Victoria Hislop. Phil Wang

Victoria Hislop

It Means the World …

For every moment of my life, the NHS has been there:

· It kept me in the world when I had meningitis.

· It brought into the world our two beautiful children.

· It gave my mother a long life in this world, curing her of cancers and heart problems and many other conditions. Last month, aged ninety-two, she passed away, in peace.

Thank you, NHS, you mean the world to me.

Phil Wang

Have you ever stumped a doctor? It’s rarely a good sign. The last thing you want to hear as a medical professional investigates your gaping mouth is, ‘Well, that’s new.’ But that’s just how special Olga was.

The main point of this story, as will be the case with many in this book, is that the NHS is great and kind; our nation’s proudest achievement. The second point is, don’t bother your ulcers. Really, don’t. This isn’t one of those pearl-clutching warnings of the overcautious, like ‘don’t eat too much cured meat’ or ‘don’t get in with the mob’. This one is real. And I ignored it to my detriment at some point in 2009.

I grew a delectable little ulcer on the inside of my bottom lip. A cute little bump with a tiny white head poking out the top. Perfect for all-day sensual licking and the occasional cheeky nibble.

I nibbled on that thing enough to give it a life of its own and to develop feelings. Angry feelings, it turned out. Because it soon swelled to six times its original size and transformed into something new entirely. It Hulked out, lost the adorable nibble tag and turned into a vengeful, painful, purple orb. An absolute shiner. The kind of marble children could fight over.

The super-ulcer became so large and so sinister that my sister gave it its own name: Olga. Sorry to any Olgas, but I’m afraid it was spot on. And to be frank, a quick glance at European history will confirm that Scandinavian names are quite appropriate for anything large and invasive.

Olga sat on my bottom lip, pushing against the top. Distorting my mouth so that I had a permanent grumpy smirk. Like Popeye had started taking it easy at the gym. Olga would fill with fluid until she could take no more, then burst her own banks, releasing a sticky midpoint between mucus and saliva that formed translucent vertical tendrils whenever I parted my lips, like I was being silenced by Agent Smith in The Matrix. She would then heal over and start slowly refilling again. And so the futile cycle went – an icky Sisyphus.

The GP googled my symptoms (‘lip abscess sticky fluid bad odour potentially unrelated’) and found Olga was most likely a mucocele – a mucous cyst that develops when salivary glands become plugged. They are normally painless and temporary, but only if you leave them alone. I, however, had been chewing on Olga like tobacco, and now she was going to make me pay, like tobacco. Olga wasn’t going anywhere.

I was booked in to have her removed, and spent the intervening days saying my goodbyes – watching films; having dinner together. When the appointment came, I was met at the oral surgery by a nurse and surgeon who were calm, kind and smiling. It has always amazed me how NHS staff are able to put you at ease with the implied unremarkable routineness of your procedure without making you feel any less welcome or important. It’s a difficult balance to strike, and yet it is achieved 99.9 per cent of the time (I am keeping in mind the time I coughed open-mouthed directly at my university GP, which made him instantly catch a very bad case of shouting at me).

The worst part of the experience was receiving the local anaesthetic in my lip. Compared to ‘general’, ‘local’ anaesthetic had always sounded relatively pleasant and benign to me. Like an artisan bakery or a parish meeting. So it’s strange that it should be the scarier of the two options, and that it meant I had to watch and feel a needle stab the softest part of my face and then impregnate it with fluid.

After that, the rest was surprisingly tolerable. The surgeon sliced open my lip on the inside (to keep the scar invisible, the legend) and began sawing around Olga like a bone in a tough steak. This was one of the most peculiar sensations of my life – I was completely free of pain while something was being cut out of my head.

He eventually severed Olga’s final grip and lifted her in front of me. She looked awful naked. Pink and glistening and bloated and alien. Which made what the surgeon said next all the more surprising.

‘Can I keep this?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘It’s just … I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

‘Um. Yeah sure.’ His curiosity charmed me. ‘Her name is Olga.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

My lip was sewn up, my mouth filled with cotton balls and I was sent on my way. Easy as that. I thanked them both and walked out of the room, turning back to steal a final look at my old friend. The new man in her life was placing her delicately into a vial. To study her, understand her, learn from her and better serve his noble purpose. Or because he’s just a fucking pervert or something.

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