The happy place

Hey I’ve had surgery in my sinuses on numerous occasions (two), and I’m likely due for a third one. When they anaesthetized me for the first time with that mask, you know, I was on the brink of panic and the whole ordeal was not a very pleasant one at all, but worst I think was waking up because then I did panic for sure: disoriented I woke up having an asthma attack and started pulling on the tampons they’d stuffed up my nose.

I find that funny today that I had two tampons shoved up my left nose, and one up my right one. The strings taped to my chin, and a menstrual pad under the nose, fixed behind my ears as a the cherry on top.

I sure did have a fine time on the train back from the hospital that time, looking like that. Snot blood dripping from the nostril with only one tampon.

There are three significant things worth mentioning about this experience:

First was was when installing IV drip into my arm, the nurse was really struggling with the syringe and she stabbed me many times before finally finding the vein. That is of course OK with me; someone has to always be someone’s first time doing something, and for sure I prefer that to mine being someone’s first surgery.

Second one was that I shared a room with an old man with a wheezy cough and a wheezy breath and he appeared to be on the brink of death but he got hospitalised just in time and after overhearing him on the phone, it turned out that he had caught a cold spending time with his grandchildren. Even so his voice really shone up when he talked about the experience and I am without any doubt that he thought it was worth spending that time with those children even though it nearly liked him. That was very significant experience for me to bear witness to.

Thirdly on brink of panic being put to sleep some medic put her hand on my chest just above the heart I think, and it felt like she was shooting warmth out of her hand and it was very soothing for some reason. That was significant.

And yeah lastly my wife visited me on the hospital the evening before the surgery and she looked so worried that it broke my heart to see.

One more thing: when pulling the tampons out, one of them was stuffed real deep and I felt it in the other side of the forehead so I didn’t really have the stomach to pull it out: my wife had to help me over a bucket. I remember to this day the feeling of having it scraping the insides and when it came out with a gush of blood it was a big relief.