15 posts tagged “life”
...The anaesthesia really did a number on me [...] and it took many, many, many nauseated hours before I even started recovering[...]
When the doctor ripped the well-crusted packing out of my nose [...] my gut reaction was to punch him as hard as I possibly could, then run far, far away. Searing, blinding, face-smashing pain...
I, however, was surprised how together I felt when I woke up in the recovery room. My nostrils were packed with mini tampons, but I was chatting happily with the nurses who wheeled me back to the ward. Then I spent a contented hour or so cheerily texting and phoning friends, marvelling at how out of it the other patients were looking.
Then the morphine wore off.
After that it was inexplicable and uncontrollable sobbing, bleeding and vomiting (sometimes all three via the same orifice) all the way. And a sudden flashback to the anteroom where the surgeon told the nurses he was going to "flush her sinuses with a cocaine solution". So basically I was.. what? Having withdrawal?
When the chipper young Irish nurse came to remove my packing the next morning, I was wide awake and counting down the hours till I was discharged. But 8am took forever to come. I now fully appreciate my dog's attitude of "okay, let's go!" when we exit the vet's surgery and she's hanging around while I pay the bill. Every second sentence out of my mouth was "...But I'm still being discharged at 8am, aren't I?"
Having the packing removed was a bit of an ordeal. She squirted saline solution up each nostril and dragged out the tampons while I held a kidney dish under my chin. It's a bit like having a wet weasel pulled from the back of your brain via your nostril. And with each one came blood. A lot of blood. Much of it was going down the back of my throat, too. And it just kept coming until the nurse got very pale and said things like "Oh dear" and "Oh god you're so young" and "I'm not very good with blood, you know".
Then another nurse came and there was a whispered discussion about whether I'd need a blood transfusion and an extra night in hospital. I fully believe that I only stopped bleeding then because I willed it. Then The Boyfriend showed up and I went from 0 to fully packed and dressed in 30 seconds. They strapped a sanitary towel to my face, gave me some painkillers and I zoomed out of the door.
I have never been so thankful to be home in my life. I have spent the last week on the sofa, mostly zonked on painkillers, although this weekend I have done an unwise amount of geeking, which only goes to show me that geeking in this condition is unwise. I get thumping sinus headaches, my nose hurts like a motherfucker but I can breathe through it a little. Thankfully my work sent me an enormous bouquet and a card, and I have 7 more days' leave.
So why aren't I slumped on the sofa watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Good question! Bye-bye...!
I went to see The Boyfriend in hospital today.
Upon laying eyes on him I was hit by an unexpected rush of love and protectiveness, and a kind of stupid pride that he was easily the youngest and most attractive man on his ward. I brought him flowers. Then I went to the nurses' station to ask for a vase. Do you have a vase? I asked. A what? Said the nurse. A vase, I repeated. Then this exchange followed:
Nurse: Vase?
Me: Vase.
Nurse: Vase.
Nurse: Vase?
Me: Vase.
Apparently the Nigerian nurse had trouble deciphering my, generic English, accent. Despite our both pronouncing "vase" exactly the same way ("vhaarz").
The Boyfriend is on IV antibiotics and hasn't seen his surgeon yet, so we don't know when he will be discharged. But he's surprisingly chipper: he has no pain in his leg. They zapped the nerves in his leg with an electric shock before operating, to numb it. This will wear off and he will be in considerable pain. But for now he's on a quiet ward with plenty to read, and now, some sunflowers. In a vhaarz.
We spent a pleasant 4 hours together, doing what we normally do on Saturday afternoons -- hanging out, reading the paper, chatting. And then it was time to go. Again, I was hit by a wave of emotion: a sudden, gnawing melancholy. I wanted to scoop him up and take him home right then. But I bit my lip and dabbed the corners of my eyes, and swung my bag on my shoulder with such false bravado that, with force, I whacked his bad leg.
He's starting to get some feeling back now, apparently.
I learned a new word today: glückschmerz - sorrow at someone else's happiness. The opposite of schadenfreude (pleasure from someone else's misfortune).
I'm exhausted. tonight I shall go to bed early with a book. But first I am going to make myself a steaming bowl of pasta and watch X-Factor. I imagine glückschmerz and schadenfreude will both feature.
The Boyfriend has just sent me a text message saying "ow". So I'm going to take a wild guess and say he's out of surgery. To bed, perchance to sleep!
Today, in song....
~Bow now now now now~
My cat has cat flu...
~Bow now now now now~
My man is under the knife...
~Bow now now now now~
Feel like this Friday...
~Bow now now now now~
Will last the rest of my life...
I got the Friiiiiiidaaaaaaaaayyyyy blues
Oh dem Friiiiiiidaaaaaaaaayyyyy blues
Gonna last me all day
~Bow now now now now~
I have to examine my cat's poo
~Bow now now now now~
And feed her chicken and rice
~Bow now now now now~
I have to help my man get to the loo
~Bow now now now now~
I'm not even his goddamn wife
I got the Friiiiiiidaaaaaaaaayyyyy blues
Oh dem Friiiiiiidaaaaaaaaayyyyy blues
Gonna last me all day
~Bow now now now now~
Tonight I'll get me some pizza
~Bow now now now now~
And some chateau neuf
~Bow now now now now~
And if anyone wants anything from me
~Bow now now now now~
I'll tell them to fuck oeuf
I got the Friiiiiiidaaaaaaaaayyyyy blues
I'll have dem Friiiiiiidaaaaaaaaayyyyy blues
Till at least Saturday
Tomorrow The Boyfriend goes in for surgery on his ankle which will leave him hobbled and unable to drive for 3 months. Next Friday I am jetting off to Spain. In between, I need to
- Work full-time
- Be on hand to care for The Boyfriend
- Go to the opticians
- Squeeze in a quick visit to my mother to see how she's doing (which may involve an overnight stay)
- Arrange stuff for my mother if she needs it
- Do 2 weeks' grocery shopping
- Edit 100 pages of copy
- Pick up 2 parcels from our ridiculously inaccessible Post Office
- Take the cat to the vet
- Find time to sleep
A time travel device would be really handy right now.
Today I
- Stole some tea
- Had marshmallows stuck to my face
- Lost a no-brainer eBay auction for someone who was stuck in a meeting the entire time. The item went for £150 less than his top price...
- Compared myself to a hedgehog during a meeting
- Was delayed on my way home by a "person under a train"
- Discovered my old office is haunted
And now to bed.
Self loathing is the #1 pastime enjoyed by people with low self esteem.
From Kristen Dyrr's tutorial on sabotaging yourself:
- When a credit card "stops working," apply for a new one.
- You're not the only one with flaws, so make sure to always point out everyone else's flaws as well.
- Take up another hobby: smoking.
The woman's an amateur! Why, this weekend alone I've managed to take the news of a former peer's apparent success as a cue to oil the downward spiral of self-loathing and take a running leap onto it, hitting every unfinished project on the way down.
But that was yesterday. Today is a good day -
- My loan has come through
- I've somehow managed to work through this scrunchy jealous feeling
- I've made some music
- Despite having flouted all my healthy eating plans for the last month, I discovered that I have not put on an ounce
- So we're having pizza and fro yo for dinner! Yay!
The hump is smaller, after many applications of ice packs and Nurofen gel. It's puffy and painful - like a sprained ankle in my neck. Can you sprain your neck?
A few midnights ago, The Boyfriend came home - merry from a beery night out with colleagues - and informed me that he was going to our neighbour's for an "impromptu wake". The guy's elderly father had just died, and The Boyfriend had run into him on the way home and thought that perhaps he could lend a friendly ear.
Obviously this ended horribly with The Boyfriend getting alcohol poisoning and almost ending up in the hospital after being plied with many warm Budweisers and almost a half pint of cheap whisky while this guy ranted until dawn. I'm not sure I will ever forget trying to haul The Boyfriend off the toilet while hearing this man howling in his garden.
Our general decision was to keep a sympathetic, tee-total distance from hereon in.
Fast forward to last night. The Boyfriend (TB) arrives home from work to find Crazy Bereaved Neighbour (CBN) outside our house:
CBN: "I just wanted to apologise for the other night..."
TB: "It was fine, honestly - how are you holding up?"
CBN: "Weeelll, I've been having a lot of trouble with witchcraft lately."
TB: "?"
CBN: "Yeah, there are a couple of witches after me. The whole street knows about my problem with them."
TB: "Oh.. Er..."
CBN: "Yes, and you see, the other night I was actually under astral attack. So I'm just relieved to see that you're okay, because you could have been hurt, too."
TB: "Well, I'm fine, so no need to worry."
CBN: "Yes, you're fine - that's the main thing. Well, cheerio!"
TB: "?!"
Hmm.
Today is not my birthday. I am not smoking cigars. I am on the sofa drinking red wine with The Boyfriend, who is watching The Story of Light Entertainment.
But I am recovering from the first of my birthday celebrations last Friday. My birthday tends to be the social event of the year. Not because I am a towering socialite, but simply because I am very, very bad at keeping social engagements. And I have unfathomably tenacious friends, most of whom I don't deserve.
So, when I send out those emails detailing a bar and a date one night in August, my friends pay attention. Because it's the one night of the year that I'm actually guaranteed to show.
I'm not proud. Okay, I'm a little proud. But then I'm a little twisted.
So Friday night began dismally. The bar - which I'd booked precisely because it was always empty and had groovy electronica burbling in the background - was stuffed with braying suited City twats, pumping out a bad, loud wedding reception-type playlist. There were glossy people sitting in the area we'd reserved and the bar staff weren't willing to move them. And I'd had a shitty day at work.
But then the alcohol flowed, my friends arrived, then more friends arrived and ordered more alcohol, and more, and more, there was a blurry, beery interlude, and suddenly I was in my friend's house, drunk, at 3am eating very dubious fried chicken and clutching a postcard of Prince William and a cigar.
These are the highlights I've managed to piece together from the fragments of memory that the beer hasn't burned away:
- The random half-naked dancing man towards the end of the evening, who kept trying to do the Milli Vanilli chest-bump with every passing female
- The arrival of a guy I hadn't seen since I met in a pub at midnight in February, but whose frankly brilliant horror script I had read. There was some concern from some quarters that he might be a murderer, but if he is, he's a very nice one
- This guy's brother, who looked like Pob and kept shouting "WHAT????". In the end he left looking for "something to put in the shit factory"
- My rather creepy friend from college, W, trying (and failing) to woo my newer, less creepy, very pretty friend S
- The arrival of a friend I hadn't seen for 5 years, from New Zealand
- The arrival of another friend I hadn't seen for 5 years from, er, 20 minutes from me
- The superstar DJs set up near the toilets who leapt in excitement every time a woman came near them, only to deflate when they realised she invariably needed a pee
My actual birthday is this Thursday. Related upcoming celebrations include:
- An Italian dinner with my family
- A trip to the aquarium and a "surprise" from my friend, E
- A night of karaoke and debauchery on Friday
- A spa weekend with The Boyfriend
Not too shabby really.
I went into work today, slammed my bag on my desk, and proclaimed, "I am grumpy. The Boyfriend is in Edinburgh."
"Awww," said my colleagues.
"No, you don't understand," said I. "My boyfriend is in Edinburgh. He's at the Edinburgh Festival. Because of work. Tell me, what business does a computer journalist have at the Edinburgh Festival?"
After that they knew to leave me alone. They didn't even laugh when I dropped my wallet in the wastepaper bin in the canteen.
According to his last SMS, The Boyfriend has "just queued for a vegeburger behind Mr Belle and Sebastian."
Just to spite him, I had pizza tonight. Ha!
