Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

As a youngster, I never did drugs. Or cigarettes. Maybe the occasional vodka and lime. I now think I missed out. Coming round in a hospital recovery room (I was cared for by a combination of NHS and private – highly recommended) pain-free despite being pricked, gassed, punctured, bored, blown, syphoned, sliced and sewn, I appreciated the positives of downers and uppers, opiates and OMGs and, last but not least, PFAS – also known as ‘forever chemicals’. May they last forever.

I’d gone under over three hours previously, just after warning the anaesthetist that I didn’t feel any different. Fast-forward to my newly semi-conscious state that, despite being pain free, scared the heck out of me. I so wanted to return to Narnia, Neverland, Wonderland, Oz or wherever it was I’d been. But the consultant kept gently tapping my shoulder to tell me that it had all gone very well. I hope I didn’t say, ‘Oh go £^9$ yourself’. I’ll find out when he sends me his final bill.

Rude, literally, consciousness was instantaneous when the catheter was removed, yanked it was. My eyelids shot over my eyebrows and my hair frizzed like Rastafarian dreadlocks breaking free. I stayed in Recovery for an hour or so, inexpertly sipping water through a straw – for once in my sorry life, not wishing it were gin – vitals constantly checked, medical staff patting themselves on the back. I allowed myself the luxury of letting my mind wander where it might, without the disciplined checks and balances that usually prevent me from offending anyone. (Delirious? Moi?) 

One thought was that to minimise the damage and the recovery period (everything is relative), the procedure was carried out by robotic laparoscopy, i.e. robotic arms accessing ground zero via keyholes instead of via inches-long incisions. I was pumped full of carbon dioxide to improve visibility and room to manoeuvre. We need more greenhouse gas, people, not less. And as I gawped at all the disposable plastic I was consuming – oxygen tubes, syringes, drainage ducts, water cups and straws – I was fast coming to the conclusion that I’d have done less harm to the planet had I not cancelled my holiday and had instead flown half way round the world to join a luxury cruise to the Antarctic peninsula. Ironic, eh. 

Ya see, someone is trying to get me cancelled, again, this time for the supposed hypocrisy of campaigning for the environment while taking a long-haul flight and a luxury cruise. Their manoeuvres were timed purposefully to ruin my holiday-of-a-lifetime and then Christmas, the season when vulnerable family members look to me to be at my culinary, wittiest, warmest, engaging best. As it happens, a) I’m too focused on my health to be concerned with puerility b) as I’ve already cancelled the holiday there's nothing left to ruin and c) I’ve happily agreed with family on a scaled-back Christmas. This is what I’m sayin’: I get the last laugh without breaking a sweat, apart from when I was in excruciating pain and couldn’t breathe, but that doesn’t count.

Why am I laughing? which isn’t clever because laughing still hurts and I might pop a stitch. Firstly, one of my last meetings before the pain took over was at Luton Airport, in whose side I have been a thorn for 25 years. You'd think they'd seize on anything to discredit me and poke holes in my arguments, but when I told them about the (not-yet-cancelled) holiday, we joked about that needing "an awful lot of carbon offsetting!"

The other thing is that capitalist, neo-liberal, highly remunerated Tory-if-not-Reform-voting executives - you know, the guys and guyesses who the pettifoggers claim 'hoard wealth, don't pay enough tax, and get off on greenwashing' have been so kind and caring during my suffering and incarceration (in hospital, not in prison – yet). No virtue-signalling, keffiyeh-wearing, hashtag-adopting, bandwagon-jumping sanctimony here. For them, kindness isn’t restricted, rationed, rationalised or relative. Kindness just is. 

Before I sign off, I must have another pop at the NHS, but this isn't so much a pop as a tickle under the chin. I would say that the totality of my recent experience, including a 2am blue-light ambulance ride that hit every pothole between here and Oxford, was better than satisfactory. If the NHS has a problem, it’s firstly the wokism. During a pre-admission bout of form-filling, I’d stared down a male nurse smothered in pink lipstick and cheap perfume, tacitly daring him to say or do anything that might cross one of my Christian, conservative, scientific, commonsensical, common-decency red lines. I sensed that the female nurses who had to work with him were over-smiley and suffocatingly-helpful because they were nervous as hell. How TF can they do their job properly when they’re distracted like that? They can’t. That’s the problem. The NHS attitude seems to be: harm the nurses, harm the patients, but as long as the Trannies are indulged, what does it matter?

Another NHS-problem is the patients. The night after surgery, I spurned the commode and wobbled to the loo, despite the nurse telling me to wait until she could help me, but time, tide and my bladder wait for no one. That morning, I sat in a chair for breakfast, which consisted of a sweet cup of tea and a yoghurt that lasted until lunchtime. By suppertime, though, I was wading through jam sponge and custard. Hubby visited me that afternoon and shuffled with me along the corridors. Two days later, I was managing several flights of stairs on my own. The other patients? Didn’t move. Didn’t try. Complained about the food then scoffed crisps and coke that their visitors brought in.

I’d like to think I was discharged a day earlier than planned because of my positive attitude, but Hubby seems to think it has something to do with me telling a doctor how to do his job. All I said was, “I beg to differ”.

I’ve been back home a few days now, still on tramadol etc., sleeping well, eating better, and blogging. Yay. My new car, which Hubby collected last week while I was in Narnia, is calling to me from outside the kitchen window because I can’t drive it yet. My new clothes that I bought for the cruise are gradually being broken in. I must be the smartest dressed convalescent in Bucks. And I’m responding to get-well cards, emails and bouquets a few at a time. 

Today, Hubby took me out for a sausage-roll lunch at a nearby farm shop. He knows how to treat a gal. Anticipating that we might buy something (we did), we took a hessian bag with us. It was one of Mum’s that I inherited, emblazoned with UKIP, Brexit, anti-EU and pro-GB symbols and slogans. So proud. Hubby said that I was on my own if anyone objected. No one did, not even the three Bobbies who'd popped in for their lunch,  past whom we had to walk to get to the shop. Did I try and hide the bag? Quite the opposite. Yet no one tapped me on the shoulder, and I was spared the impulse of saying ‘Oh go £^9$ yourself’.

It's good to be back.