#timeforsurgery

[rosaleenjohansson]

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Surgery day! #timeforsurgery #nervous #nohighhopes

[preciouslysparkled]

Innerbloom

In the midst of getting the next part of the school year off to the best possible start and keeping up with my fitness regime that has gone from strength to strength, I got a phone call. Alister from Plastics. Took me a while before I made the connection. First images running through my brain was the recycling centre where I had dumped huge canvases in the wrong dumpster by mistake and legged it…Were they chasing me?…  Of course not dimwit.  I remembered. The hospital.

Is it not an amazing thing how the human brain can go from from the dumpster to the operating theatre in a nonne second? And even more extraordinary would be that a brain can choose to forget. A brain that has been filled with the long lonely walks of white hospital corridors, endlessly waiting in clinics, tough treatments and a love of the place that keeps me alive. St George’s.

Anyway, a last-minute cancellation had occurred and that meant I would advance to the top of a list probably as long as the Nile, for reconstructive surgery. Whoop whoop!! At the same time it was so far from my mind that I would got through surgery in January that it is a bit of a reality check.

At preop yesterday, I had to go through the normal paperwork and questions I have answered a shedload of times. In the midst of questions on heart murmur, valve replacements, chronic pain, hernia or significant problems with stomach acid they’ve snuck in “Are you a homeowner😨?…” Gets me every time….Yes… and it will affect me in tomorrow’s surgery how?…Maybe they’ll have legal advisory services on how to write your last will and testament just before anesthetics?…. But seriously, I do understand they need to establish if there is a social care issue that needs to be adressed, but even so it is a bit funny…

That was the excitement of yesterday and turning up today, I was quite looking forward to more hospital shenanigans. Bitterly disappointing on that score initially, as everything seemed to be calm and under control in Surgical Admissions. Or so I thought…

When I was called to be checked in by a little asian looking nurse, an encounter of language barriers took place…The same questions as yesterday, but now including some new ones… - Wearing nail varnish please?  -No -Take off please! -I’m not wearing any so that won’t be necessary… -No wear nail varnish. It’s procedure. -Ok, look at my nails, they have no varnish!! -No varnish? -No, no varnish…. -Ok. -Ok… It continued in awkward mode as my starved self is a little less composed than normal and a little on edge. -Food, please, what time is it? -Pardon? When I had my last food? -Yes!! What time is it? -? 😱I ate a snack at 10 last night. -Drink, please, what time is it? Getting her questions now I  could confidently answer that I’d drank water an hour ago. -Clear fluids? -? Yeees…the water was clear…

Thankful when the questions came to an end I could settle in to the usual waiting time infront of the oversized screen showing daytime television which is an endless treasure trove of the ridiculous and WTF moments. But it is appropriate for the setting as I’m sure it dispels some people’s thoughts.   For me sitting here always makes me ponder on time gone by and remembering back when it was all new and daunting. When it all felt as if I was in a film, that it wasn’t happening to me, but to someone else as I looked on helplessly.

I thought about the me of three years ago, staring into the mirror at a frail bald creature and how much she would have loved to have met the me I am today.

Hearing my name belted out loud and clear after 6 hours, waiting is finally over and it is time once again to walk the walk, I feel proud of the me that is here. The me that is conquering my own personal Everest. The me that has turned the wilted within into innerbloom.

Soundtrack Innerbloom, Rüfüs du Sol https://open.spotify.com/track/22FQIHFVTooytobKZ3h65E