Ricardo, Sonny, I missed you guys!

Trapped in the apartment until I recover from the surgery, I immediately invest in a digital set top freeview receiver, which allows me access to about seventeen more channels (puny by American standards I know). This allows me to reacquaint myself with a lot of re-runs from the 80’s and beyond, and one of my all time favourite shows is being aired after sixteen years in some dark cupboard. Miami Vice brings back fond memories of another life I lived so many years ago, so far away. A life of condos, Corvettes, ties as thin as the moustaches, and Maserati driving Columbians with permed hair and chests and fingers dripping in too much ill-gotten gold (another scary story). I lap it up and am lost in the nostalgia.

Ten days after being discharged I’m having my twenty staples being removed by a nurse in my doctor’s surgery. This is nasty, and is very similar to removing normal staples from cardboard except the nurse has to break through scab and overlapping skin to get under them and a grip. Not pleasant, and I excuse myself from time to time to squeal like a pig. Cue Deliverance reference.

A couple of days later Francesca’s mum flies back to Rome. Despite the usual anti-mother-in-law jokes this is not ideal. Francesca needs as much help as possible, and Ann is a bit like a ‘fish out of water’ with the kids.

A few days later I attend St. Georges hospital again. This time it’s for an electroencephalogram. TQ, my friend from work is happy to take me there, and cheerfully sits through my ordeal of having my scalp glued to a net of tiny electrode like objects. After bombarding me with ‘up close and personal’ strobe lighting for what seems like an eternity, and being subjected to the usual rave music and Star Trek Borg references the technician ‘unhooks’ me from the machine and TQ and I leave via our waiting squad cube.

Things you don't want to hear in surgery number 38 - Better save that. We'll need it for the autopsy.

Early November 2006. Less than a week after my mum's death I’m being admitted into St. George’s Hospital, Tooting, for my biopsy. Avtar, one of the cops in my squad, takes Francesca, my auntie Ann and me there. The kids stay at home with Francesca’s mum, who is over from Rome for about two weeks.
Upon arrival I'm booked into a two-bed side room. The patient lying opposite me, I soon discover, was a roofer that had fallen some distance onto a concrete floor compressing part of his skull a few weeks prior. He was cheerful, and introduced me to the delights of the patient TV at the side of my bed.
After about two hours I told Francesca and Ann to go home, it was getting late and I didn’t want Francesca to go home to find her mother dangling from the rafters. The kids had a tendency to ‘run rings’ around her.
Shortly after, the nurse came around and took a blood sample from me. This would be the first of many. One of the surgeons called in next to explain the procedure to me. He told me that in addition to a biopsy they would be removing a portion of the tumour through ‘debulking’. It was anticipated that this would alleviate any pressure build-up within the cranium. He’s a young man, in his early thirties, and judging by his name and accent I would say he was from Central America. Not a good time to mention the Alamo then?!

The next morning a nurse wakes me at 7am. She orders me to wear a ridiculous operating gown. After ablutions I don it the logical way, the only way the one hundred tiny tassels can be tied. Unfortunately, this leaves me with a slight problem, my ‘wang’ is hanging out. Hmm… air-conditioning, I think. Just then a nurse walks in. Time for a ‘bom chicka wah wah’ moment. Yeah, not the way my lucks been lately! She’s someone’s granny, about 300lb, and not putting up with any shit at the start of her shift. “Son”, she announces in a thick Jamaican accent, “you got that on the wrong way”.
Shortly after a porter arrives with a gurney. Carefully, covering my ass and ‘bits’ I gingerly hoist myself up and sit on the side. With one deft movement I bring my legs up horizontal whilst maintaining my dignity.
Quick intros. In the theatre, seem like a nice bunch of people. I remind them that I’m not a traffic cop, and that I only usually deal with robberies and burglaries. A small prick in my hand, doctor, there’s a time and a place [sorry, couldn’t resist that], an icy stream up my arm. I try to say the caution, I get to, ‘…court…’, and I’m out.

Operations are strange things. I always fancied time travel would be the same. I mean the needle goes in and the next thing is you wake up three or more hours later in another part of the hospital with no sense of elapsed time. Sure enough, true to point, that’s what happens.

The recovery in hospital is swift. Ten staples in the side of my head, and a big patch of hair missing. The wife fondly refers to me as Frankenstivan. Truly, the root canal work two years before was worse. But then again, that was in a tiny Italian village with little or no anaesthetic. Just call me Indiana Ivan. Well my life is made up of challenges. ‘Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?’ Nah! Brain tumours, why did it have to be brain tumours?

Four days later I’m on my way home to the temple of doom. Well the mother-in-law is staying! Help!