A PAINFUL EXPERIENCE
Hartland’s Medical and Dental Hypnosis – Michael Heap and Kottiyattil K Aravind
It was a cold, frosty, early-February afternoon in 2019 when I embarked on an epic journey across London to go see some magic.
I say ‘epic’ because I’d catastrophically broken my leg the previous summer and, unbeknownst at the time, was suffering a life-threatening post-op infection.
The journey from my flat in Brixton, south London, to the wonderful Wilton’s Music Hall in the heart of London was so epic, in fact, I had to set off a few hours in advance of the evening show. I was still a slow, limping, lumbering mess who’d taken to wearing a giant pair of leg-warmers for ‘protection’ against the brutalities of the London Underground.
Clearly, a good book was necessary to keep me company while I waited at Wilton’s for my friend to arrive. And so I chose Hartland’s Medical and Dental Hypnosis by Michael Heap and Kottiyattil K Aravind.
This book had been prescribed by a hypnotherapy diploma course I was embarking on later that year, so I figured I’d get stuck into my prep.
But my leg break also left me with a fascination for pain control. So the book was appealing to better understand some of my broken-boned experiences.
I didn’t even fall – my mother protested my stepping inside a second-hand bookshop while on an excursion to Margate. I turned awkwardly on ye olde steppe in irritation and my left foot must have rolled off the ledge – I don’t recall. I landed on my arse and, fascinatingly, my body was immobilised; I knew I could not, should not, attempt to stand.
Contemplating the peculiar angle of my rapidly swelling ankle, I knew this was bad, dire, an emergency – despite my mum’s pleas to get up and speculations it was just a sprain. And, because I knew all these things, I also knew I didn’t need to experience the pain. I stared out to sea and told my body and brain that help was on its way, and that I didn’t need the pain.
When the ambulance crew arrived almost an hour later, I was still without pain. They commented that this was a dislocated tibia-fibula fracture if ever they’d seen one, and a bad one, to boot. By the time a doctor was poised to knock me out with profonol (which he was very keen to impress upon me was the drug that killed Michael Jackson) to pop my foot back into place, I was in the most e-x-q-u-i-s-i-t-e pain imaginable.
Pain was the ‘red thread’ of my two-week hospital stay before the operation, and my subsequent recovery… right up until today. I was told by doctors I wasn’t experiencing enough pain as an in-patient; I quickly learned ‘pain’ was the bargaining chip in ensuring receipt of pain relief and medical attentions in a pressurised health system. I learned that morphine is a blissful release from this (and that Kev takes great pleasure from beating me at Dobble while I’m full of it). Pain changed my face and my personality. Pain is an excellent reason to demand wine and pizza and to get your work sick leave extended and for your then-newish-boyfriend to hoover your flat. Pain is complex; it’s good, bad and ugly, and I wanted to better understand it.
I sat down, then, at Wiltons that afternoon and drank in 176 pages of Hartland’s Medical and Dental Hypnosis – as well as several large dry whites (#PainRelief). If you’ve benefited from Kev’s credible and valuable reflections upon key academic books, then I hope you can forgive me for being consistently useless with such tomes. I don’t remember much about the 176 pages I did read – and I never reached ‘the meat’ of content on pain control.
What I do remember is sitting down to see the magic show with my now-present friend – and seeing none other than Derren Brown, and three of his collaborators, one of whom I’d had a couple of email exchanges with, in the audience three or four rows in front.
Now, readers of this blog will know that Uncle Derren features as both a leading shaper of public perceptions of hypnosis today, and as someone who’s influenced my and Kev’s paths. I sat through the show really appreciating why people say to never meet your heroes – hobbling up to them while slightly inebriated in an outfit that cries “I’ve only recently stopped cutting the left leg off my leggings!” is not something to aspire to.
After the show, my friend and I did the only sensible thing: we hid upstairs and got completely shitfaced. My logic was that Derren would do the public selfies and autographs thing, then they’d rendezvous with their performing magician pals and, sooner than later, go elsewhere. After which it would be safe for us to make our escape.
Wiltons was closing, and so we ventured downstairs. There, in the main bar, sat Derren & Co – alone. The last patrons there! It felt like… fate? My sozzled brain searched for a opening gambit while we lingered by the door – and it landed on the *genius idea* of asking Derren Brown, the Derren Brown, to sign my copy of Hartland’s Medical and Dental Hypnosis..?!
Clearly this would have been a ghastly, foolish, tragic, etc, etc, fan/social gaffe and I’m forever grateful to my friend for dragging me to our Uber home.
So there you go. My bookmark remains stubbornly on page 176 and Uncle Derren remains blissfully ignorant as to my existence. If you see future ‘academic book’ posts authored by myself, I hope this teaches you to steer clear!
