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Laparoscopy

While I was given morphine, I was able to sleep a little and take myself to the toilet.  The next morning (this was Tuesday 11th May, my brother Damian's birthday) I needed help to shower and dress in a new gown (their gowns have buttons and ties and are very complicated!), and to put on my super-sexy pressure stockings. 

I got to speak to my Mum (she's excellent at tracking down people in hospital, having been a hospital doctor (anaesthetist) most of her working life), and talking to Mum always makes me feel better. I did manage to send a Happy Birthday text message to Damian, too.

I ended up going down for surgery at about 2pm, having been visited briefly by a crowd of doctors, and told I was having a laparoscopy, and no matter what state my appendix was found to be in, it was being taken out.

I woke up in Recovery in a huge panic, as I knew I shouldn't be treated in a Muggle hospital, as I was a Wizard, and it was really important that I let them know...  
 
I was apparently thrashing around quite a bit before I worked out where and who I was, and realised that I was out of surgery. Being still quite drugged up, I was feeling OK, just a bit disorientated. There's no sense of time having been passed... one minute I'm chatting with the anaesthetist about English Literature, and the next I'm thinking I'm in Harry Potter, desperate to escape the non-wizard hospital. Weird.

The hard part about being post-operative for me, is that the morphine got replaced with paracetamol!!!! Didn't they know I was an advanced analgesic-taker? That I'd passed the level of paracetomol years ago?!?! I was a hardened Tramadol-taker... stupid paracetomol wasn't going to help....

But I wasn't even being given my usual Tramadol, so I was still in quite a lot of pain. And then there was worse news: most of the pain I was experiencing was from the CO2 left over from when they blew me up like a balloon for the keyhole surgery, and there was no pain relief for that!! I just had to wait until I deflated. A day later I was given some heat packs for the gas pain, and that was goooooood.

My dignity and inhibitions deserted me while I was there, allowing a tiny child-nurse to help me in the shower, and not even wincing when one of them opened the door on me while I was on the toilet. Perfect time for a chat, really....

Steve visited again, with more clothes, and a lovely pink gerbera and a little pink teddy. The teddy was great, as I could pretend it was Freddy (although not as warm), with the noise from my drip machine sounding just like him purring. It was quite comforting.

I stayed in hospital for four days in total, although I could have stayed longer. But I was keen to leave - to get some sleep, more than anything. Hospitals are not restful places. My lovely friends, Steve and Karen, who were already looking after Dexter and Freddy, were insisting on looking after me, too. I was in no fit state to protest, and besides, I love hanging out with them and their fur-family (Fudge and JJ the Field Spaniels, and Midnight and Ebony the cats).

So Steve drove me home, worrying about every bump in the road, but I was happy to be out of hospital again.

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