember a word.

My first real experience of being so close to anyone was courtesy of three Greek sisters that I met who knows where but it must have been at another concert/BBC performance with Bobby Vee who i absolutely adored.

The sisters were dark and mysterious to me. They had black glossy high beehives, wore make up and trendy for the times clothing. They lived in also-mysterious Chalk Farm in a house with high ceilings and many rooms. One of them was their bedroom with its old fashioned dressing table full of toiletries and makeup. I wanted to be them. Instead I was a rather shy looking middle class Jewish girl, not yet brave enough to flaunt a thing. I ate at their house, food I’d never had with some biscuits that had no flavour but they gobbled up.
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