Life in Middle Girth

Decided to blog then thought I’d better do it as a document first because I hate to think of getting everything down then losing it thanks to some site gremlin or my computer as it’s doing its daily scan, but it doesn’t feel the same for all that, doing it this way. Should put the microwave timer on too because I know I have verbal, er, typing, diarrhoea.

Right, the operation.

We had to be over at the hospital at 7am, which meant getting up about a quarter to six in order to get away by quarter past…Which we did, blearily. Once over there we had to do the paperwork, meet the nurse (a small, very black, Indian called Bal. He’s lovely), fill in more forms - thank goodness most had been done at the visit last week, shower, shave the very hairy belly from nipples to pubes, don white stockings (for the circulation) and attractive baby blue gown. At this point I was wondering if they’d got him down as a tranny in for nip and tuck, but Bal assured us it was standard theatre garb. I think he understood I was joking, but I forget that not everybody has my warped sense of humour. The anaesthetist popped in for a chat, then we waited..and waited….for days it seemed, but it was only till ten o’clock then they trundled my very nervous, slightly teary husband away, saying he’d be back by two.

Off I went into town, to do some mind distraction exercises. Started off at the kitchen place, expecting to browse the showroom and pick up a couple of ideas - an hour later I’d seen about thirty kitchens and had a pile of pamphlets about a foot high to browse through. Confusion reigneth, but I think price will be a major deciding factor in the final outcome. I mean, sure I’d like granite worktops with sliding pantries and soft touch drawer closures and double ovens and this and that but one has to be practical, we need some dollars left to build the rest of the house too! And oh my god, how is the woman who lived with bare light bulbs for twelve years because she couldn’t decide on light shades going to decide on a whole houseful of things? The noise you are hearing is the sprouting of grey hairs. So anyway, after I left there I wandered into town, but my mind wasn’t really in gear and I just drifted around wasting time. Bought a pair of pj bottoms for Brent in case he runs out, got a summer blouse for work, and that’s about it. Went and had some yummy quiche at McCafe and suddenly it was quarter to two and I found myself skedaddling back to the hospital in case I wasn’t there when Brent arrived back.

Sat in the lounge which is a good lookout point for passing traffic, and waited, and waited, and waited…..at three o’clock I got myself a cup of tea and was just wandering down to Brent’s room in case I’d missed him when I spotted the surgeon, so I introduced myself and asked how it had gone. The procedure had gone well, he said, but it was definitely a cancer. Thunk. I think he said “a cancer” not “Cancer” - you tell me, is there a difference? I’ll hang on to the first one, it sounds less, well, you know. Oh, I said. What does that mean, where do we go from here? We wait now, for lab results (more waiting). We have to wait to see if there is cancer in the lymph nodes they took out, and if there isn’t, fine, but if there is, we’ll move on from there. Does that mean Chemotherapy? It might. (God, it’s like getting blood out of a stone.) When will we get results back? Up to a week. What next? Just recover from surgery first. Then we’ll see what needs to happen, probably start with a scan. I’ll pop in to see Brent later.

Ok. It’s there. It’s happened, the sky is falling - he doesn’t know yet and I’m not going to tell him.

I slunk down to Brent’s room feeling like I’d been hit with a fekkin great sledgehammer, trying to arrange my face impassively in case he was there - but he wasn’t, so I drank my cuppa, blew my nose, wrote in my journal and waited some more. He finally turned up about half past three, as my phone was coming to life with “how is he” texts. Poor darling was dozy, and bristling with tubes. Tubes up his nose, in his arm, out his willy, but he was awake enough to say “I’m glad to see you, I didn’t think I was going to”….My big, strong, invincible macho man. He dozed off and on for the next hour or so then a nurse came in - new nurse, different shift, really neat lady - and talked about this and that, what we could expect in the next day or so, breathing exercises, her family, our family, how to laugh and cough and how not to, how to call for help, the pain thing, the drugs thing, concentrating on recovery and building up to things slowly, the importance of passing wind - lots of stuff. She’d had her mum go through the same op last year and was very good at reassuring Brent and empathising with me. After she left we were just like an old (really old) married couple in a rest home, sitting/lying holding hands and dozing. Awwww…. I left him to sleep about half six and came on home - back to normal life, straight to Scouts where I collected Greg, and Duncan once Mike dropped him off, then pick up tea on the way home (F&C) and try to eat it while talking on two phones at once it seemed, everybody wanting to know the latest. It was quite late by the time I finished, and I just flopped on the floor and watched the stupid programmes the boys had on that they’re not usually allowed to watch downstairs (Pulp Sport and some cartoon thing). They caught me laughing several times, I won’t live it down for a while.

Damn, the beeper’s gone off.

I'll be back later