I think it’s fair to say it’s been a rough year. I’ve felt
the razor cut of physical and emotional pain at a level far deeper than my
previous dark imaginings. I’ve been confronted with the imminent possibility of
my own death, then wandered lost in that unique and surreal fog of sorrow that
descends when you lose the person you love most in the world.
If this Universe is also our university, then I feel like
I’ve passed an important exam and should get a certificate or a badge, because
– despite all the heart-shattering turbulence over the past twelve months – I’m
still here, living and breathing and filled with potential.
As some of you who follow me from Socialmediashire will
know, I suffered a collapsed lung last October. That diagnosis was actually
good news, because I thought the excruciating pain in my chest was a heart
attack, but as the medics attempted to surgically insert a drain tube, to help reflate
the lung – which should have been a very simple procedure, apparently – there
were a few mishaps that set in motion a much more serious threat to my life.
Later in the evening, lying in a hospital bed (in a
hospital), I noticed the left side of my chest was beginning to swell. I
mentioned it to the nursing staff and it was hypothesised that it was ‘surgical
emphysema’ – when air leaks from the lungs and into the tissue around the chest
and neck, which often happens after surgery, hence the name – but I’d had that
before, when I was in my early twenties, and there was a completely different feel
to my skin. With surgical emphysema, there’s a ‘crackle’… like hundreds of tiny
layers of bubble wrap popping when you press against it… but with this, it was
firm, like muscle.
An hour or so after that, I literally had a boob like Pamela
Anderson. Also, the morphine I’d been given before the third botched attempt to
insert the drain tube, when I was admitted, was wearing off, and I felt
agonising, paralysing physical pain for the first time in my life. I couldn’t
move an inch in that bed without wanting a vet to burst in with a shotgun and
do the humane thing.
It was late at night and, even when I managed to get the
attention of one of the nurses (I’m too English to shout out), it took a short
eternity for her to summon a doctor to see me, so he could authorise my pain
relief. In that intervening time, I was seriously considering phoning an
ambulance. Really.
My new lady breast turned out to be a massive haematoma. The
minor surgery, earlier on, had ruptured some vessels in my ribs and the whole
left side of my chest cavity was filling with blood.
I was transferred to Harefield Hospital – a specialist heart
and lung unit on the outskirts of London – and the ambulance that took me actually
did the whole flashing lights and sirens thing. As much as I found that rather
impressive and exciting, it did make me ponder that I may have some sort of time
bomb priming itself in my chest, ready to go off at any moment. I mean, when I
see an ambulance blaze past me with strobing lights and blaring sirens, I’m
thinking that there’s some poor bastard in the back, close to death… so it
really does feels quite odd to be confronted by the realisation that, today,
you’re the poor bastard in the back.
It was so strange to be visited by the surgeon and his team,
as well as the registrar, who talked me through the post-operative pain-killing
options and explained that I was about to undergo very serious surgery. It was
a genuinely life-threatening operation and I was already far weaker than
perhaps I forced myself to believe.
I also had in mind the recent passing of my childhood
friend, Mandy, who had died on the operating table – in her very early 40s -
from internal bleeding, which was essentially what I was experiencing. My
blood, and lots of it, was in the wrong place, and I’m sure most doctors and
nurses would agree that’s generally a bad thing.
On the trolley, just outside the swing doors of the
operating theatre, the anaesthetist began to slowly press the plunger of the
syringe and I knew there was a unreasonably large possibility that those final
few seconds before the anaesthetic kicked in could actually be my last on this
Earth.
Of course, I tried to fight the effect. Not, though, because
I was afraid, but because I felt sure I could at least make it to the count of
ten before I blacked out. I don’t think I made it to 8.
I woke up and it was as though there were snowdrops falling
from a void, forming bright shapes and curious creatures that I didn’t recognise
for a while as fellow human beings. I was whacked up on some of the poshest
drugs you could imagine, lying in the High Dependency Unit, my ex-girlfriend
stroking my hand and probably nodding and smiling at me as I talked nonsense.
In the 24-hours previous, I hadn’t been allowed to eat or
drink, in preparation for the surgery. The thirst was almost unbearable. I’d
been sweating so much from the pain and the most I could do was take a sip of
water and swirl it around my mouth, then spit it out again. It was momentary
relief, like throwing water onto baking desert sand.
I thought I’d be able to gulp down long, cool glasses of
water when I came to, but then came the badder news… that this operation had
only allowed them to evacuate the blood already in the wrong place, and they’d
have to perform a second bout of surgery the next day to fix the problem
properly. They’d left a pack inside me, to help them identify where the
bleeding was coming from, and the pressure and pain in my chest was immense…
and I still wasn’t allowed to have more than a tease of a drink.
On the plus side, during the first operation, they also
surgically implanted a morphine pump, which allowed me to self-medicate either
when I needed to, or every three minutes, which turned out to be the same
duration.
Before going into theatre a second time, I asked the anaesthetist
to wait for a few seconds before he hit the plunger. I had a moment of
reconciliation. I didn’t think I was going to survive round two. At that
instant, I feel as though I stared death in the face and recognised there was
simply nothing to fear about it. I was ready, and I told the patient anaesthetist
to carry on. I don’t think I reached the count of five that time.
Of course, I survived, but it was far too close to the edge
a few times along the way, and when recuperating from such an event in life –
especially when it’s the first time you’re shown that, actually, no, you’re not
invincible after all – there’s a psychological, as well as physical battle
involved as you move along the road to recovery.
Just as I felt as though I was climbing out of the mental snake
pit of my own calamity, my Mum’s health began to deteriorate. She went into
hospital on New Year’s Day and never came out again, passing away on the 17th
March. My heart was shattered.
I’ve survived, though, despite the fact it wasn’t too long
ago I would have put the money on me having bought myself a farm within a week
of my Mum dying. It was the event I feared most in my life… the unfathomable…
and to some extent it remains and always will remain unfathomable. Death messes
with the mind, however at peace you are with your own mortality.
I’m stronger than I thought I would be. The arrow may still
be at ‘Lardster’ on my ‘Manfoxication Ambition Chart’, but I’ve developed a
great deal of psychological and spiritual muscle through enduring these trials
and I feel much more prepared to confront the challenges to come.
And my life is collapsing.
It hasn’t collapsed yet. It’s an ongoing process that I’ve just got to endure.
Both my Dad and my eldest brother nearly knock, knock, knocked on heaven’s door
during the past couple of months; my kitties are all ageing and not long of
this world, and it’s more than likely that I’ll be kicked out of this house in
the medium-term future… the house I was brought to from hospital, when I was a
big-boned baby… with the garden all my beloved menagerie of pets are buried,
including my beautiful Itchy and the legendary Mr Mouser. The thought haunts me
that their resting place could be desecrated by the new tenant’s desire to put
a patio over the grass. In fact, if we lost this place, we’d have to get my
cats adopted. That would rip me apart.
Yet, amidst all this tumultuous change, I feel fortunate
that I’ve been able to practice what I preach, in regard to present awareness.
Absolutely, though, I haven’t always been a perfect picture of peace and calm.
I still wake up crying and I still have days when I plunge into emotional air
pockets; I’ve been petulant and pissed off at the world and certain people in
it, but compared to my pre-awakening days, I’m pushing through this like a
champ.
What’s to come is a fleeting fear and I can lead myself out
of that, even if it takes a little time. What’s behind is beyond my control,
and if I fall into sadness, I re-emerge swiftly. I’m a human being, not some
‘bullet-proof guru’ and that understanding, flexibility and patience with
myself is cool with me. I’ve come a long way.
I’ve got to lay the path out of this chaos by working hard,
pushing myself further than I ever have before and developing my writing. I’m
humbled by how much my words appear to help others, and that’s the burning
passion at the heart of me. If there is such thing as a destiny, then I believe
the work I’ve been doing over the past couple of years is a major part of mine,
and the naysayers are just going to have to talk to my hand while I get on with
it.
I never thought I’d have the peace of heart to say it, but
life really does go on.
