There was a particularly memorable medical event that occurred over the winter that has to be recorded to give a more realistic over-view of life on a BAS base. Steve had developed a sizeable lump under one of his nipples. Our medical facilities were very limited and Dr Terry Allen had no way of determining whether or not this might be a tumour. Thinking along the lines of “better safe than sorry”, Terry decided it was better to perform a relatively straight-forward operation and remove the lump. He would need an assistant to perform the operation. Several of us wanted to take on this role (another Antarctic box ticked) and we drew lots. I won. Everyone else could hover and take the pictures.
The best operating theatre we could come up with was the dining mess. We gave it a good scrub and Steve was put on a table. Cleaning, scrubbing, disinfecting and preparation of sterile towels were little more than our usual immaculate and thorough base-cleansing programme (ish!). Lighting via various lamps was no great problem, and, of course, was suitably augmented by multiple camera flashes at gripping moments. He was very co-operative under the circumstances, because the operation was planned to take place under a local anaesthetic. He would be able to hear (and possibly see) all that was going on, and while this was really quite a serious matter, most of the on-lookers were only contributing to the occasion by cracking jokes. Terry responded in his usual casual manner, providing a semi-humorous commentary to explain each and every cut of the scalpel. My main role was as a mopper-up of fluids and assistant stitcher-upper.