I Want To Go Home

"WAKE UP. IT'S ALL OVER!"
 
There's nothing to operations really, all you do is lie on a trolley and someone else does it all. Well the bit after the operation can be perhaps not quite so easy.
 
"It all went very well," said the nurse beside me.
 
I surveyed the massive edifice of white plaster that my leg had become. A problem was immediately apparent:

"The bottom of the plaster is rubbing against my ankle."
"Oh yes, they need to trim that."

"That plaster is far too big" said the consultant the next morning to the doctor whose proud creation it was "lovely and smooth but too big and it's rubbing on her ankle. We'll get a new one done for you on Monday."

Monday???
Yes, the plaster room didn't deal with in-patients at the week-end.

The ankle-rubbing plaster made for a miserable week-end - as well as the pain of the knee I had the totally unnecessary pain of the ankle. This could only be relieved by propping my foot in exactly the right position.As soon as I fell asleep it would then fall out of exactly the right position and it was either buzzing a nurse to try and re-arrange it or just bearing it for a while. When a nurse found me almost in tears at 5 am on the Sunday and got me some toast and jam as well as some extra pain-killers it felt like one of  the kindest things anyone had ever done for me. She managed to track down a doctor who gave her permission to trim the plaster but she couldn't find anything she could use to trim it.

Finally on Monday it happened - the plaster taken off, revealing a knee that looked a bit like a stitched up roll of meat and a nice smaller one (though still very heavy) put on, mercifully clear of my ankle.

Apart from a few crises - several involving low blood-pressure, the one where the physios got me into a chair then went off and left me and I nearly fainted, the 'can't get the cannula in' one, the 'cannula's stopped working' one and the 'if this cannula isn't working can't some one please take it out' one - everything went well. The staff were all lovely for which I was very thankful. Our pastors and another couple of friends came in and prayed with me. When I was feeling a bit low one morning the chaplain appeared in my room and held my hand while I had a cry.

Getting me out of bed was a complicated procedure involving leaning on a giant walking-frame and pivotting on my other foot and then sinking into the wheelchair, the leg being held by someone throughout. This began to get a bit difficult as whenever I buzzed for someone to help me to the bathroom I had to explain all over again exactly how to do it and I could see that supporting the weight of the leg was hard for them. Although they tried hard they didn't always support it in the right way and sometimes it hurt. I just wanted P to do it, he was used to caring for me, he understood my body, I wanted him to come and live there with me. When I needed the loo I started hanging on until visiting time when he could help me - sometimes this would be for 4 or 5 hours (yes I realise this wasn't a good idea).

Really I just wanted to go home.