Moio sudno na vozdušnoy poduške polno ugrey

Sorry about that, I’m learning Russian at the moment.

Anyway, leading on from the last entry… the next few days are lifted straight out of a David Cronenberg film festival. Nightmares on a scale I could never have imagined.
As I’m being wheeled down from recovery I’m hallucinating like crazy. As I stare up at the passing ceiling tiles, I see their corners lift and swarms of crawling insects pour through the gaps. I close my eyes to escape the horror and vivid excerpts of the last few hours flash through my mind. I see everything compartmentalised, my personality, my memories, my thoughts and feelings, all neatly arranged in DFS like displays. It’s hard to explain, but I’m looking in on my mind and how it’s arranged from a third person perspective. Surreal yet terrifying!

I drift in and out of consciousness punctuated by fits of uncontrollable nausea. My wife holds my head while I vomit, tears of despair roll down her soft cheeks.

I wake to find myself sharing a room with another recent post-operative patient. I attempt the most basic of conversations in an effort to establish some form of normality. Big mistake. ‘Great, they’ve stuck me in with a lunatic from Tooting’, if this was on the ‘outside’ I’d be clamping his wrists in quick-cuffs and carting him off to the nearest psych-ward. Where’s my Asp when I need it? I drift off again.

My sleep is interspersed with visits from nurses taking temperatures, blood pressures and urging me to drink and pee. As one of them leaves at around 2am I strain my eyes in the semi-dark, and stare across the room to my manically depressed roommate. I’m startled by the presence of a small fiery demon hovering over his bed. I squint my eyes, still there. Well he is from Tooting after all. Am I seeing things, or have structural changes taken place within my brain that enables me to tune in on a different wavelength?

The medical staff are not happy with my recovery and decide to move me into the main ward for closer observation. It’s been at least 10 hours since I pissed last, and I’m constantly being coaxed to pass urine. However, I can’t pee into a paper bottle lying on my side, I need to be vertical. I attempt to raise myself, but the movement of the mattress and my left side paralysis make it impossible. By now the pain in my bladder is becoming unbearable, so grabbing my left leg with my right hand I pull my self over to the right hand side of the bed. With one deft movement I swing my legs over the side, touch the floor, heave my self-upright with the ‘good’ leg, and grab the paper bottle. Great plan, except I haven’t factored in the ineffectual left arm that won’t be able to hold me steady while the right hand is holding the piss bottle. I collapse in a heap, flailing in the dark in an impromptu bath of my own piss and shattered pride.
Before I know it I’m surrounded by scowling Philippino nurses. In about as much time as it takes to say, ‘are you taking the piss?’ I’ve got a catheter strapped to the side of my bed. I never thought I’d be so pleased as to have a pipe with a kink passed through my urethra. Wonders never cease.