I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think that hanging bog roll from trees in Cape Town is art.
I’m not really sure that the 0834319513 “interactive social project” is art either, but at least they provide a bit of a laugh to Cape Town drivers and they clean up after themselves.
This one seemed particularly apt after the events up in Joburg today:
More images and information here.
And so here I sit/slump/lie, mildly drugged, with several holes in my abdomen.
I’ve been out of hospital for a couple of days now and I’m making my way along the road to recovery. The op went well and I’m under doctor’s orders to take it easy. As he said, I can eat what I want, drink what I want and do what I want, but if he sees me before the scheduled follow-up appointment, then he’ll know that I have no common sense.
“The operation may be routine,” he told me when I first saw him, “but it should not be underestimated.”
A bit like life really. But he was right. While I was in and out of theatre within the prescribed 90 minutes, things went badly wrong for the patient across the ward from me – a nice older gent who had been doing the Cape Times crossword with his wife before I went in – who was having the same op with the same surgeon immediately after me. He ended up in the High Care unit after 3 (4?) hours of surgery and had to go back under the knife the following day to attempt to rectify matters. I’m sad to say that I have no idea how things went. I’ll make a point to ask when I see the doc again.
Immediately after coming out of theatre, I was plied with morphine. I have a vague recollection of the nurse asking me if I was in pain. I was. She slipped some morphine into me and asked again. I seem to remember telling her that yes, it still hurt and she gave me some more. Things were going quite nicely at this point, and it seemed that I had quickly worked out an excellent system for legally obtaining copious amounts of opiates by just giving an affirmative single word answer. However, it rapidly fell apart when I missed her next question as I was too busy watching the huge gerbils chasing each other excitedly around the walls of the ward.
Sadly(?) I’m not on anything quite so strong now and my bedroom is a gerbil-free zone. But everything is still a bit fuzzy and though I have proof-read this post about 74 times already, I keep finding errors and those are the errors that I have found. Apologies for any that I have missed.
And so this is me for the moment, still a bit slow and a bit sore, having now learnt that you use your abdominal muscles for absolutely everything you do. Breathing, laughing, coughing, walking, any sort of movement whatsoever, sit-ups (OK, I knew that one already), dancing, abseiling… absolutely everything. I have tried to cut down on my painkillers already, but it’s not an option yet, and now my wife has asked me to do the shopping (online – no driving for 10 days).
It could yield some interesting - but I hope at least entertaining – results.
I’ll let you know.
Stuck as I am in a hospital bed (or, if things have gone horribly awry, a mortuary fridge) in the land-locked southern suburbs, I am probably unable to enjoy a nice sea view out of the window (there are no windows in a fridge).
So, I’ll probably be mostly dreaming of getting out and about again soon for some crashing surf and blustery beach walks on the Cape coast. Meanwhile, here’s a quick quota photo to keep me going:
Of course, if I actually am in a mortuary fridge, this is going to appear horribly creepy, so I should probably tell you that this was written pre-op, as there’s no wifi in here and my fingers are too stiff to type.
As this post publishes itself (via the magic of WordPress), I will – if all is going according to plan – be lying on a bed in an operating theatre in a hospital deep in the Southern Suburbs (no, not that one – I want a decent chance of survival) with a highly accomplished and highly expensive surgeon delving inside me like they do on Grey’s Anatomy.
I’m not particularly looking forward to this. My last “proper” op was when I was 7.
The aim of this one from my point of view is twofold: it will hopefully sort out the medical issues I have had recently and it will give me a chance to flirt with the nurses on the recovery ward.
In addition, I’ll be handily placed for the local A&E department when my wife reads this.
Pre-posting this is a bit of a risk: previous pre-posts about big events backfired spectacularly. I can only hope that that incident was a one-off. I can’t afford similar disasters with today’s operation.
Although the thought has occurred to me that it would be unlikely to be cancelled because of heavy snowfall.
Anyway, I digress. Often. And this time it’s probably because of pre-op nerves. See, much like when one reads a newspaper story about an event that one witnessed and one realises just how inaccurate the papers are, so it is with being a patient in a hospital when one has, for much of one’s life, worked in and around the medical profession. That smooth veneer of cleanliness, knowledge, professionalism and caring that you see as an outsider actually often covers a multitude of sins. I would prefer to be ignorant of these things for the next few days.
Indeed, the run up to this op has been plagued by poor service, misdiagnoses and ineptitude at virtually every step. It doesn’t fill me with confidence.
Still, it should all be plain sailing as long as the bloke with the knife has had his morning coffee (maybe the pre-op nil-by-mouth thing goes for surgeons as well):
All being well (but most especially me) I should be back blogging “soon”.
Maybe even sooner than that if I manage a couple more pre-posts before Thursday today.
You’ll never know the difference.
www.6000.co.za
Le Onde
It might not seem like a big deal for many people, but I didn’t enjoy being stuck in hospital, even though it was just for a couple of days. I was bored, sore, drugged, a bit scared. It wasn’t nice.
What kept me going was Ludovico Einaudi – more specifically his music – and even more specifically, his “Greatest Hits” collection Islands. One favourite track therein is Le Onde which translates as “The Waves” and it’s no big surprise to me I like it. As I said before I went in, the thing I’m looking forward to more than any other (save maybe from avoiding future excruciating abdominal pain) is getting back down onto the beach for some blustery walks near the sea.
Sadly, while I wanted to share the goodness of Le Onde with you, I couldn’t find a decent version online. Sure, there’s plenty of Einaudi stuff on Youtube, but I don’t expect you or anyone else to enjoy staring at a picture of an album cover for 5½ minutes (pretty though it may be).
The music is evocative, delicate, powerful – it deserves more than that.
So I did my own version:
The music is Einaudi’s (obviously – that’s the point of this whole thing).
The images are mine – taken in and around beautiful Cape Agulhas, South Africa. (Flickr)
And sure, it’s not professional in any way, shape or form. I have neither the software nor the talent to produce a masterpiece.
But it sums up what the music means to me. And that’s what’s important, right?
In addition, it gives you something to look at while you enjoy a few moments of calm in your otherwise hectic day.
You will feel better after watching this.
Please feel free to let me know what you think. Be gentle. I am a sick man.