TONSIL RATS AT FARSUND HOSPITAL

Tonsil rat

Summer 1946, we checked out the sanitary facilities at Farsund Hospital and found them under any criticism. We came from a furnished home on Bringsjord in Lyngdal, where it was installed properly toilet in a small enclosure under barn bridge where our father had fine planed a disk with two holes, with two round openings, one large and one small. The large hole, which was aimed at adult buttocks, was admittedly dared to sit on for a 5 year old, for if one was inattentive and plunged in through there, bar the flux into the darkened basement fertilizer.

With "grandma in the new building" there were much safer conditions, thus, since the fall height there was little. She had the toilet in the hen house and there was only a dirt floor with chicken dung and other muck as she chopped away and spread out over the potatoes in the springtime. There were still stubborn rumors that the roost toilets one could be exposed to rat attack from below, and all knew then that kid gear was most vulnerable...

The toilet under the barn was little used after bedtime. Who would shiver across the darkened yard on a dark autumn night? Then there wisely put forward a white enameled bucket for common use in a corner in the upstairs hallway. So everything went as usual on the farm, and everyone was happy and fresh until Kjell got a sore throat and could only drink hot milk with honey and eat porridge.

The mother was afraid that there was something wrong with the prospective farmer, and drew us to dr. Lande in Alleen. There we had to gape and swallow and the diagnosis was that Kjell had red, swollen tonsils as promptly should be removed. So what about me and mine, there was no red on them too? Oh yeah, dr. Lande had even twins, Gunnar and Per, and knew how such'd toured; just as well that Kjell and Finn were operated simultaneously, so it was done.

A few weeks later we sat together with our mother on the bus to Farsund. Bus driver Mr. Bryge had kindly stopped at Presthøl Bridge, when we eagerly thrust forward right arm and leg. The bus trip to Farsund was like a fairy tale, and it peaked when we got to the Girlmountains where the road crooked forward and Bryge honked angrily horn to potential oncoming to warn that now came the bus and that they saw getting into first and best meeting place.

Farsund Hospital on the hill. Photography: Finn Bringsjord

We were greeted at the hospital, examined, washed and groomed and commanded to bed, even the sun shone outside. We had not eaten anything the day it was uncertain whether we would be right on the operating table when we arrived. But now it was said that we should not be pruned until the next morning, so it was silly, but now it was too late to eat. It gnawed in villi, but we got a glass of water for consolation.

Our good-hearted mother, who would be with us until the operation was over, went to get a cup of coffee, but it lasted and slid several hours endlessly until she came back. Finally, we drew a warning line on the wall over the bed, and a sour nurse came and told that it was not allowed for mothers to stay in the hospital, so Lina had traveled back to Lyngdal with ½ five route. Then it was cast long shadows into the room and we looked rather dark throughout the hospital stay. Should we ever see again father & they and 5 newborn kittens to Bianka?

Having depress a while, came back discouraged, and we thought of the brother Ludvig had told about how easy it was to operate away some tonsils: "It is like picking cherries from the tree. The tonsils hanging on stalks, and then comes the doctor with a pair of scissors and cut them down as soon as you have fallen asleep on the operating table. No big deal! ". When I asked if we could get tonsils home to Bianka, this was laughingly dismissed, "Oh no, tonsils goes to the dark red tonsil rats in Farsund".

A while later came the sour nurse in and said that now we had to sleep because tomorrow we should get up early and operated, so she said "good night" and turned off the light. Slightly depressed we were lying there in the dark, feeling the tears pushed forward. No praised and evening prayer this evening. No circumspectly mother's hand through hair...

It should not be so long before we noticed that there were also other things besides tears that pressure on, we had to pee. Carefully we slipped down on the cool linoleum floor to look for the white bucket, but it was not there. Oh, of course stood out in the hallway! But there it was not. The only thing we saw was an old woman in gray-checked bathrobe that went into a door, way down the corridor.

Farsund was a strange city! They had no white bucket at the hallway; so whoever was going to the toilet had to go way out on the hen house toilet. No thanks! City’s rooster house and tonsil rats? There cracked courage...

Back at the room, we realized that there was only one thing to do; we had to pee in bed. But there we had stopped to do long ago. And we remembered how disgusting it smelled of straw mattress for days after unfortunate relapse. Fortunately stood a ready-made bed no. 3 until a wall, also were constructed of green-painted pipes. Caution and guilty, we climbed into the high bed, pulled aside the covers, and were just about to open the floodgates, as I saw it: a wonderfully beautiful black hole in the top of the U-shaped pipe in the front end of the bed; a side stopper was falling out.

Gods carry and comfort, what a relief. Something similar had we done several times through the knothole in the barn wall on Nodeneset. We picked up a stool and with steady hand, we filled up piping in bed.

The morning after I was killed, suffocated by an ether-cloth was pressed hard against the nose and mouth. Oddly enough, I woke up again about the same minute and had a terrible pain in the throat and difficulty in speaking and eating for days.

In the afternoon gave a smiling nurse from Spind us insight into water closet incredible mystery; that with pulling the brass lace poured water from a huge water tank under the roof down into the toilet bowl without this was filled with water that flowed across the floor with plimp and poo and paper. No; "sim sala bim", so was all filth disappeared down the bowl. The cheerful sister did not know where the unspeakable shit vanished away, but she was quite sure that it not ended up in a city roost house.

"Where do you have the dark red tonsils rats here at the hospital"? I wondered, "Are they perhaps in the hen house"? But then she laughed well and allayed laughingly that it was not tonsils rats at Farsund hospital.

"Do you think we can get our 4 tonsils with us back home?" whispered Kjell, a voice like a crow came from his knife scraped through, "you see that freshly boiled almonds are the best Bianka know about - and they will come in handy now that she has five kids to feed”. The cheerful sister of Spind promised to look into the matter, but she probably thought they were already washed down the drain...  Where our four dark red actually took the road we never know.

A few days later, two of our big sisters came to Farsund and fetched us. Outside the hospital was the neighbor boy, Erling, in his dark red Studebaker Convertible waiting on us, and with open hood, we drove all the way home to Bringsjord. That day it was served cream cake, topped with strawberries, in a garden party for friends and neighbors. The twins were home.

Finn & Kjell. The photo is taken just before surgery

This blogside was printet in paper "Lister" 4th July 2015