A long time coming

For a longtime now I've forgotten about this blog, forgotten all these words I used to write of pain and sorrow but now I'm determined to post on a regular basis once again.

I had two teeth out under anaesthetic at Torbay hospital in December 2007.

The night before I hardly slept because I was anxious about the operation. My girlfriend reluctantly came with me though she couldn't stay awake to be with me mentally. You know sometimes just being there in the flesh isn't enough especially at a time like this.

A time when I really needed her to be there for me.

I went in for my assessments and consultations only I had three when others had one which I found very odd but soon came to realise they were concerned about my irregular heartbeat and the episode at McDonald's.

After I adorned the national hospital gown and robe and I walked alone to the preparations room as my girlfriend was fast asleep in the waiting room. I lay on the bed and watched as two women and one man attached a heart monitor, BP clip and band, an ECG machine and put a line of fluid into me. They aimlessly chatted to me pretending they were interested in what I had to say but were really trying to distract me from what they were doing.

Then came the time for the anaesthetic.

They talked some more to me until I pointed out that I knew what they were going to do and reverse physiology on me doesn't work. They stopped and told me straight as they administered the anaesthetic.

My stomach sank so deep into the bed I thought it was going to fall through the bed to the floor, my heart rate increased by almost double, I felt sick and dizzy, and then I was gone, asleep.

Just over an hour later a woman was calling my name over and over telling me to wake up. Apparently they were getting very worried because it had been twenty minutes since they first tried to wake me. The nurse said she was just about to get the doctor to give me the reverse drug for anaesthetic.

I was laying on my right side with the guard rails up. I could hear the monitors beeping and people talking but I couldn't see or hear clearly.

I started to cry: "I want my mum"

The nurse asked if she was in the waiting room, well, that really set me into hysterics as I cried:

"No, she's on holiday".

Strange as it sounds, which is was, the next thing I did was ask for a cup of tea!

Sometime passed and I found myself being forcibly sat up as some nurse pushed the top half of the bed into a up right position and drew the curtains around me. It took me a while to realise that I'd fallen back to sleep and was now in a recovery cubicle and not on the intensive care recovery room.

I'm not sure if I asked for my girlfriend but at some point she appeared through the curtains. She looked sleepy and started talking to me, something about a cash machine and that she'd had a cigarette. I asked her to get my clothes from my designated locker as I wanted to wear something dignified, something more than a gaping gown which kept falling off my shoulders revealing my all to whom ever opened the curtains.

I think I drifted off again shortly after I regained my dignity because I opened my eyes to a nurse placing toast and a plastic cup of water on the table. I had already pre-determined that I wasn't going to eat anything that day but when it came to it I just couldn't face it. The sight of toast when you feel very groggy, sick and have a face swollen like a hamster's filled pouches eating tends to be the last thing on your mind.

My girlfriend at first tried to persuade me but then she tried forcing me to eat the fucking toast saying as soon as I eat it then we'll be able to get out of the hospital. I turned my back on her, curled into a ball and cried my eyes out as flashbacks of being forced fed came flooding back- painful memories.

A doctor came round a while later to check on me and he took my drip out saying nothing about me not eating the toast. He said I could leave once my medication arrived. My girlfriend then tried to dress me/help dress me but I wasn't ready for that either. She said if I got dressed then we could go straight after my medication came because she hated hospitals and with that I got really upset and angry, I said to her that she didn't have to come with me and that she could leave anytime she wanted.

After my medication arrived I eventually got dressed and staggered out of the hospital and walked to some steps where I sat and had a cigarette. I know I shouldn't have but I wanted one, so I did. A taxi arrived and we went home.

I spent the rest of the day in a daze on the sofa in some discomfort and a little pain. I ate nothing and drank through a straw.

Fallen-Angel