by Paul Potts
With all that going on, the next few months were going to be a busy time for me. And that was before everything that happened next.
CHAPTER TEN
An Opera and an Op
I STARTED FEELING UNWELL during rehearsals for Aida and Manon Lescaut. It began with a dull ache in my stomach, and at first I figured I had a bad stomach: something simple like food not agreeing with me. But when I went to London to do some Christmas shopping, I realized the pain could be something more serious.
This should have been a enjoyable occasion; the Christmas lights were on, and London’s shopping streets were bustling with people excited about the festive season. But the pain in my stomach was getting worse, and I had to walk with a pronounced limp to cope. I knew then that something was terribly wrong.
When I got back from London, I immediately took time off from work. I got on my bike, cycled to Bristol Parkway, and caught the train to Julz’s parents’ house. All I knew was that if I was going to be ill, then I wanted to be with Julz. I wanted to be able to see her, and for her to not have to drive all the way to Bristol.
Like many men, I hated going to doctors. But by now the pain had become unbearable, and I was forced to go to Bryn surgery. The doctor there told me that as I’d had the pain for over a week, it was unlikely to be appendicitis. But to be on the safe side, he referred me to Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend.
At the hospital I was seen by the surgical registrar. As I explained my symptoms, he reiterated the local doctor’s opinion that after a week, appendicitis was unlikely.
“If it was,” he said cheerfully, “you’d be dead by now!”
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or worried by that comment.
“I suppose I should rule it out completely, though,” the registrar continued. “Have you noticed your breath smelling at all?”
This, apparently, is a well-known symptom of appendicitis.
I shook my head. “I brushed my teeth before heading out,” I explained.
“Of course,” the registrar replied. “But can you blow into my face anyway, to be sure?”
As I breathed out, the registrar winced.
“That breath could knock over a donkey! Yes, I’m afraid it probably is appendicitis. We’re going to have to operate pretty quickly.”
In modern hospitals, appendectomy is normally a keyhole surgical procedure. In my case, because I had left it so long, my appendix had actually burst. The surgeon, the registrar cheerfully told me, was going to have to “cut me up” to take it out. I was nervous at the thought, but they knew best.
I was relieved that I had made the decision to come to Wales, as I definitely wanted to be close to Julz if I was having an operation. The news didn’t go down so well with my parents, who felt it was inconsiderate of me to have gone over, knowing they would have to travel. I didn’t do it to put them out; Julz was my future wife, and I wanted to be close to her. I thought they would understand, but I don’t think they did.
Thankfully, the operation went with no hitches and I was sewn up pretty tidily. I was still in pain, however, and had regular doses of pethidine (aka Demerol) to deal with it. As Christmas ticked closer, I worried that I would have to stay in over the festive period. But after five days in hospital, I was finally discharged and allowed to go home. I was glad to have put the whole episode behind me.
Or so I thought.
I’d got through Christmas fine, and thought I had been convalescing well. Then just before New Year, Julz and I went to watch a film at the cinema in the Aberavon seafront. Everything seemed normal: we had our usual snack of peanut M&M’s and settled down to watch the movie. But as the film went on, I started to feel less and less with it. I was beginning to feel sick and dizzy.
Vomiting is something I’ve always hated, but by the time we got back to Julz’s parents’ place, I couldn’t stop myself. I was violently sick several times. Julz drove me to Maesteg Hospital to see the off-hours doctors, who immediately referred me back to the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend. By now I was being sick so violently that it hurt.
It was déjà vu: I was readmitted to the ward I had left little over a week ago and saw the same doctor as before. I was sent for tests and a CT scan to check for infection. There were a few ominous mutterings and I was sent to another room, where I was given an ultrasound scan. By now I was getting more than a little worried. The gel felt a bit weird on my skin, but more disconcerting were the words from the person operating the scanner. I couldn’t pick up many of them, but two in particular leapt out: tumour and malignant.
I was left panicking. It was hours before I next saw a doctor, the same surgical registrar I had seen on my first admission. This time around, he was somewhat more serious as he gave me the results.
“We’ve found a tumour, Paul,” he said. “It’s close to your liver, and it’s large. We think it’s about thirty centimetres in length.”
“Is it malignant?” I asked, remembering what I’d seen on the scanner.
“We won’t know for certain until it has been removed. But we suspect it’s benign.”
The registrar told me they couldn’t do the operation there, and I would have to have surgery in the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. At this point, Mum and Dad, who’d rushed over to see me, came in. I got an earful from my father, who told me I should be seen in Bristol, not here in the backwater that was Wales.
“I can refer you to Bristol if you want,” the registrar offered. “Though it will be quicker to be referred through Bridgend, as you’re already on the emergency list. If you transfer to Bristol, you’ll have to be assessed all over again.”
“I have no intention of transferring,” I told my father.
He was still angry, so I told him that if he couldn’t calm down, then he should leave. This was the first time in a long time that I had stood up for myself, and although I felt ill, it made me feel a little stronger as a person.
I was discharged on New Year’s Day. I returned for regular appointments with the hospital’s consultants, who told me it would be better if I was operated on as soon as possible. A date was found for the middle of March, right in between the performances of Aida and Manon Lescaut. I asked whether it was all right to carry on singing and take part in the shows and was told that although I wasn’t fit to work, I was fine to take part in the productions, provided I didn’t exert myself too much.
The performances of Aida took place at the end of February and the beginning of March. With everything else going on, the shows seemed to come around quickly. My role as Radames was a very challenging one, but I was determined to sing it. The rest of the cast was no gentler with me in spite of what was ahead; during the opera, I was thrown on the floor and against a throne so hard that the back of my legs were marked.
A week later, I had a meeting with the surgeon. He told me that as the tumour was on the right-hand side of my body, there was a very real risk of cutting through a major artery. As a result, they would have to stop my breathing and put me on a ventilator. On top of this, the surgeon explained that they would need to thread the breathing line through my vocal cords.
My initial thought was, You’re going to do what? Followed by, What if they can’t start me up again? and, Why me? The surgeon noticed my look of horror and told me not to worry: they knew I was a singer and would take every care not to do any damage. He added, though, that their first priority was to make sure I stayed alive. I came away in no doubt of how serious this operation was, and the risks involved.
It was a lot to take in. I was still trying to do so as I made my way to London for that night’s Manon Lescaut rehearsal. I spoke to Southgate Opera’s musical director, Neil Cloake, about it. To my horror, he told me his wife had had the same procedure and it had left her unable to sing for a considerable time. This, of course, did nothing to settle my nerves.
The operation was now upon me. I went up to the hospital the day before and settled into the pre-operation ward, where I spent
some time with Julz and her parents before they left for home. The following day, Julz returned to see me in the morning, as the operation wasn’t until around noon. I was given an ECG to ensure that everything was working as it should, and then I was given my pre-meds.
I had heard of pre-meds before, but didn’t know exactly what they were. I started to feel very drowsy. As they were wheeling me towards the theatre, I felt someone fiddling with my back, and a man introduced himself. He told me that he was normally an ambulance technician, but was on job swap for the day. He wanted to know if he had put my epidural in the right place. By now I wasn’t really on the same planet.
“You’ll know better than m . . .” I said, before going under.
The next thing I remember is coming around to find tubes coming out of me left, right, and centre. I was now in the high-dependency unit of the hospital, and everything was being monitored. Every few minutes I felt a fibre band go tight on my arm; so tightly it almost hurt.
The first thing I did was call for Julz. I didn’t want anything else at that time: just Julz. I was told that she had called to check on me and was told I was “comfortable,” a medical euphemism if ever there was one. I wasn’t so sure about the “comfortable” prognosis, especially when the strong painkillers stopped working. I had a large post-op scar that felt like it was on fire. As time went on, the sensation changed, and not for the better. It now felt like I had a full express train on my chest. I had never known pain like it.
I wanted to scream, but I didn’t want to be a wimp. I didn’t press the buzzer for assistance, but in the end the monitor readings did that for me. A nurse came in and asked if I was okay.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“Strange,” the nurse said, looking at the equipment, “your blood pressure and heart rate are telling a different story.”
I shuffled in the bed a little. I wasn’t actually all that good at playing the hard man, but I was determined to do my best. The nurse, though, was determined to get an answer.
“On a scale of one to ten, how is the pain?”
I gave my answer considerable thought.
“Ooh . . . about thirty.”
The nurse got me to lean forward so she could check my epidural. She frowned at me.
“Why didn’t you press the call button?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I didn’t want to be any trouble.”
The nurse sighed. “The reason you’re in pain is that the epidural hasn’t been put in properly. You are lying there with precisely zero pain relief. Let me get the pain nurse, and we’ll see if we can’t get you feeling more comfortable.”
I had visions of a nurse dressed in black leathers and leather gloves, but she wasn’t that kind of pain nurse. The decision was made to put me on self-administered morphine, and I was given strict instructions to make sure I gave myself enough of the drug, and not simply suffer in silence. I had been warned that I might get strange dreams, but this didn’t happen—perhaps I didn’t take enough! I asked if Julz could visit and was told this shouldn’t be a problem since I was now alert and awake.
I ended up staying in the high-dependency unit for a few days, then transferred to a surgical ward while I recovered. I was “nil by mouth” for over a week: I wasn’t allowed any food or drink, all my body’s essential needs provided for by the drip in my arm. As Murphy’s Law would have it, while I was not allowed to eat, every single lunch and dinner on the ward smelled delicious. Steak and mushroom pie, lasagne . . . my mouth was watering, but I wasn’t allowed any of it.
At the time of my operation, the Second Gulf War had just started. Being unable to sleep most of the time, I sat there and watched the events as they unfolded. Even when I did get to sleep, it was not undisturbed. The medication I was on, and the fact that I was not eating anything at all, upset my system. I felt very low and was in considerable pain. The latter wasn’t helped by the decision to remove the morphine. The nurses had been keeping me under review and had noticed that I didn’t take many breaths per minute. One of the undesirable side effects of morphine, they told me, was not breathing often enough and therefore suffering from oxygen deprivation. In fact, I was breathing quite normally for me. As a singer I was used to taking long, deep, slow breaths, and I tried to explain this to them. Their minds were made up, however, and I was moved on to oral painkillers.
Coming off the morphine just made the pain worse. I repeatedly woke up in the night from the agony. The first night it happened, I asked for pain relief, thinking the night nursing staff would get me painkillers that wouldn’t affect my main dose. I thought wrong: the nurse brought forward half my next dose, but wrote it up as a full dose. This meant that for the first eight hours of the next day I had no pain relief at all.
It wasn’t until the end of my second week on the ward that the pain settled down a little, and I started to get into a more normal routine. The tramadol was starting to be a little more effective, although I still had a fair amount of pain to deal with. I also had to cope with the fact that my wound was open, weeping, and infected. Although I was no longer nil by mouth, the menu had changed and the mouth-watering food I dreamt of had been taken off. Instead of steak pie I was served liver and onions, something I’d had more than enough of as a child.
Eighteen days after entering the hospital, I was discharged into the care of a district nurse. She would help me with medication and with changing dressings. But when I left, I still didn’t know whether the tumour was cancerous or not. The relief of good news would not come until several weeks later.
I was determined not to let my illness get in the way of my singing. The day after I was discharged, auditions were being held for the chorus of the Welsh National Opera. If I was honest with myself, I wasn’t at all ready. Ian Comboy, my voice teacher, also told me exactly the same thing. As with his comments about taking part in the singing competition in Barcelona, his advice was absolutely right. As with Barcelona, I ignored it. Too late, I thought to myself. I’m outside their rehearsal doors now.
On reflection, it was a mixture of stupidity combined with a good pinch of stubbornness that led me to go ahead with the audition. It was a stupid thing to do because it could mark my card for the future, and prevent me getting anywhere in subsequent auditions. I also didn’t help myself with my selection of music: I had chosen “Che Gelida Manina” and “E Lucevan le Stelle,” even though the letter of invitation indicated that I should pick from different genres. However, most of my music was in Bristol, so this was the only choice I had.
In the rehearsal with the pianist beforehand, I was in very good form and quite confident. But it all fell apart in the audition room. I had used all my energy in preparing and didn’t sing well. I made my apologies, explaining that I had only been discharged from hospital the previous day. The panel told me that although they could hear some potential, I should have waited until I was well again before auditioning.
My focus now was getting ready for the production of Manon Lescaut; it was only a week before a full weekend of staged rehearsals at Southgate, North London, and I needed to learn my words. I used my Sony microphone to record my voice over the top of José Carreras’s and listened to it on repeat. I then got some reference cards and wrote down the libretto again and again until I could write it out without looking at the music score. This was my system for learning lyrics, and remains so to this day.
During the whole time I was rehearsing with Southgate Opera, members of the chorus were kind enough to put me up in their homes, instead of my having to travel back and forth from Wales. One particular family that looked after me very well was the Prior family. They had three cute little girls who would fight over whose Choco Shreddies I would be given.
When they heard my surname, they were immediately reminded of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Caractacus Potts. I was serenaded by all three to a pitch-perfect performance of “Truly Scrumptious.” The youngest, a very precocious four-year-old, was a huge fan of James Bond music and sang a very
sweet version of “Nobody Does It Better.” The people of Southgate Opera treated me very well, and I had a brief but enjoyable time with them.
The rehearsals were quite intensive and not helped by the fact I was still recovering from my operation. I was partway through rehearsing the first love scene with Ruth Kerr, who was playing the title role, when she noticed that something wasn’t quite right.
“Oh my God, Paul, you’re bleeding!”
I told everyone not to worry and explained that I had an open wound and simply needed to change my dressing. They weren’t convinced when I returned, but I was insistent. There was no way I was giving up. I was determined to perform my role in full.
And get through it I just about did. One of each cast’s performances was filmed, and in the footage of the finale of act 4, I could be seen limping slightly. This could be considered good acting, as I was meant to be in the desert, dying of thirst. I had succeeded through stubbornness and sheer determination—I was proud of myself.
There were certain sections of my performance that Julz couldn’t watch. At one point, the action called for me to kiss Manon. I assured Julz that it was just acting, but she wasn’t so sure.
“You don’t need to look like you’re enjoying it that much, though!” she said with a half smile.
Ian Comboy had suggested I write to music agents and invite them to all the performances. I did, but never heard back from any of them. Despite that, my performance in the role of Chevalier des Grieux was one of the highlights of my life.
I had one final leading role to perform that spring—the bridegroom at my wedding to Julz. Our marriage was to be the culmination of a frantic few months: as well as my time in hospital and the opera productions, we had also been house hunting and had finally found our first home. The house was in central Port Talbot, and though it wasn’t in great condition, it was the best we could afford. When we applied for the mortgage, we could only use Julz’s income: we didn’t know whether my tumour was cancerous or not, and as a result I couldn’t get critical illness coverage or life insurance. We had a very nervous wait while our house, which was a repossession, went through its statutory ten-day notice period. After an agonizing wait, we discovered that our offer was the only one accepted within the notice period. We were delighted: it was the last property in the area we could have bought with our budget. Now we could focus on getting married.