Here's to a quiet 2026

View from the ward window. (Helicopter landing pad with a windsock and a nice Zen garden)

2025 turned out to be one hell of a year. But here we are in 2026, I’ve had 3 operations and I’m still alive.

Brief summary of a totally weird “Unfortunate Series of Events”

Operation 1

Three operations were cancelled last minute for various reasons but eventually In October I was admitted (to male head injuries ward as no other beds) and operated on. The operation was 7 hours with 4 surgeons. I was discharged after 36 hours as a dazed invalid with excruciating post op head pain, double vision and hypersensitivity to light, noise and any other brain stimuli. The first couple of weeks are now thankfully only a blurred memory  and my husband did an amazing job of looking after me, cooking all my meals and leading me round the block in sunglasses to get me on my feet again.

I continued slowly recovering until completely randomly and unconnected with the brain stuff, in early December I had an acute abdominal medical emergency.

Operation 2

I was was taken to hospital by ambulance and rushed to theatre. Part of my small bowel had herniated internally and cut off its own blood supply. They removed the gangrenous bit of it and I awoke on ITU, family round the bed , a stoma in place and told that I was lucky to have survived.

Operation 3

Baffled by the randomness of life, we did our best to get on with a new form of recovery! We were able to handle the stoma itself but it turned out to be too high up in the bowel. We had 5 weeks of a constant battle with fluid balance, multiple readmissions for IV fluids to fight dehydration and a loss of 1.5 stone as I was unable to absorb nutrition adequately. The abdominal surgeon held off as long as he could (6 weeks is the official earliest date for stoma reversals) but at 5 weeks we all had had enough and he went for it. To everyone’s relief it took and I was finally discharged home in January.

Now 8 weeks post op I am in a busy round of constant wound dressings, follow up appointments and scans, trying to get back to some sort of normal life. We’re still in a bit of state of shock with everything but trying to move on from cursing the unexpected events that happen to feeling lucky that the tumour was picked up and that I’m alive!

Here’s for a quiet, boring and uneventful 2026!