The Big[ish] Sleep

 

(Written following open-heart surgery at Papworth Hospital - the surgeon and the staff were brilliant.)

Having already carefully shaved my chest of its normal complement of hair, I made a last light-hearted remark to the anaesthetist in the hope of persuading someone that I was not afraid and then ... nothing. Nothing until about 12 hours later, when they allowed me to wake up in intensive care. I wiggled all my extremities to make sure they were working and, when I could assemble the words, asked whether my mitral valve had been repaired or replaced. It had been repaired - mission accomplished! All I had to do now was get better.

But oh, I did feel ill. The pain was reasonably well controlled by morphine and I soon found that the nausea too could be medically controlled but not sufficiently actually to encourage eating. The feeling of being ill was compounded by the wires and pipes sprouting from me and the monitors to which I was connected. I couldn't move without first being unplugged.

Quite quickly, though, they started to remove first this pipe and then that and then I was able to be disconnected from the main monitor. I started to do more than simply get up out of my chair. I walked one or two paces and then more. I felt a sense of triumph when finally, clutching my pacemaker which was still wired through to my heart, I put my head around the door of my room and looked into the corridor. Another world.

And the cards. I've never seen so many and never before realised how much difference it makes when you're feeling ill to know that people care about you.

Numerous people visited and offered to visit, despite the distance and despite the fact that they knew that after half an hour I would ask them to leave. Talking, even with oxygen fed into me was something like running a marathon. But it was wonderful to see them and they were then able to spend some time with the wife I had brought with me to this isolated part of the country and who was probably worrying more than me about the whole thing.

All good things come to an end, though, and on the 9th day following the operation I was released back into the community and life could start again.

Oh and yes, since you ask, the hair on my chest is growing back very nicely, thank you.

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