full description if you can handle it.

I am lying here at 4am using my phone ever so briefly after typing this for hours offline. The reason I am awake at 4am and have been all night is because unfortunately the terminally ill lady opposite needs pain relief and assistance with breathing every few minutes. But who needs sleep after surgery eh. Should I complain? No not to the understaffed underpaid nurses who are just trying to do the best they can with facilities that don't cater for a variety of patients. But if you don't mind you said you d always listen so can I tell you about my day instead?

So after 3 days hectic planning I left the house at 5.30am and headed off arriving at sutton am hour and ten minutes later, if phils car could fly it would have done at the speed he d whisked me off to hospital in. I was to my absolute relief given a private room only to settle in and be moved to a nearby cramped ward with my bed is situated opposite a terminal patient and a lady having chemotherapy. Sound appealing for a hospitalized first timer?

After going 24 hours without food or water and waiting all of 8 hours in a sunshine burnt room with thick surgical stockings warm enough for an Alaskan swim I still when the nurse actually remembered I existed nodded when asked are you ok!

So at 5.30pm I headed down to be greeted by an unfamiliar person who didn't hide his understandable desire to get home. I was last of the day and there had been a string of complications preceding me. He then left me half naked in a cold pre op room and went into theatre to set up for ten minutes.

I absolutely could not wait to go under to relieve the headache that arrived at 1pm through dehydration and has returned now through exhaustion. I vaguely heard the surgery went well from the swiftly departing surgical team and I told them they were amazing whilst resisting the urge to say they are far from amazing at scheduling operations and retaining the 8 hours of torture I will never get back that now may mean I am in here longer.

Phil. What can I say? He went without just as long out of a gentlemanly desire to suffer with me, but this is the man who ate cold beans to prove his love I may I add did not. He did the right amount of hand holding, hair stroking and soft laughs to give me enough support to walk down a very rough road.

So I lie here oxygen tube up nose, bloody fluid draining from a sore wound into a large bottle, I v needle numbing my hand throughout the heat of the night with the background noise of strained lungs and vomiting and what do I feel? I feel lucky to be alive and so relieved that in a few days I can close the chapter of book on how to survive two operations in three weeks and not fall to pieces...much. love you all dearly and please stop to appreciate your life today.