Surgery has moved on a lot since the days of the 'Butchering Art' – Susan Morrison

Following cancer surgery, Susan Morrison is relieved she didn’t try to punch a consultant this time

Surgery has come a long way since the days when they had to break down a toilet door to drag a patient to the operating table (Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

On the morning of my operation, I entertained myself with a book called The Butchering Art. It’s a history of surgery in Victorian Edinburgh.

My own 21st-century surgeon dropped by for a chat just as I’d just reached the part where the historian Lindsey Fitzharris described a kidney stone operation.

The surgery involved the patient being held down whilst a curved metal rod was shoved up his wazoo and wooden poles up his bahookie and then the surgeon going in like a crazed machete-wielding maniac and slashing out the offending stone.

The whole surgery, excluding breaking down the toilet door to get the patient out (he’d run away), took less than 60 seconds. I read this to the great professor. A minute! So why, I demanded, will my surgery take six hours, eh? Well, he said, thoughtfully, we could do it without the anesthetic, I suppose. I went for the longer version.

General anaesthetic and I have a problematic relationship. Last April I woke up and attempted to punch a consultant, whilst bellowing, “who followed Campbell-Bannerman?” It’s Asquith, to save you googling.

I thought of warning the team last week that my reaction could involve random violence and the desire to put the prime ministers of Great Britain in order, but it turns out this time I woke up with a concerned face and grabbed everyone’s arm saying I had to take my books back to the library.

They kept trying to tell me the surgery had been a success and I kept telling them I’d left my books behind.

The great prof done good. One of his surgeons, a fantastic young woman from Dublin, came to confirm that everyone was very pleased with me. I’m always chuffed to be included in the team like this, even though my contribution to the event was just to show up and lie there for six hours without speaking. Mind you, silence from me for six hours is no mean achievement, which is probably why it requires heavy duty drugs to do the trick.

I’d met Róisín before the surgery. I do love a young woman smashing glass ceilings, and surgery used to have a bit of a reputation as a boys club, so how, I asked, did she become a surgeon? Ah, she said, back in Ireland when she was a schoolgirl, she got a chance of work experience in a hospital and she got to gown up and watch a surgery. She was hooked.

Gee whizz, I thought. In my day, work experience was sweeping the floor at the hairdressers. Things have clearly moved on a bit.

When we get back to near-normal, will we see sixth years from Trinity manning air traffic control? Doing day release to run the country? Oh hang on, I think that’s happening already with that Eton schoolboy in Number 10.

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