So you might not know what a knickerbocker glory is, I never had one but always coveted one…in every cafe we ever went in as a child I watched enviously as other children were given these beautiful treats by doting grandparents. I wasn’t the only deprived child, my husband also coveted a knickerbocker glory and never got one. This current generation with mcflurries and kiwiyo will never understand our loss, I suspect there must be something they covet…maybe it is cabbage or tapioca..or semolina…
Anyway I had to have surgery this week and it was classed as high risk and I am classed as high risk. I don’t have cancer, I have chronic diseases which is exactly like it sounds..chronic kind of slow and lingering. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, Ulcerative colitis and a bit of Sjogren’s, I also bleed in surgery for no known reason and have allergies to a fair few antibiotics including penicillin and also a latex allergy, add in steroid dependency immunosuppressant drugs and I am quickly becoming the last person you want in your operating theatre we can now add in difficult intubation on more than one occasion and to be fair you wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole if you could help it.
It was my sixteenth surgery. That is my sixteenth surgery done with anaesthetic and cutting in Theatre, not including those other procedures like the colonoscopies, endoscopies, flexi-sigmoidoscopies, IVF procedures, MRI’s CT’s and minor intrusions.
There will be many of you out there that have been through more and many that have been through less but all I can tell you is that despite everything, which included losing 3 litres of blood in 2 minutes in my last surgery and nearly not surviving this one had terrified me the most. The sixteenth.
The sixteenth surgery was in tiger country. Not in my belly or my abdomen or some big roomy cavern but up my nose and into my head to the deep space beneath the brain that is called the sphenoid sinus. Tiger country because the membranes are all that stands between the scalpel and the brain, Tiger country because the membranes are all that stands between the scalpel and those major blood vessels and arteries. Tiger country because that is how Dr Shetty described it and that is how I found my peace on the afternoon of my surgery, he was going to be slow and careful and exercise stealth to remove the disease and infection from the tiger country.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
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