What a week it was!
By a weird synchronicity, 3 totally unconnected things came together one after another just to make life more complicated.
First event:
I got a phone call from the hospital to ask if I could come in for the operation (on the Thursday) to remove the skin cancer from my face. As anyone knows, with the NHS you don’t try and rearrange for a more convenient time, you just go with the option, a rearranged op might be months later. How bad could it be?
I think I could sum it up as very comparable to an all morning, rather stressful and unpleasant trip to the dentist. With quite a lot of that time in the waiting room. There was bright lights in the eyes (very bright), unpleasant local injections and loud equipment.
But it went well, the medical staff were pleased with the outcome. HOWEVER they also took it more seriously than I was expecting saying I would need 3 weeks off work and not to do my exercise classes. Oh and the enormous dressing had to stay on till Monday, I was NOT to touch it, they would deal with it then.
Any useful take home messages?
1)They asked what my work was and I said “comic book artist”. It’s the first time I’ve said that. It has always been an awkward question, my previous options being “doctor” “housewife” and “artist”. The first two are misleading and the third has always felt pretentious, distancing and over serious when I have said it. "Comic book artist" felt down to earth and more "me", it interested and engaged the person asking, they invariably asked more questions. (Not that I always wanted to answer them!)
2) Tapping on the top of the head was a very useful distraction from the painful injections. So much so that it made me wonder why dentists don’t get the dental assistant to do it?
Second event:
The next day I got the all clear from another hospital, another surgeon, on the lump I had found. It has subsided, not completely but enough for it to be a lymph node not a cancer.
Very thankful, very good news.
Really glad to draw a line under that.
I’ll blog about the third event next week as otherwise this will be a very long post, but I will just say that a week later I am surprised how exhausted, low in energy I have been. Apparently even SAS soldiers are exhausted after surgery so I’ve been very careful not to beat myself up but to accept it. I’m really hoping that my intermittent fasting will accelerate the healing process, I am trying to remain optimistic and upbeat even as my body and brain wade through treacle to get anything done.
(Bit more energy today, hooray)
Here is a random picture of my Grandad's bedside table with his teasmade.
