You know what doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs? Surgery for blood clotting caused by a burst abscess under the skin. You’d probably need a shit-load of morphine to deal with the pain. You could also probably do with a sympathetic doctor.

No such luck for Manchester man Qasim Abbalisi, who was left in agony for 24 hours after his surgery at Wythenshawe Hospital, but was told by the surgeon who performed the operation to “man up” and “stop screaming like a girl”.

Qasim had woken up in an unbearable amount of pain after his operation — the morphine had worn off. He asked for more pain relief but was told by one of the nurses that he “shouldn’t be in so much pain” and then asked if he had a “low pain threshold”.

Qasim said: “I kept dozing off then waking up screaming because of the pain. I remember calling the nurse and begging for painkillers. I was told that my nurse was on a 15 hour shift and that he had to eat. He would come to me when he had time.”

It took 24 hours before the consultant who performed the operation turned up and took out the internal wadding that Qasim believes had been causing the excruciating pain.

“He told me to man up and stop screaming like a girl — his exact words. He told me to lie on my side. When I did this he ripped the dressing out. It was probably the most painful experience of my life.”

When the surgeon turned to speak to Qasim’s wife, “the first thing he asked her was if she spoke English”. Qasim and his wife Fozia are Manchester born and bred and Qasim has a Chemistry degree from Oxford and a PhD from Sussex uni. Whoops.

Qasim made it out alive, which is the important thing but he’s rightly bringing his treatment to light so that nobody else has to go through the same thing. Bet the staff at Wythenshawe Hospital would have been a lot more respectful of him if they knew he spoke enough English to take it to the press.

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