3. Cut It Out

Sunday morning arrived quietly. Too quietly, really.

I don’t remember much about it beyond the essentials: a hospital gown that didn’t quite understand the concept of dignity, and a pair of hospital-issue underpants that should come with a formal apology.

Then there was theatre, bright lights, and the calm, reassuring voice of the anaesthetist — the last person you ever meet who sounds like they genuinely know what they’re doing.

And then nothing.

Waking Up Is the Hard Part

The next two days in ICU were, to put it mildly, pretty fucking grim.

I was alive, which felt like an achievement, but not yet particularly comfortable. I had a button for pain relief — a small miracle of modern medicine — although sadly it did not come with a permanent “on” setting. Apparently there are limits.

On day one I was helped out of bed and into a chair, where I was rewarded with peach yoghurt.

Yes, peach. Who eats peach yoghurt?

Still, it counted as progress.

Pain was constant and inventive, finding new ways to announce itself. At several points I remember thinking, whose idea was this surgery anyway? (The answer as it turns out, was mine. Definitely mine).

By the time I was properly awake, the scale of what had been done became clearer.

Fifty-six stitches in my face.

Twenty-four stitches in my chest.

Forty-two staples running down from my left armpit.

This was not a subtle surgery. It was, however, very much lifesaving. Swings and roundabouts.

Learning to Move Again

By day three I was well enough to be moved into my own room, which felt like luxury. Privacy. Quiet. A door that closed.

The physiotherapists, however, had other ideas.

Almost immediately I was being encouraged — firmly — to get up and start moving. Short walks at first. Then laps of the corridor. I had four drains attached to me: two in my chest, two in my back, all of which needed to come along for the ride.

Fortunately, carrier bags were provided. Nothing quite undermines the seriousness of post-operative rehabilitation like shuffling through a hospital corridor dragging your internal fluids in a supermarket bag.

Day four and the feeding tube is removed. No tears were shed. It’s like having a fish bone permanently lodged at the back of your throat, except the fish was clearly enormous and for reasons unbeknownst to me was clearly holding a grudge.

Removing it is, of course, another charming experience, filed neatly under things I’m not in a hurry to repeat.

Realisation

By day five, something strange had happened.

I hadn’t noticed it at first — which, in hindsight, was the clue. Pain has a way of announcing itself loudly when it’s present, but it slips out quietly when it’s gone.

The surgical pain was still very much there. That wasn’t in question. Every movement reminded me of what my body had been through. But the other pain — the one that had lived inside my head for months, the one that had given me endless sleepless nights and required increasingly impressive painkillers and a potential opioid addiction— had vanished.

Completely.

Was this the drugs talking? Some kind of post-operative hallucination?

But no. It was real. Or rather, it wasn’t.

The pain that had dominated everything was simply… gone.

What wizardry was this?

I felt ridiculous for being surprised, and yet utterly overwhelmed by it. After months of bracing myself every waking moment, I no longer had to. I hadn’t even realised how much energy that took until it stopped.

I was dumbfounded. And more than that — I was overjoyed.

The rest of my recovery in hospital was mercifully uneventful. Painful, yes, but predictable. By day six I was allowed to leave the hospital grounds for a walk — drains still in tow — after signing a waiver that I loosely translated as “Don’t do anything stupid.”

The drains came out when the nurse said they could. But by day nine, they had gone. All of them.

That moment alone felt like a milestone. And shortly afterwards, I was told I could be discharged. Earlier than expected. Much earlier. Stitches and staples would come out the next day, and if all went well, I could finally go home.

Ten days earlier than planned.