(Original title – The Whomping Willow)

Here’s the rundown on how today went with my oopherecomy and bonus D&C.

I arrived at the Peter Mac 15 minutes before I was due to check in because I wanted to avoid being late since I was scolded for it last time (which I guess should have been the indicator that things were gonna go to shit). I check in, go upstairs to level 6 where day surgery is, and wait. For 45 minutes. So much for making sure I’m there on time because I knew I was first up on the roster.

Finally taken through, and as soon as I drop my bag on the floor, it’s nurse after nurse after anaesthetist coming in to do pre-surgery preparation questions. The biggest break between people coming in is when they all leave so I can get undressed and into my incredibly flattering hospital gown, blue surgical booties, and red hat that matches my red wrist and ankle bands. The anaesthetist puts some Emla cream on the back of my hand and on the inside of my arm to prep for two spots for cannulation. The emla cream numbs the skin to limit the amount of pain you feel through the skin and underlying structures prior to being stabbed with a needle. It takes about 30 minutes to work fully.

I completely forget the anaethetists’ name, but she was super lovely. Very patient, very friendly, and still very professional. I talked through what had happened last time, and she commented that she hates having to use arm veins for anaesthetic because of the risk of it not working properly. Chemo patients have shit veins. #fact.

Running through blood pressures (123 / 75) and temperatures (36.8) and a flurry of people coming in and out, I’m wheeled off to surgery through the corridors of level 6. I’m parked in the pre-operating room where the anaesthetist and the anaesthetic nurse both come into the room and there’s a bit of handover from Giraffe Nurse who was looking after me again today (Cherry Nurse today because cherries were on her scrub cap).

So I’m laying on the bed, having a conversation about being a little anxious but also weirdly excited about what’s about to happen, and Cherry Giraffe Nurse leaves. I overhear a conversation about preparing Fentanyl for me, two lots would be good apparently, and I pipe up “oh, the Michael Jackson drug”. Some more random stuff is said, and they ask how I’m feeling just after the cannula is inserted in the back of my hand WITH ALMOST NO PAIN even though the Emla hadn’t had a full half hour to do its thing.

This is where things get a little interesting. I’m pretty funny on the best of days, but I was on fire today in that tiny little room. Probably a whole bunch of nervous energy was coming out in the form of verbal diarrhoea.

“You know, I’m kind of glad that this cancer will kill me eventually, and kind of soonish, because I am not prepared for the Robot Uprising.”

I have no idea what made me say it.

“Are you sure you’re not a robot?”

“Oh I am definitely human. Unless robots feel pain, I’m definitely a meat popsicle.”

Then somehow, the conversation gets turned towards the use of pure oxygen. But I make a comment about it being flammable, and please don’t set me on fire in the operating theatre.

Then the Fentanyl goes in.

And do you know what that sounds like? Yes, sounds like?

Robots with lasers going “PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW” really fast inside your head. For about a minute until this sensation wears off, every little noise was punctuated by “PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW”, including the humming of the air conditioning in the ceiling above me.

Good times.

I say this to the nurse. And my voice sounds tinny and robotic in my head.

“Oh well I’m fucked. Turns out I am a robot after all.”

I concentrate really hard on speaking slowly and clearly because my tongue starts feeling heavy and slurring my words just a little on the vowels. And then I start feeling reeeeeeally good.

“I can see why Michael Jackson used this stuff to get to sleep. This is fucking amazing.”

“You know about that?” the anaesthetist asks.

“Uh yeah, doesn’t everybody?”

“Not as many as you’d think. We try not to talk about Michael Jackson when patients do mention it.”

“Well, this feeling is exactly why I stay away from hardcore drugs. This is good shit.”

And then the anaesthetic goes in, and I hear her say that it’ll be a bit of a stinging sensation in my hand, but there’s nothing, and then the little army of ants with red hot feet crawl over my face and I’m out like a light.

I think it’s about 10:30 by the time I wake up again. I’m taking part in a anaesthetic recovery research project, and Zelda comes in to ask me to lift my head. She says I’m nice and awake but I’m really not, but I lift my head for her.

I recite some numbers forwards, then backwards, and then have to think of as many words starting with the letter C in 30 seconds and say them out loud. I get four. Cat. Curtain. Car. Cup. About fifteen seconds afterwards I say “cannula would be a good one”. I close my eyes again because I need to go back to sleep. I’m feeling a little nauseous, and even though I warned them beforehand I come out of it poorly, I don’t think they gave me enough anti-nausea drugs. I manage to snooze, then I’m woken up by a nurse asking me to open my eyes and take a couple of deep breaths for me while they check my vitals. I do this like a champion because I don’t want no partially collapsed lung again, and I remember every couple of minutes that I’m awake to take three deep breaths.

Eventually I’m deemed stable enough to transfer to the recovery ward in my own little private room nook, but 10 seconds into the journey I tell the two nurses pushing the trolley that I’m going to be sick. They scramble to find a spew bag and even though I’d just had abdominal surgery, the ache isn’t so bad as I cough and heave. That surprised me. They turn the lights off in my room after I have another therapeutic spew because I drank some water and lemonade – Mars has more moisture on it than I do in my mouth.

I get my blood pressure checked again, and it’s low (105 / 63 I think she said it was). When I’d raised the bed a little to have a sip of water (bed goes up, bed goes down), my head spun so I knew it wasn’t looking so good for a quick discharge, which suited me just fine. I eat a quarter of a sammich and drink some more lemonade and water, before deciding more sleep is needed.

I doze on and off for a bit, but keep waking up because I try to swallow, which is such a reflex, but my throat sticks together and I choke a little and then I need to sip water and go back to sleep. When Jane leaves to go to an appointment downstairs, I have the longest stint of sleep between choking on swallowing, and am woken up by one of the other nurses’ pagers ringing at full fucking volume. If my throat had been more lubricated, they would have heard me calling them all sorts of four letter words starting with C and F and S and then a combination of them all.

The nurse is talking with another outside the curtain, and saying I’ve met two of the challenges to be discharged, but not all of them. When she comes in moments later for more I ask what all the challenges are. She says eating and drinking without spewing, and weeing. Well, I didn’t really feel the need to wee, but I said I can give it a go if you like, and that I was reluctant to get out of bed and stand while my BP was still on the low side.

I won that challenge because I am a winner.

She tells me she’ll wait just outside the door for me to finish, but when I open it there’s nobody there. The woman in the bed facing the door directly said the nurse would be back in a moment, and I joked with her that the nurse lied, and I could run away, or hobble away, and they would never find me again. The nurse escorts me back to my bed and tells me I can get dressed. I ask when the cannula can come out and she said if my BP is over 105 she’ll take it out.

123 / 75, bitches.

When she comes back in after I get dressed, I’m sitting on the edge of the bed eating and drinking.

I won those challenges too.

I was discharged just before 3pm, Jane gave me a Wonder Woman bandaid for my cannula stab wound, and she drove me home because she is the best, and she made me a cup of tea and heated up a tiny muffin for me to eat and then I put my phone on silent and took a nap.

I’m sore, but able to move around just a little bit. Standing up from sitting is a struggle, and don’t even get me started on what I have to do to get out of bed. I also have to give myself anti-clot injections in my stomach for the next week, and after psyching myself up for five minutes to actually stab the needle in the first time, it doesn’t hurt at all and I have acquired a new skill to level up in the Game of Cancer.