Essex boys

Revising for my exam and have just read about cystic fibrosis, which reminds me of a patient I saw the last time I was on nights.
I had a bleep at about 1 in the morning. "I'm sorry," began the nurse (always a bad sign when nurses are apologetic for no apparent reason), "*Damien's cannula has tissued. Can you come and put in a new one?" Damien is a 13 year old boy with cystic fibrosis (CF). He was in hospital for an infective exacerbation and was on intrvenous antobiotics. His Portacath had been removed after it had become infected, and he did not like to admit it, but he was needle-phobic. I arrived on the ward to be greeted with a loud, "Hi Doctor!" He grinned at me from behind the nurses' station, where he was in the middle of ordering a pizza using one of the ward's telephones. He looked about 9, and had a thick fake gold chain round his neck, more little ones around his wrist, and was wearing a basketball jersey over his hospital gown. As Inner City Hospital is in the middle of what seems like Little Bangladesh, the CF kids stand out for being white, and they all seem to come from Essex. "Hi Damien," I said. "Ready for your cannula?" I motioned toward his room, but he swaggered a few steps in the opposite direction, and stuck his head into someone else's. "Hey *Jen," he said, "come and see this." A skinny blonde girl (another CF patient) emerged. She was wearing a pink tracksuit and a similar gold chain around her neck. Damien wanted an audience for his ordeal.
Having finally coaxed him into his room (and banished Jen from it), he stuck his hand out. "You can have one try, there," he said, pointing to a vein in the back of his left hand. I was still trying to get over the surrealness of his manner. Fortunately the cannulation was an easy job (having done loads of thalassaemics with totally shot veins and very dark skin). "Thanks, doc." said Damien, running off to find Jen and his pizza.