Technology

I have gallstones and cannot eat my favourite things

As I write, my mother is still in hospital, but why should she have all the fun? I’ve been seeing a lot of hospital too. She is in Finchley; I, being a more bohemian, walk-on-the-wild-side kind of guy, have opted for the Royal Sussex County Hospital to be ill in. It’s been wild. The Royal Sussex likes to play its cards close to its chest so, after being admitted by ambulance on the Monday, it wasn’t until Thursday that they told me what was wrong with me. Up until then, someone had been using the ultrasound machine. It was quite exciting being seen slightly before my appointment time: I’d got there early because I wanted Ben to drop off a package at the Post Office, so he got to see me with the doctor carefully palpating my abdomen with the… well, here my technical vocabulary fails me… with the thingy that sees what’s inside you. “I don’t want to know if it’s a boy or a girl,” I said when Ben came in. Detecting an accent, he fell into conversation with the doctor, in Spanish. My Spanish is barely even rudimentary, but even I was able to pick up the facts that a) the doctor was Argentinian, and b) Ben’s favourite bar in Alicante is an Argentinian football bar. But what about my babies? It turns out I am having gallstones. I had come prepared for being whisked away to an operating theatre, so I had brought my toothbrush, a book and a phone charger, which is actually Ben’s mum’s. I felt a bit guilty about hanging on to this. As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. After having a nice little snooze in the Surgical Assessment Unit for a few hours, I was eventually seen. The registrar didn’t impress me much. I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t a fan, either of the human race in general or me in particular. Well, at least he laid the salient facts out for me: I am the proud father of gallstones; I must eat nothing but a low-fat diet; my operation will be somewhere between six and 12 months from now. “Six to 12 months?” I wailed. That seems an awfully long time to go without eggs, cheese and butter; also a long time to go without being able to lie down on either my left side, my right side, or my front. They sent me off with a prescription to be filled in at the hospital’s pharmacy that, with the kind of efficiency I am beginning to associate with the Royal Sussex, is in another building altogether. There I was given a sack of meds: what looked like four months’ supply of dihydrocodeine 30mg, ditto paracetamol at 500mg, and ditto a medicine that glories in the name “Laxido”, which consists of sachets one pours into half a glass of water to counter the constipation caused by the codeine. Warnings on the packets of the latter told me not to drink alcohol, and not to take them for more than five days in a row, lest I become addicted. So being given four months’ worth made me feel a little giddy. After a short but painful climb up the hill to the head of the taxi rank, I climbed in and asked the driver to take me home. “No, on second thoughts, make that the Waitrose car park,” I said. I needed wine. Or perhaps something stronger. The cab driver was all sympathy. “I had to have my gall bladder out,” he said. He looked younger than me, but then so do most people these days, especially if I’ve spent three out of the last four of them hanging around the Royal Sussex. “Can’t eat cheese ever again.” I am now one week into my regime of not eating my favourite foods, trying not to become a codeine addict and learning to savour the bouquet and floral notes of Laxido. My sister-in-law, who has gone beyond a consultant and is now a professor, was rather alarmed at my treatment at the hands of the Royal Sussex. “They didn’t give you any discharge notes?” “Maybe they’re with your meds.” I looked in the sack, about the size of a Waitrose Bag for Life. “Nope,” I said again. So she told me to go to the GP to see if they had been passed any details. As it happened, they had, but they only concerned themselves with my visit on Tuesday and they were inaccurate. What with one thing and another, a picture was beginning to form in my mind of the Royal Sussex County Hospital. Some basic research has turned up some interesting facts about the place. The trust that administers the hospital was ranked 117th out of 134 trusts. And according to an article in the Guardian dating from February, there are 90 deaths at the hospital that are being treated as possible manslaughter. This is exactly 90 more deaths than one would wish to hear about from the hospital in which one is booked to have an operation. The police operation investigating these has its own name: Operation Bramber. I wonder if it’ll be all sorted out in six to 12 months from now.

Jo Pitson,Nicholas Lezard • October 29, 2025

I have gallstones and cannot eat my favourite things

It’s been wild. The Royal Sussex likes to play its cards close to its chest so, after being admitted by ambulance on the Monday, it wasn’t until Thursday that they told me what was wrong with me. Up until then, someone had been using the ultrasound machine. It was quite exciting being seen slightly before my appointment time: I’d got there early because I wanted Ben to drop off a package at the Post Office, so he got to see me with the doctor carefully palpating my abdomen with the… well, here my technical vocabulary fails me… with the thingy that sees what’s inside you.

“I don’t want to know if it’s a boy or a girl,” I said when Ben came in.

Detecting an accent, he fell into conversation with the doctor, in Spanish. My Spanish is barely even rudimentary, but even I was able to pick up the facts that a) the doctor was Argentinian, and b) Ben’s favourite bar in Alicante is an Argentinian football bar. But what about my babies? It turns out I am having gallstones.

I had come prepared for being whisked away to an operating theatre, so I had brought my toothbrush, a book and a phone charger, which is actually Ben’s mum’s. I felt a bit guilty about hanging on to this.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. After having a nice little snooze in the Surgical Assessment Unit for a few hours, I was eventually seen. The registrar didn’t impress me much. I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t a fan, either of the human race in general or me in particular. Well, at least he laid the salient facts out for me: I am the proud father of gallstones; I must eat nothing but a low-fat diet; my operation will be somewhere between six and 12 months from now.

“Six to 12 months?” I wailed. That seems an awfully long time to go without eggs, cheese and butter; also a long time to go without being able to lie down on either my left side, my right side, or my front. They sent me off with a prescription to be filled in at the hospital’s pharmacy that, with the kind of efficiency I am beginning to associate with the Royal Sussex, is in another building altogether. There I was given a sack of meds: what looked like four months’ supply of dihydrocodeine 30mg, ditto paracetamol at 500mg, and ditto a medicine that glories in the name “Laxido”, which consists of sachets one pours into half a glass of water to counter the constipation caused by the codeine. Warnings on the packets of the latter told me not to drink alcohol, and not to take them for more than five days in a row, lest I become addicted. So being given four months’ worth made me feel a little giddy. After a short but painful climb up the hill to the head of the taxi rank, I climbed in and asked the driver to take me home.

“No, on second thoughts, make that the Waitrose car park,” I said. I needed wine. Or perhaps something stronger. The cab driver was all sympathy.

“I had to have my gall bladder out,” he said. He looked younger than me, but then so do most people these days, especially if I’ve spent three out of the last four of them hanging around the Royal Sussex. “Can’t eat cheese ever again.”

I am now one week into my regime of not eating my favourite foods, trying not to become a codeine addict and learning to savour the bouquet and floral notes of Laxido. My sister-in-law, who has gone beyond a consultant and is now a professor, was rather alarmed at my treatment at the hands of the Royal Sussex.

“They didn’t give you any discharge notes?”

“Maybe they’re with your meds.” I looked in the sack, about the size of a Waitrose Bag for Life.

“Nope,” I said again. So she told me to go to the GP to see if they had been passed any details. As it happened, they had, but they only concerned themselves with my visit on Tuesday and they were inaccurate. What with one thing and another, a picture was beginning to form in my mind of the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

Some basic research has turned up some interesting facts about the place. The trust that administers the hospital was ranked 117th out of 134 trusts. And according to an article in the Guardian dating from February, there are 90 deaths at the hospital that are being treated as possible manslaughter. This is exactly 90 more deaths than one would wish to hear about from the hospital in which one is booked to have an operation. The police operation investigating these has its own name: Operation Bramber. I wonder if it’ll be all sorted out in six to 12 months from now.

Read original article →