When summoning attention, with everybody these days hysterically obsessed with their own problems, they are bound once in a while to impatiently reach for the wrong pill, bottle or cylinder. But it really is a hell of a terrible feeling to lie there suddenly or even slowly getting the axe instead of the cure.

To keep hospital employees on their toes and their hands on the right remedy you must alternate between being highly irritated or generously polite. A little of each following plenty of the former is the recipe. Require the nurse to sniff, taste or sample whatever it is she’s treating you with. She’ll give you a lot of raised eyebrow back talk but this is preferable to being swabbed with paint remover instead of a liniment. And in cases where they start amputating or taking out something healthy you still need, don’t hesitate to shout blue murder and jump straight up from wherever they’ve got you immovably strapped down. Previous practice getting out of strait jackets really helps

In a busy hospital when you are one of plenty of patients it is essential to make an impression. It helps to have your coat of arms largely and colourfully emblazoned on the sheet covering you. Wheeled in to the operating theatre under the doc’s nose it will make him glance up from sharpening his scalpel. It also brings looks of awe from folk watching you carted by down the corridors. And provided everybody isn’t doing it, this harmless pretentiousness always makes staff think you’re someone different and special and it stimulates dim witted minds.

Show the doc you’re a sport by winking and grinning up at him. This gives you a personality instead of being about the thirteenth bloody mass of shivering belly he had had to hack through that night with it now a god awful four a.m. in the morning. And if the doc is red eyed and seems, as you stare up from the table, to be a wee bit unsteady on his feet, laughingly offer the little reflection.

"Jesus doc, don’t kill me will ya."

Carefully watch what impression this makes on him. If he is unsympathetically unamused and turns away to take another drag on his cigarette, or worse, cigar, it is more than high time to add further to your remark.

"And by the way doc if you do kill me, I’ve left instructions with my

lawyers to slam you and the hospital with a multiple series of malpractice

suits that will make the trustees of this hospital and their endowments

tremble as well as your scalpel shake so much you couldn’t cut

your way out of a cardboard built barn."

It is essential that these words have the desired effect of making the doc pull himself together. It would never do if when the doc’s cutting through a particularly difficult area criss crossed with major nerves and blood supplies that he mulls over your threat and his scalpel goes into a spasm of tremor on the spot. This coupled with his tense cautiousness plus the pressure of hours of operating, he could completely panic and instead of a few minor little gashes here and there, you could end up needing to have your parts listed and labelled before they could be stitched back together again. And it just might, even at this last minute, be best to change docs. Shun physicians who have berserk tempers. Especially those heavy drinking ones with somewhat eccentric reputations. Who have been known to throw artistic tantrums in the sweat of operating when trying to get their hands around something slippery to pull out through the overly discreet opening they’ve made to impress colleagues. As the ruddy item keeps escaping from their fingers, they have been known to take a back handed swipe at the tray of instruments. The sound of these surgical steel tools tinkling across the floor tiles generally gets a laugh. But is often followed by the doc storming out of the theatre shouting "God damn it," having ripped the oxygen mask off the patient’s face and then sneered at the protesting anaesthetist. Although there are a lot of eager experience seeking final year students to take over who thrill to this kind of robust display of temperament, it can produce acute pessimism even in the most optimistic of awaking patients.

After the long arduous endurance of being cut, clipped, staunched and stitched and then heavily billed it is a painful feeling to wake up and sense that a lot of operating utensils may have been left in you. The awareness is even worse when you feel around a bit and find that they have. Never take this uncomfortable situation legally lying down. Complaint should be immediate. But little will be gained from heaping bitter rebuke on the doc who will already be sheepish enough, as they hate doing things like this especially as he has a batting average, based on the number of folk who die under his knife, to keep low.

If you’ve decided because of the risks attendant to hospital care to instead enjoy a nice natural death in your own cozy home, remember to make provisions to stop the smart arsed relatives who are going to think you can get better treatment far enough away from their daily inconvenience as they can get you. To prevent them suddenly jumping you at all unsavoury hours of the day or night to shovel you into an ambulance usually requires the secreting of firearms.