Oh the nursing care was second to none. This was epitomised by one particular incident where I was at a very low ebb in the middle of the night, I was coughing and it was to the point where there was tears coming out of my eyes and I just couldn’t breathe and I was very, very distressed. Now there was a nurse there and she was rubbing my brow and so much so that I had the feeling that it was my mother looking after me, it’s a strange thing that crop into your mind. But she was like that, she was, I said to my wife several times since I’ve come out that that’s not the type of thing you can teach somebody that’s the type of thing that you either have or you haven’t got and yes it epitomised the type of nursing that I received.

Did you have to have any physiotherapy?

Yes, the physiotherapist would come along and shed do some movements with my shoulder, try and get my shoulders and my body moving a little bit but mostly it was breathing exercises that she gave me. She reckoned that most people breathe through their mouth when they should breathe their nose which is something I learnt and gave me breathing exercises whereby I breathed in through my nose and then out through my mouth and that then I should do this at regular intervals. I’m supposed to still do them at regular intervals and supposed to just keep my breathing right as that is a problem that I have which it’s an ongoing problem. But not, certainly not an insurmountable problem.

I think I was in theatre for four hours and then they kept me there on observation for an extra two afterwards. I think the reason behind that was with me being overweight and with me, I tend to have coughs and that sort of thing, I think they just wanted to be sure before they sent me back up for observation on the ward. Nonetheless when I got back on the ward and became aware again I wa; told that they’d taken away the whole of the lung and part of the pericardia which is something that surrounds the heart. They warned me that they’d gone dangerously close as he put it to the voice box and that my voice may be affected but that he had felt that things had gone very well and that he had got the whole tumour out which obviously was a great relief to us all. But at that time, I mean at that time I was, although I was relieved I was very weak and very, I had what the ladies have when they’re pregnant, to keep the pain away?

An epidural?

I had an epidural and a little button to press when the pain came along. And that was a great comfort to me because at one stage before I realised I could help myself the pain got quite bad. And seemingly they had told me to press this button but I must’ve been in a daze and I’d forgotten so they came over and said “You don’t even feel the slightest tinkle, you press the button and we don’t want you feel anything at all.” So that, I mean in future I used the button.

What was communication like between you and the doctors?

Communication was quite good. The doctor that came and seen me on a regular basis, he was a Chinese man and he was lovely, his attitude was superb. He, it’s very hard to explain how good he was, he didn’t leave anything to chance, he explained everything to you and he would reiterate that anything, any question that I wanted to ask to ask him and he even said at one stage, ‘If you write them down because sometimes you don’t, or get your wife to ask me, because sometimes you don’t always remember what you want t; ask. So he was good and he also, as I said before, the worst part was bringing this spittle up and he was underlining the fact that this was so important to me, getting well and he would say like “Spit for England,” and things like that. And I laughed at that stage, and said “Well definitely not for England,” and my wife explained to him that I was Irish. So he was humorous as well, he was very good in communicating; I thought that he was a lovely man. So as far as communicating with the doctor was concerned that was very easy, he was very easy to approach.