Monday 26 July 2010

Aftermath

I woke up surrounded by big bosom-y black women. There may have been six, there may have been just two, but they exuded enough love and care to make me feel surrounded and fussed over and looked after. Or maybe I was still high.

“Where am I?” I slurred. They told me I was in the recovery room. Then it hit me: a gut-wrenching tidal wave of emotions. The events of the past 12 hours overwhelmed me and I started sobbing. Tears drained down my cheeks and my chest heaved with every sob. The nurses did some more bustling: “What’s wrong dear? Are you in pain?” “No,” I managed to say, “it’s just been a really long day.”

I don’t remember much after this. Apparently I called Mark once I was back on the ward. I slurred at him as I once again railed against the bastard registrar. Then I sunk into more sleep.

The next day there was pain and pills. They had gone in via the old scar from my previous operations and it was now longer. It was held together by stitches that would dissolve – which was a relief. I remembered having to have my stitches taken out and it wasn’t pleasant. The registrar came to see me at one point, to check out his handiwork and let me know how the operation went. I said little, watching him with suspicion and waiting for his insensitivity to jumpstart my counter-attack. But he was fine, a lot less boisterous this time, and he spent only a little time with me.

The pills were a cocktail of pain killers, and not as exciting as you may imagine: two paracetamol, one ibuprofen and (the only exotic one) one dihydrocodeine. Generally I was left alone by the nurses to sleep and speak to the next batch of people I thought I should tell.

My friend Jen texted me first thing to ask what time she should arrive for dinner at mine that night. I called straight back, there would be no dinner tonight. She was great as always and asked if I wanted to tell our friends Su and Yuki or get her to do it. I was glad she could do it for me. Already it was a hard conversation to have. But my family handled it all so well. I really experienced the benefit of having two parents who worked in the medical profession. They were concerned, consoling, but practical at the same. Then there were my sisters, with their sentimental pep talks; Libby in particular had a reassuringly no-nonsense but caring approach that comes from her own training as a nurse.

But the hospital wasn’t done with me yet. I couldn’t spend all day chatting on the phone and reading my book (Day of the Triffids, if you must know). They wanted me to have a CT scan, to check my innards for any signs of cancer there. They asked me if I could walk down. I’d hobbled to the toilet okay so said I reckoned so. They reckoned not and got me a wheelchair and a porter. Which sounds quite nice but is actually quite weird when you’re used to being so independently mobile.
The scan staff made me drink a vile-tasting liquid which they’d tried to sweeten with lemon cordial. It didn’t really work. The liquid was supposed to dye your insides so they showed up when scanned. They told me it may make me feel nauseous. It did. After waiting around for an hour for the dye to pass through my body, they invited me in for my scan. I’d given up drinking the dye as it was becoming hard to keep down, but they told me I’d drunk enough.

The mixture of pain from walking and the dye in my stomach made me feel queasy and I began to retch. A nurse got me a bowl but the only thing that came out was spittle. I waited until my stomach had calmed down then slowly manoeuvred myself onto the scanner. I had to lie down with my feet through a large donut-shaped contraption. Another nurse then hooked me up to a drip, more dye apparently, and told me that when the scan started I may feel warmth inside my body, as well as some nausea and a tingling sensation. That sounded like a mixture of the pleasant with the unpleasant to me, so wasn’t sure whether to be nervous or not.

The nurses retreated to a safe distance and the scan started. An American female voice boomed from the donut as it moved up and down and around me, telling me when to breath and when not to. Then the tingling started. It was mainly in my belly, though went up to my chest and I got, yes, little waves of nausea, but I didn’t feel like I would vomit. The sensation of warmth was quite pleasant but none of it felt natural so I wouldn’t say it was an enjoyable sensation; just an interesting one to have experienced.

And that was it. The American female voice fell quiet. The nurses reappeared from their hiding place and helped me off the machine. Soon I was being trundled back to my ward to answer more phone calls.

I’d been told I would be discharged that day but there didn’t seem to be much rush to do it. Libby had decided to come down from Bath with Joseph, my four-month-old nephew, and her unofficial mother-in-law in tow. She arrived early in the afternoon and was immediately bouncing around the place, quite obviously as comfortable on a hospital ward as she would be in her living room. Joseph quickly garnered the unabashed attention of the nurses; understandably given they spend their day surrounded by sick old men. Their faces lit up with joy at the sight of him. He had a similar effect on me.

Mark came to pick me up as well and by mid-afternoon I found myself in a bar by London Bridge supping on a latte while Libby changed Joseph’s nappy next to me. I got the Tube to Clapham with no problem. Mark was jumpier than I, getting nervous any time someone went near me. We got a taxi home for the final leg, as a 10 minute walk, I thought, was just pushing my luck and physical tolerance. Before long Jen was on the doorstep with a bottle of organic white wine - “It’s organic; it’s definitely good for you” – and I could almost wonder whether it had actually happened. Until I moved. Then I knew it had.

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