Heart Beat:When writing about sports injuries recently, an incident from my registrar days in the Mater hospital came to mind. When the Dominican Convent and school in Eccles Street closed and was purchased by the Mater, we acquired a basketball court.
In residence at that time we had a vertically challenged but highly enthusiastic aficionado of the sport. Leslie from Singapore duly obtained several basketballs and cajoled a rather unenthusiastic bunch of residents to participate. Initially our efforts resembled a cross between Gaelic football and rugby, with a very slight admixture of the game itself.
We improved gradually and eventually sought competition from outside. One summer's evening, a team of clerical students from Clonliffe College came to give battle, literally as it turned out, to our team.
It was quickly apparent that there was a gulf in class between the sides. They were taller and fitter than us and one particular gentleman, about 6' 7" in height, was giving us endless grief. A huddle was called and instructions given to Paddy Mac, a surgical intern who had been a Mayo minor footballer, to deal with this menace.
Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan and the menace objected most strenuously to being "dealt with". A most unsavoury brawl developed when it became apparent that these aspiring pillars of the Church had no intention of meekly turning the other cheek.
Eventually order was restored and the game, our first and last against outside opposition, ended in total defeat. I wondered afterwards if the authorities in Clonliffe did not think it slightly unusual that two of their seminarians should sport major black eyes after a basketball match. I suppose it had something to do with the "church militant".
I, however, had my own problems. Towards the end of this debacle I hurt my back and had to be assisted to our A&E department by the few spectators present. There I received little sympathy, the senior staff nurse opining that I should have more sense and the good nun in charge concurring in this belief.
Two aspirins, a pair of crutches and a total absence of tender loving care. I was the surgical registrar on call and I could only pray that a quiet night lay ahead. God let me down, doubtless because of the earlier fracas.
That same evening, one Richard Rock was returning to Dublin from some musical triumph abroad and was met at the airport by a delighted throng of appreciative fans. In the midst of the "spit on me Dickie" delirium, a balcony collapsed and many were returned to earth with a bump.
The hospital was notified of a major emergency and ambulances full of hysterical victims arrived on our doorstep. The department was in Shakespearean parlance, "full of sound and fury; signifying nothing". The surgical registrar facing this screaming avalanche was so far gone in self pity that he considered himself in more pain than any of those being assessed and treated. I might also note that those afflicted got far more sympathy than their treating doctor had, some hours previously.
The arrival of a real "acute abdomen" delivered me from this hysterical Hades, and it was almost a relief, crutches, pain and all, to escape to the calm of the operating theatre.
That night left me with an aversion to white sport coats and pink carnations and chapels on the hill, and also to the game of basketball.
Sometimes, despite the best efforts of Sr M Rosarii, who looked after us waifs in residence so well, we would augment our diet by dispatching emissaries to the "chipper" just up the road in Phibsboro. Also in this time of Methuselah, a hamburger bar opened at the junction of Eccles Street and Dorset Street offering a change of cuisine to our jaded palates.
Shortly after its opening, my fellow surgical registrar, later a distinguished neurosurgeon in Belfast, drew the short straw to visit this new culinary haven to procure provisions for his starving colleagues.
It was a complicated order: 28 hamburgers, some with mustard, some ketchup, some both, x chips and assorted drinks. He duly departed only to return a short time later empty handed.
He had joined the queue at pub-closing time and gradually worked his way to the top. When the magnitude of his order percolated to the gentry behind, a riot nearly ensued and he was told in graphic terms to remove himself. He claimed that the interest of public order rather than intimidation made him withdraw. His prudent stance was not appreciated by his colleagues in the residency either.
I think at the time, Dublin had one or two Indian or Chinese restaurants, and kebabs and pizzas were in the distant future, and yet somehow we survived.
I suppose it is a sign of the times that an outbreak of food poisoning allegedly originating in a Sligo town is considered newsworthy. We residents were felled almost yearly by the same condition and never made it to the papers.
No Health and Safety Authority then, no inspections, no closing down of kitchens; such protections lay in a future beyond our imagining. Yet our hospitals functioned and the sick were looked after in dignity and with compassion. common sense ruled. I wonder where it went. I suppose it wasn't politically correct enough for these times.
Maurice Neligan has a strong stomach and is also a cardiac surgeon.