Slash and dig day has arrived. It is this Thursday that my sebaceous cyst gets exorcised. So I am up early and eating a muesli breakfast to sustain me for the day. Hot black coffee goes down a treat as I get my bag ready and order fish food for my hungry fish. I leave having a shower to the last moment in a bizarre attempt to be as clean as possible for the hospital, how mad is that, I even breakout a brand new pair of pants and a new pair of soft trousers. All this stuff is easy to take off, I’ve played this game before and have excellent hospital coping skills. So the time comes to leave for the hospital and it throws it down with rain, I drive to the hospital stopping to fill the car with petrol on the way. At the hospital I hop out and leave my partner to drive back. I stand in the rain and ring the mobile number on the door in order to get in. After a couple of minutes a person appears and lets me in and asks me to wait until she can do my paper work. She checks my paper work, gets me to sign some papers and then escorts me up to the surgery ward. Actually it is a suite of private rooms. I am shown in and told to wait for my nurse to come and prep me. Me being me I take pictures of my facilities
My private room 
Lobby to en suite 
My bathroom
My nurse arrives and measures my vitals while filling in more paper work on me. I answer the same questions I have answered before and listen to my instructions, change into the robe, have a piss before I go to the theatre and press the button if I need anything. The nurse leaves and I look at the notes she has left. Of course I photographed them. It appears I am very healthy. Bit ironic really given my underlying cancer.
Once the pictures are taken I get into my robe, ties at the back as instructed. I cannot resist a selfie.
My consultant comes to visit me and runs through what is going to happen to me and draws a kiss on my check to signify what work is going to be done. He also tells me that I am last on the list of four and he will get round to me about 4 o’clock. He waves farewell and tells me the nurse will be back.
I settle down to my three hour wait and break out Helgoland to reread some of the chapters on Entanglement. I read for a while and then become aware of feeling a bit odd and not sure why. Then I realise I am thinking about the month I and my partner spent in a hospital room for almost a month in Jamaica when my cancer caused my kidneys to collapse on me. I spent hours passing time in a state of existential anxiety fighting to be positive and to keep myself alive. I never realised till now how much that experience had embedded itself in me. The difference this time is that I am here by choice, in fact paid for the honour of it, but never the less the hospital sounds around me and the waiting trigger those Jamaican days. I do what I always do in these situations, I write. I drag out a writing pad and and set about writing my head out of myself so that I can do this for what it is. By ten to four I am ready and obediently empty my bladder and sit waiting for them to come and get me. At four two nurses come to the room and do more paper work and then escort me up two floors to the theatre level, which is decidedly chillier than the rest of the hospital.
And so it begins. The team introduce themselves and then they perform a ritual dance of checks and double checks. The anesthetist introduces himself and cuffs me up and clips a SATs monitor to me. My scrubs nurse introduces herself and proceeds to wrap me up in operation covers. My surgeon arrives and we get to work, anesthetic first injected into my face, the first couple were slightly painful but after that I felt nothing, it was clearly good stuff. The surgeon got to work and gave a little running commentary of how things were going with things like “well that’s got all of that out” and “oh its dry your anticoagulants don’t seem to be working.” My eyes are covered with wet bandages to keep out the intense light of the operating illumination so I can only feel some broad sensations but being sewn up is unmistakeable. I forgot to count but it was clear he clipped internally and hand stitched the outer layers before putting on butterfly clips, which he then covered with a dressing. All done I was de-mummified and allowed to sit up. I was all for walking back but they insisted that I be wheeled down to my room. The nurses encourage me to rest and to wait for my tuna bagel to arrive. As soon as they left I of course take a selfie.
My tuna bagel arrives with my coffee in a small silver pot and china cup and saucer. I am very hungry and before I realise it I have got it down me without capturing it for the blog. I sip the coffee through a straw to start with but quickly get fed up with that and just drink it normally. I figure I might as well just get on with it as normal.
Once I have eaten I decide to dress and get ready to leave having rung my partner to tell her I was done. The discharge nurse arrives and takes me through the paper work adn makes sure I understand what the surgeon has said to me. It al goes well adn she pops out. The surgeon reappears to say goodbye and exchange mobile numbers so he can organise my stitches being taken out in a couple of weeks time. He reminds me to cream my wound once a day till the tube runs out and then he is off. The nurse returns and asks how I am getting home and at that moment my partner rings to say she has arrived. I am escorted down to the exit, the nurse insisting on carrying my bag. I am driven home to a tea of mince and rice coked by my eldest daughter, which was very welcome. To my delight my new England Ice Hockey jersey has arrived. This years word ice hockey championships start in a days time and England play Russia on Saturday, which is going to be on TV.
My evening is taken up with unpacking my bag, getting back to normal and writing the blog, all the time I am waiting for the anesthetic to fully wear off and for me to begin to experience the pain that all the medics advised me to take paracetamol for.
In all this has been the messages from family and friends that have been supportive and kind for which I have been immensely grateful.
