JBJ Hospital Diary pt 3

Friday 31/7/09

I woke up in a cunt of a mood. I hadn’t slept, my arm was increasingly painful and I was still shitting myself about being put under and wondering what I’d do if it didn’t work.

I was told it would be 12pm or “maybe tomorrow” that I’d go in. I got into some Abraham Hicks while on a shit-tonne of codeine and it got my head together a bit. It turned out that I got taken down just before 2pm and panicked in the direction of anyone who came near me: porter, receptionist, anaesthetist, surgeon, you name it. The anaesthetist gave me some ‘calming’ drugs before knocking me out, so by the time it came to it, I thought it was a brilliant idea! “Lets go! Knock me out, Doc!” I was saying.

I woke up to find myself (as I usually do after anaesthetic), swinging my arms about and shouting. My family seem to have a history of having interesting reactions to general anaesthetic, my favourite being my sister waking up and telling the nurse she was “pure… beautiful” before bursting into tears. I, this time, felt very nauseous, had come out in a rash and was generally freaking out in a semi-conscious but vocal manner. My arm felt better already, the same amount of pain but not as ‘wrong’ as it did before, more natural. Or as natural as 4 steel pins holding your arm together can feel I suppose.

I went upstairs, back to the ward and after my new 20 hour fast was given 2 slices of bread, a slice of cheese and a pear, but Colin added to this a fantastic pack of crisps and M&Ms from the machine. We had a few laughs in the ward (actually, i was so wasted that when i think about this, i remember loads of people there and music playing and all that) eventually he headed back to the hotel. For the rest of the night I phoned family etc back home to give updates and watched Mannequin. My sleep was only interrupted once by pain, but my favourite night nurse James sorted me out. In exchange for eye-pieing painkillers, I’d say things in my funny accent at his request, leaving us both delighted.