So today, finally, she had her operation.  She had to be at the hospital at 7:30am, which is a silly time in the morning, even more so because that meant we had to get up at 5:30am to be ready in time to leave the house at 6:30.  The journey in was pretty straightforward, little traffic to speak of, and we didn’t talk about the operation at all.  It was only when we got there and waited in the drop-off car park that we spoke properly about the op, and prayed together that it would all go okay.

And that was it.  I dropped her off and came home.  I wasn’t able to sit with her, or wait for her, or comfort her, or be around when she came round from the anaesthetic.  I felt quite helpless.

Samuel managed to stay awake all the way home, but only just, and went straight off to sleep when we got home.  Which was brilliant, because it meant I had time to go through the shower and everything else I didn’t have time for first thing.  He woke up eventually and we went to Tesco, and when we got back I phoned the hospital to find out what the situation was.  I spoke to the lady who was in charge of bed allocation, so she didn’t know exactly where Ellie was, but she said she’d give me the phone number for the ward where she’d be put after the op.  I went to fetch a pen, started writing down the number, and then my mobile rang – it was the ward I’d just been given the number for, telling me that Ellie was out of theatre and was doing well.  Talk about good timing!

I gave her a quick ring on her mobile, because the ward nurse had told me I was allowed to.  Ellie was compus mentus, which was encouraging, but she was understandably groggy so I didn’t keep her long.  Apparently she’d be let out later in the afternoon and they’d give me a ring when she was ready.

So Samuel and I played some more, and went to the park, and came back again.  And then I put Disney’s Lion King on, because I don’t think Samuel’s seen it before.  Not that he’s got enough of an attention span to watch it all the way through, but he did spend the first 20 minutes or so laid on his tummy underneath the coffee table with his eyes glued to the TV!

Finally, as I was giving Samuel dinner, Ellie let me know that she was being discharged and that she’d like me to pick her up from the hospital.  And so I bundled a load of stuff into the car and made the journey to Yeovil again.  I managed to find Ellie eventually, in a little ward in the women’s wing (I was almost surprised to be let in, maybe I just misunderstood the name…).  Curiously, there weren’t many staff around at the time.  In fact, because Ellie had already discharged herself and was just waiting for collection, I didn’t have to check with anyone that we were leaving, we just left.  It almost felt like I was stealing her away, as if we were sneaking out without permission.  It also felt odd that I hadn’t seen or talked to any medical professional the whole day – Ellie could have been looked after by gerbils for all I know.

Thankfully Ellie was in pretty good shape, all things considered.  She’d had the operation fairly early in the morning, and it had been relatively straightforward (it had taken about an hour in theatre, plus several hours recovery), and she seemed a lot more ‘with it’ than I had expected.  I’d forgotten to bring her squash though, which she’d asked for, but I don’t think she had the energy at the time to tell me off.  We talked about her experience most of the journey back, and when we got home my Dad had arrived and was getting dinner ready.

So all’s well.  God has looked after us all, answered our prayers, and will undoubtedly continue to work his little miracles as Ellie’s body heals itself from the ordeal.  We’re also really thankful for all the various family members who are looking after Samuel for the next couple of weeks, which means Ellie doesn’t have to and I don’t have to take time off work.  It’s amazing how things pull together!

Feel free to send chocolate, she can eat that now.

Now, just recently I’ve not been all that active on Twitter or Facebook.  Life has just been too hectic, and having spent all day working at a computer actually the last thing on my mind when I get home is “right, I really need to sit in front of a computer for the rest of the evening”.  I’ve also had very little to say for myself, so even when I do find myself sat at a computer in the evening, I can rarely think of anything worthwhile to say.  The same goes for this blog, which hasn’t really been regularly updated in yonks.

A few days ago I was chatting to two of my best friends on Skype, catching up on stuff.  It was wonderful to see them both, and it reminded me just how much I miss them, and how irritating it is that Colchester is just so far away.  Whoever decided that 200 miles needed to be such a long distance clearly needs their head examined.  In fact, it occurred to me that Anne-Marie and Sarah are still my closest friends (apart from Ellie of course), despite the distance and the shameful lack of regular conversation.  We really ought to keep in touch more often.

And then it hit me – I’ve been doing Twitter all wrong.

For some time now I’ve been operating under the mantra that “no one wants to hear about what you had for breakfast”.  It’s been drilled into me that Twitter is meant for sharing important and useful information, and that you have to offer something unique and intellectually valuable for people to follow you and retweet your ideas.  Well, if the goal of your existence on Twitter is to attract clients and do business and generally be seen on Twitter as a minor celebrity, then yes, by all means, that’s exactly what you should do.  But that’s not me any more.  The only people interested in following me now are my friends and family.  I’m not interested in anyone else.  And I don’t have to prove my intelligence to my friends, they already know my foolishness, they don’t want to hear about the latest trends in website performance or PHP coding.  My Twitter followers are like Anne-Marie and Sarah, who want to hear about those mundane everyday moments that often get missed even in a Skype video call.  True, they may still not care what I had for breakfast, but there are other parts of my life that they will be interested in.

I’ve found my purpose again.  And hopefully, with that newfound confidence in my own online existence, you should hear more from me in future.  And if not, feel free to shout at me in the comments to tell me off.

The first man to call was the handyman.  He’s been before.  He knows us.  He was called in because we had a draft in our downstairs cloakroom.  The rubber seal around the bottom of the window frame had begun to perish, leaving a visible gap where it had cracked, letting cold air through from the outside world.  He stripped out the old seal and whacked in a new one.  Job done.

Then, yesterday, the plumber came.  We’ve had issues with the heating since we moved into the house, in particular with the front bedroom not getting very much heat through the radiator.  That being Samuel’s room, it’s actually been quite a concern, so much so that it’s taken us well over a year and a half to get round to doing anything about it.  Ahem.  Basically, even when the heating had been on for several hours the radiator in that room didn’t get more than luke-warm.  And that’s no good at all, even if your name is Luke.  I had also discovered that several of the radiators couldn’t be adjusted because their valve controls had seized.  So the plumber came to sort it all out.

It turns out that the radiator in Samuel’s room wasn’t heating up because the pipe the other end (i.e. not the valve end) was almost completely clogged with limescale.  So even with the valve completely open, there wasn’t actually any hot water getting into the radiator, hence its utter inability to heat the room.  It was an issue elsewhere in the house too, so he drained the entire system (which apparently took ages).  While he was at it he also replaced all the old valves (apart from the one in the kitchen, which apparently he forgot about) with new ones to give us more control over the heating of individual units.  And Samuel followed the plumber around the whole time, inspecting his work at each stage.  Once it was done the system was refilled with water and tested.  Job done.

Well, almost.  I discovered this evening that there is the tiniest of leaks from the radiator in the cloakroom.  It’s so small that we hadn’t noticed until now.  I only noticed because I happened to be sitting on the loo (sorry, too much information…) and heard a faint hissing noise; the culprit was discovered eventually and we’ve put a cloth down to soak up the water and save the carpet from any lasting damage.  I did try ringing the letting agency this evening, but they were out and didn’t have an answering machine, so we’ll have to ring them tomorrow morning and get the plumber out again.  Shouldn’t be more than a matter of tightening a nut, but I’d rather they did it than me, just in case I break it – not sure they’d be too happy if I flooded the house out of impatience.  Especially as we’ve got an inspection in a week or so…

And all this reminds me of a Flanders and Swann song I came across many years ago: The Gas Man Cometh.

Thing is, now that I have a ‘real’ job, working in an office 9 till 5 every day, I have very little time or energy for much else.  I come home in the evenings and have very little enthusiasm for staring at another computer screen for the rest of the evening.  I check my emails for anything important, but things like Twitter just get pushed aside: “I’ll do that tomorrow”.

I did try to remedy that not long ago by installing Flock, which is a social media browser based on Chrome with a funky sidebar linking into Facebook and Twitter and suchlike.  That gives me a constant feed of what’s going on in the online world, which is nice.  If nothing else, it’s a useful reminder that the online world is still there, waiting for me to participate when I finally think of something to say.  But that’s part of the problem – I have very little to say at the moment.  I read other people’s Twitter feeds and Facebook statuses, and feel I ought to say something in return, but I can’t find the words, so I remain silent.

I feel like I’ve lost part of that creative spark just lately.  My current job is more technical at the moment, more to do with programming than visual design.  Which is a shame, because I really enjoy that side of things.  These days I seem to think in terms of data flow diagrams and entity relationships, in PHP and Javascript and any other code I happen upon.  I don’t think in colours, or textures, or typography.  I miss that.  And it’s almost as if that change in focus has stopped me being quite as creative in writing too – even this blog post doesn’t feel like it stands up against some of my others, it doesn’t seem to have much of a plot to it, nor my usual eloquence of language.  All this coding is making my brain numb.

I guess what I really need is an artistic outlet of some sort, to keep my mind active in the evenings.  I ought to spend some time working on the album I was recording last year.  I should dig out a sketch book and some pencils and do some still life drawings.  I should invest in an Airfix model.  I should get my Lego out and build something monumental.  Any or all of the above.  And maybe that will give me the stimulus I need to share my creativity with the world, to get on Twitter again properly, to make sure my brain doesn’t resign itself to a future of endless coding…

To explain, let me share with you a little of the detail of what they actually did when they operated on me (I’ll try to keep it brief for those who don’t like watching Casualty).  The problem was a small tear or hole in my abdominal tissue, just under my belly button, which was allowing the fatty tissue underneath to poke through and get slightly strangulated, causing some considerable pain.  I was under doctor’s orders not to lift anything, not to do anything strenuous, and basically to take it easy and do a little as possible until it was fixed.  The operation involved a general anaesthetic, a small incision above my belly button so they could get to the hernia, a few stitches to close up the hole, a few more stitches to close up the hole they’d made, and a hefty dose of painkillers to see me through the ordeal.  Simple.  Except that more than two months down the line I’m still in just as much pain and discomfort as I was two weeks after the operation.

I’ve been back to the hospital several times, trying to persuade them that something’s not right, and they finally got round to doing an ultrasound scan to look at the area.  My surgeon was initially mystified as to why I might be in pain, because as far as he could see everything was fine.  The scan showed that I had a slight inflamation, technically known as a granuloma, around the internal sutures.  That’s not meant to happen.

During the operation they used two different types of suture (which is a medical term for a needle and thread).  The ones on the outside, sealing up the external hole that they cut to get at the hernia in the first place, were dissolvable stitches.  I was told they would disappear on their own within about 2-3 weeks.  Actually they took twice that long, but that’s the NHS for you.  The internal sutures, on the other hand, were non-dissolvable, as they had to be stronger and more permanent so that the hernia didn’t spring back open again.  They’re deliberately made of a man-made material that won’t be rejected by the human body.  Except mine, apparently.

Yes, I’m one of those tiny percent of people whose bodies see the suture and  say “Whoah, there!  What on earth is that doing there?  I’ll have to get rid of that.”  And so my body’s defences did what they could to try to isolate and kill off the foreign body, surrounding it with extra tissue.  That’s the granuloma.  It’s a little spherical lump next to the scar tissue where my hernia used to be.  And if I lift anything, or walk anywhere, or stand for too long, it hurts.  It seems the movement of the stomach muscles agitates the granuloma and causes my discomfort, meaning I’m still unable to do very much even after all this time.  How utterly frustrating.

My surgeon wasn’t too sympathetic, last time I saw him.  He found the whole thing hilarious, and told me that if anyone was to blame it was my own body.  I didn’t see the funny side of that.

So I’m having another operation, next month, to remove the little lump.  Apparently that will do the trick.  My body has, on the whole, accepted the internal suture, so they have no plans to take that out and replace it with something else.  It’ll be a smaller operation, so I’ll only be off work for a few days.  The end is in sight (again), and hopefully by Christmas I should be starting to get my life back together again.  In the meantime, I’ll just have to carry on imagining rough and tumble play time with Samuel, rather than actually doing it.

I say “early” – that may be a slight exaggeration.  In the grand scheme of things he’s not altogether ground-breakingly early, he’s just right at the very early end of the scale for each of those developmental milestones.  Physically, Samuel is hitting his targets earlier than most of his contemporaries, which makes me very proud.

And now he’s started to walk.

It all started about a week and a half ago, when we were all sat on the floor in the lounge having a Skype video chat with my mother-in-law.  As we chatted, Samuel stood, mesmerised by the moving picture of the face he knew to be his grandma.  And, to our astonishment, he took a few small steps away from us and towards the computer.  On his own.  Unaided.  Not holding onto anything.  We almost didn’t notice the first time, it seemed so natural, but then he did it another few times.  Samuel didn’t appear to be noticing it for himself, he was just trying to readjust his standing position to be closer to the computer, which I guess is the basic principle of walking, just without the conscious deliberation behind it.

Then, typically, I went away for a few days and didn’t see him.  Last time we were separated for any length of time was when Ellie and Samuel went up to Gloucester to visit, and the day before Samuel decided to start crawling.  Yet again, the day before I go away, he learns something new.  I had to wait an agonising four days before I could see his progress.  I came home from my conference half expecting him to be running around the house…

He’s still a bit cautious, and doesn’t go very far, but he’s beginning to realise now what he’s doing.  He can walk a good few paces before he overbalances, and is getting quite excited about it.  Trouble is, when he’s excited he has a tendency to jump up and down, which isn’t really conducive to walking steadily and not falling over!  He’ll get there, with practice, but I’m so proud of my son and his achievement.  He’s 10 months old.  He’s beaten me to that milestone – I was 11 months when I started walking.  There’s no stopping him now!

The surgery itself went very well.  Not that I remember very much of it, of course.  Apparently when I came to after the operation I turned down a cup of tea three times before accepting, and had some garibaldi biscuits, none of which I have any memory of whatsoever (and yes, I still feel cheated because of that).  After the op I spent a lot of time lying down, resting, not doing very much, giving my body all the time it needed to get itself straight again.  Well, I say “all the time it needed”, in fact I was back at work the following week, because I’d convinced myself that sitting at a desk didn’t constitute effort.

Now, I had been told in the hospital that I had been given dissolvable stitches, which would disappear within about 2 weeks.  There were actually two parts that needed healing – the interior wound where they patched up the hernia, and the exterior wound that the surgeon cut to get at the interior one.  I still have a lovely scar visible just above my belly button, about 4cm long.  Next to that is where the stitching for the exterior wound was brought to the surface and knotted off, so for some time I had a bit of what looked like fishing line sticking out of me.  I gave that a good 3-4 weeks before wondering why it hadn’t dissolved away and started gently pulling at it to see if it would come away, but each time I could feel it pulling on something inside.  Obviously I didn’t do that too much!

I had also been told that I should expect to be back at work and starting to do things again by about 3 weeks.  Sure enough, by the third week I was feeling much better, much stronger, and I slowly started doing things again.  Not all at once, and nothing too strenuous, just building up gradually as my wound would allow.  All was fine until a week or so ago, around a month after the operation, when things started going backwards a bit.  Playing with Samuel was causing me discomfort again, I was feeling tender and sore, and on Sunday I even felt quite nauseous and wasn’t feeling well at all.  So I booked myself an appointment at the hospital to get it checked out – the last thing I wanted was for it to have re-herniated.

What came out of that phone call was that the dissolvable stitches can easily take 50 days to dissolve.  A bit different to 2 weeks then.  That explains why I still had a bit of fishing wire poking out of me.  If they’d given me that number at the beginning I wouldn’t have been trying to hurry it up.  This morning I had the appointment with my surgeon, who had a feel and reported that it was all fine.  The exterior wound does indeed take around 2-3 weeks to heal up, but the interior tissues take a lot longer, possibly 2 months.  Again, not what I’d been told originally.  The discomfort I was feeling was most likely caused by me trying to do too much too soon.  Apparently throwing Samuel in the air is back off the cards again.

So, the good news is that I’m making a good recovery after all.  Everything looks and feels fine to the surgeon, and there is no cause for concern.  What I thought was swelling and/or a re-herniation is actually just scar tissue.  That’s a huge relief.  I guess it’s just slightly frustrating that my worry was caused by incomplete information and vastly understated recovery times when I had the operation itself.  I’ll have to hold back on what I do again, and give my body a little bit more time to heal itself before I launch back into normal activity.

Patience is a virtue, so they say.  I just wish patience came with a countdown timer.

I guess it’s partly with that in mind that I and my wife are leaders each year on a Christian youth camp.  I say ‘partly’ because the other half of the reason I go is that Ellie asked me to, and since we were engaged at the time (the first year we went) I felt I ought to say yes.  Since that first year we’ve both made ourselves quite indispensible, doing lots of stuff, leading lots of things, running hither and thither to help out wherever we can.

This year was slightly different for both of us, for different reasons.  The main difference for me, as you may have read, is that I’ve had a hernia.  I was under doctor’s orders not to lift anything heavier than a kettle, and not to do too much walking around either.  Ellie’s time was also eaten into by the attention of our baby Samuel, who had his first experience of exuberant teenagers this year.  Camp this year was tough on all of us – physically and mentally.

My main responsibility at camp is leading and co-ordinating the music and worship during the week.  I’m the front man for the band, which plays for the morning and evening meetings each day, helping the kids worship God in music.  I choose the songs, co-ordinate the rehearsals, lead worship and provide musical interludes where appropriate.  This year we had a music session on each day as well, and for the most part I led those single-handed too.  There was a worship workshop on band dynamics, two practices for the members’ band (who provided the music for one of the evening meetings), and a jam session where the young people could come and play.  I was also on hand to help out with the DJ session, and usually help with ‘Junk Funk’ too (which is a percussion session using bits of junk we find around the site).  And that’s all in addition to co-leading a Bible study group and being a dorm leader, and all the other responsibilities of camp in general.  Oh, and I was the official photographer as well.

Normally I would have thrown myself into all those activities, and doubtless worn myself out by the third day as usual.  But, with my hernia hampering my ability to take part in anything even remotely physical, I had to take things a lot slower than usual.  I had to leave extra time to get between locations, because I could only walk at a very leisurely pace if I wanted to avoid a lot of pain later in the day.  I had to get people to carry things for me.  I had to ask other people to run around and find the theatre keys while I sat outside in the sunshine.  I had to push in the queue at meal times s that I wouldn’t be standing for longer than I needed to.  It may sound like a cushy life, but in reality it was really hard work – not physically, but mentally.

Life wasn’t easy for Ellie, either.  While it was a godsend having her mum with us to look after Samuel during the day, Ellie still needed to be with him for some of the time, and of course she was still getting up during the night to feed him.  How she had the energy to do camp at all I really don’t know.  And of course because I wasn’t able to physically do much with Samuel, I then felt guilty for sitting and watching.

And yet, despite this backdrop of difficulty and inconvenience, camp was still undeniably awesome.  The worship band, which consists of only three people – me playing guitar and keyboard (not at the same time), Greg on bass, Sarah on drums – gelled together almost instantly, and I was once again amazed and inspired by how rich and full a sound the three of us could make.  Leading worship from a sitting position didn’t appear to have a major impact on the effectiveness, and many of the young people said how wonderful the worship had been during the week.  I even taught them a few of my own songs, which seemed to go down well.

Everyone looked after me, everyone understood why I wasn’t able to do as much, no one was offended at my inaction or blamed me for lateness.  Being temporarily disabled gave me an insight into other areas of camp, those chilled out times in Stanbucks (our on-site equivalent of a Starbucks cafe), the spectators at the sidelines of sport activities, the conversations and relationships taking place in the breaks and free time.  It was beautiful.  I got to listen, to hang out, to gain insights into people’s lives that I’d never found time to explore in previous years.  Yes, this year’s camp was lived in the slow lane, but ultimately I found it to be a very positive experience.

And then there were the kids.  Or ‘members’, as we officially call them.  A lot of them are repeat offenders – by which I mean they come back to camp year after year.  Sometimes they bring their friends, too.  And it’s been so inspiring to see how they’ve all grown and matured in the last few years.  I remember leading the members’ band a few years ago, and recall how hard work it was getting them to work together and wanting the show off their musical talents.  This year, in stark contrast, I was blown away by their spiritual maturity, their willingness to serve, their ability to work together for a common goal, and their musical skill.  That Thursday evening when the members’ band were on stage was such a rewarding experience – its rare that you get to see those seeds grow and mature over the years, and I’m so thrilled with the way God has been at work in their lives in those 51 weeks of the year they’re not at camp.

I’ve put photos up on Facebook, as usual, and most of the members are now ‘friends’ with me.  I find it interesting watching them go through life the rest of the year, seeing what’s going on in their lives, how God’s working in them.  And I guess that’s the key.  Nothing we do at camp would be worth a penny if God were not at the centre of it all.  There’s no way such a small group of leaders should have the energy or resources to do what we do each year and still be able to drive home at the end of it.  There’s no way we would have any impact on young people’s lives if it weren’t for God being there to inspire them and help them grow.  It’s God who attracts them, God who challenges them, God who changes them, God who equips them, God who supports them when they go back home.

I’m looking forward to next year’s camp already.  Ellie and I have a list of things we’d like to improve or add.  But most importantly I’m looking forward to meeting with the young people again, seeing where God has led them in the last 51 weeks, seeing how they’ve grown and matured, catching a glimpse of the people God is making of them.  I’m also hoping I won’t need a desk chair on stage next year.

Friday didn’t feel ominous or troubled at all.  There were no dark clouds, no rumblings of thunder, no vultures perched on the lampposts.  It was just an ordinary summer’s day, with blue sky and wispy white clouds and birds singing in the trees.  And, quite honestly, I wasn’t worried one bit.  Ever since I had been given the diagnosis I had remained calm and philosophical about the whole thing.  People had reassured me that it wasn’t scary or dangerous and they were sure I’d be fine.  I could have told them that.  It wasn’t until the night before that I had wondered why people seemed so intent on reassuring me, that perhaps I had been too blasé about the whole thing and actually there was something to fear after all.  But no, I pushed those thoughts aside, took a deep breath of clean morning air, and walked confidently – if slowly – into the hospital.

I was met with a look of surprise when I announced myself at reception.  ”Hello,” I said, “I’m here for an operation.”  I had so wanted to walk up to reception and declare at the top of my lungs “They’re going to take me apart!”  But I muffed it at the last minute.  How boring.  ”Okay,” the receptionist replied and, looking round me said “and… are they with you too?”  Yes.  My support crew.  My groupies.  My dedicated followers.  Or, to be more precise, my wife (who would be coming in with me), my son (who wouldn’t be), my chauffeur (because I wasn’t allowed to drive myself home), and my hanger-on (whose job it was to entertain Samuel).  From the receptionist’s expression, clearly I was the first person ever to have day-surgery who came with such an entourage.  I felt at the same time guilty and proud.

We settled into the waiting area for me to be called through, and proceeded to make with our usual level of conversation.  Anne-Marie flicked through one of the leaflets advertising the hospital, and commented on how they had used the same people in all the photos.  I said that I wished the ceilings were more interesting.  Samuel crawled under the seats and ate bits of promotional material from the literature stand.  I wondered what the other patients must have thought of us, and whether they minded our buffoonery ahead of their own operations.

Then, after not too long a wait, a lady came through and called my name.  I got up, and asked if my wife could come with me.  Again, she seemed shocked and appalled that I had so many people with me, and requested in a not altogether friendly way that Samuel be left in the waiting area.  Why else did she think we had brought extra people??  On reflection, I suppose most people would have left the baby with someone else, rather than bringing the babysitter(s) into hospital too.  Still, I felt her attitude was a little harsh, but my determination to enjoy the day prevented me from clinging onto any ill will.

Ellie and I were taken into a cubicle where we were told exactly what would happen throughout the day, what the timings would likely be, who I would meet, how it would work, what would happen afterwards, that sort of thing.  I nodded and smiled and tried to take in as much as I could, but I could feel the tension rising in me like the tide – slowly, but impossible to stop.  My wife helped me into my hospital gown, which wasn’t exactly stylish.  What made me laugh most though was the slippers – completely made of foam, one size fits all, not particularly comfortable, not at all attractive, and in the end only worn for a matter of minutes.  If it was up to me, I’d save the money on foam slippers and ask people to keep their socks on instead.

Ellie left me in the cubicle to go and walk Samuel around the local park with the girls.  No, I wasn’t afraid of my impending operation, but she could tell I was nervous, and I could tell she didn’t really want to leave me.  But the operation itself would only be 20-30 minutes, and if she hadn’t left then there wouldn’t have been time to get to the park and back again before I was awake.  So there I was, alone, in a cubicle, being seen every now and then by a surgeon, an anaesthetist, an assistant anaesthetist, a nurse… there may have been more, I honestly don’t remember, my mind was already beginning to fur up with a slow but perceivable flow of adrenaline.

Then, without much warning, I was asked to come through to theatre.  I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, perhaps not as far as a big flashing neon sign saying “Welcome to the slaughter-house”, but maybe at least some sort of indication of where we were.  From what I remember, I was led down a corridor, through a set of double doors that might easily have led to a store cupboard, and there was the operating table.  No flashing lights, no fanfare, no pyrotechnics, just a simple operating theatre.  It was almost an anticlimax.

Still, the staff were friendly.  They chatted away to me as they were getting me prepared – it helped that they had come in to see me beforehand while I was in the cubicle – and it all sounded routine and straightforward and as normal as doing your shopping.  So I was almost surprised when I began shivering with nervousness and not being as conversant as I thought I would be.  I just lay there, looking up at the nondescript ceiling and the big circular lights, as various people did their jobs around me.  The assistant anaesthetist took charge of putting the IV in the back of my hand, where they would later administer various drugs without the need for additional injections.  She fussed around for a while trying to get my veins to the surface, but eventually found one.  The head anaesthetist joked that he’d never seen her do that before, and that it was some sort of miracle that I was still alive.  Very funny.  I wonder how many times a day he makes that remark.

In addition, they put monitoring thingies on my chest to make sure my heart was still there, or some such thing, and put inflatables around my legs to keep the blood in my upper body.  I’m sure there are technical terms for those, but I didn’t bother to ask.  Someone made a comment about me being nervous, and the anaesthetist gave me a couple of syringes of clear liquid into the thing in my hand.  The first, he said, was an initial anaesthetic to start things off.  The second was something to make me less tense; apparently it’s like being drunk, and he used the example of a gin and tonic.  I didn’t want to get into a conversation about my drinking habits, so I just smiled as best I could and said “sounds good to me”.  And then I waited for the general anaesthetic.

And then I woke up.  I’ve no idea when they knocked me out, and I certainly don’t recall the experience of going under, there’s just a blank where I was asleep.  I even vaguely remember dreaming, I think.  Nor do I really remember waking up.  It certainly wasn’t the gradual fade-in that they show on TV, as things slowly come into focus and sound goes from mushy to clear over a period of several seconds.  No, I just remember at some point being conscious, no half-way point, no transition, just awake.  The nurse was next to me, I think, and asked me how much pain I was in on a scale from 1 to 10.  I said 5 or 6, which he thought was a little high, so gave me some additional drugs via my drip.

The next 10 minutes or so were rather vague, and I don’t remember exactly what happened or in what order, but I do recall the nurse asking me if anyone was waiting in reception for me, and I said my wife would be there.  She was brought through a few minutes later.  Apparently then I started looking a big pale, and the nurse gave me some oxygen.  At some point it was taken away again, and at some point the IV drip was taken out of my hand.  Ellie disappeared somewhere, and while she was gone the nurse started dressing me.  It was only at this point that I realised I must be going home, and that the last 15 minutes or so that I remembered were actually and hour and a half.  I don’t think I was slipping in and out of consciousness, nor was I delirious or saying random things, it’s just that my awareness of the passing of time was out of sync with reality and my short term memory was apparently sporadic.

Walking was very slow, and quite painful.  I had been told that I would have a nerve block that would stop me feeling any pain immediately after the operation, but either they’d forgotten or they’d over-advertised its effectiveness.  I nearly turned down the offer of a wheelchair to the front door – I didn’t want to cause a fuss – but before I knew it the wheelchair was there and I was being helped into it.  It was quite fun, as it turns out.

As Sarah drove us all back home, I tried to put a brave face on it all and ignore the pain (or discomfort, as I expect the medical professional would call it).  I was quiet, but I did join in the conversation and joked as much as I could.  Laughing, it turns out, isn’t something you can do comfortably when you have stitches in your belly.  I learnt and re-learnt that lesson several times over the next few days.

When we got home, I went to bed.  Sleep is good.  I like sleep.  I also like food – apparently the operation has done nothing to diminish my appetite.  I’ve watched several films this past weekend, including a couple of old Thunderbirds episodes (need to find more of those, I’d almost forgotten how brilliant they are), and done quite a lot of surfing the internet from my phone, thanks to free internet from Orange.  It’s now Monday evening, Anne-Marie and Sarah have both left, I’ve changed my dressing, the wound is looking like it’s making good progress, and I’ve finally worked out a way of sleeping on my side – I’ve had several nights of poor sleep on account of not being able to get comfortable on my back.

Walking is still slow and slightly painful, and I’m still not entirely convinced of the effectiveness of the painkillers they’ve given me.  But things are looking promising.  It’s early days, and I won’t be doing any abseiling any time soon, but on the whole it’s been quite an adventure.  Even though I’m now even less able to play with Samuel, there is a silver lining on the horizon (apologies for the mixed metaphor there) – the more I heal, the sooner I’ll be able to lift him again, and I am so looking forward to that.

Thank you to everyone who has sent warm wishes on Facebook and suchlike, it’s much appreciated.  And watch this space – I’ll be trampolining again before you know it…

There’s a hole in my abdomen, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There’s a hole in my abdomen, dear Liza, a hole.

For the uninitiated, a hernia is basically a hole in the muscle wall where the tissues and/or organs contained within are allowed to poke through and become strangulated.  It’s unclear as to when or how I sustained this impairment, but I first noticed it about a month ago as a pain underneath my belly button that didn’t go away on its own.  I paid a visit to my GP, who identified it as an umbilical hernia, and sent me packing to Bath Royal United Hospital for confirmation from a surgeon.  Thankfully I was still able to drive.  Otherwise it would have been a very long walk.

Forty minutes’ drive later and I was at the hospital front desk, and was soon directed to the Surgical Assessment Department.  That was in a completely different building, and by the time I’d done all that walking my tummy was in quite a bit of pain.  Thankfully when I got there I had plenty of time to relax.  After the preliminary questions, the taking of my heart rate and the obligatory urine sample, I was shown into a room with a bed and told to wait for a surgeon to be available to have a look at me.  I must have been waiting a good hour and a half before I was seen.  Good thing I had my mobile phone handy to surf the net while I waited; I read up on hernias on Wikipedia, and went through the archives of the Fail Blog.

After all that, the surgeon poked around and announced that, yes, it was a hernia.  Not a big one, thankfully, about the diameter of a finger, so it was just fatty tissue that was poking through rather than complete internal organs.  It basically looks like my belly button is swollen.  So then I was sent off to the Pre-Operative Assessment Ward, where I would have a few more tests and answer a few more questions to make sure I was healthy enough to have an operation.  They explained what the op would involve, and it all seemed fairly straightforward.  And then I drove home again.

It wasn’t until a few days later, having not heard from the hospital as to an operation date, that I decided to give them a call.  Turns out their waiting list was 18 weeks long.  They had no intention of getting in touch with me until at least September to book a date, and the operation itself would have been some time in November.  That’s a lot of waiting around, especially since my GP didn’t seem keen to recommend any painkillers other than the usual off-the-shelf ones.

Thankfully, I received a phone call not long afterwards from the Somerset Health Trust, or some such organisation, asking if I’d like to have my operation at Shepton Mallet hospital instead.  Of course I said yes, particularly when they said the waiting list there was only 3 weeks.  Quite a difference!

So, I’m due to be operated on next week.  It’s day surgery, so I’ll be in and out in a matter of hours.  I’ll be under general anaesthetic, the operation will only take about half an hour, and I’ll be sent home with some hefty painkillers to get me through the following week.  Apparently I’ll be out of action for at least a couple of weeks following the op, although thankfully my job doesn’t require much (any) moving around, so I should be able to get back to work sooner than most.

In the meantime, I’m restricted to very short walks at a very slow pace, no heavy lifting (by ‘heavy’, they mean anything more than the weight of a kettle), plenty of rest, and painkillers if I need them.  I can still drive, which is good, but I can’t lift Samuel at all.  That’s arguably the most painful part of the whole thing – playtime is very much restricted at the moment, and it’s killing me.  I’m doing my best to play with him on the floor, but it’s a very non-physical sort of play, and not at all what I’d like to be doing with him now that he’s active.

In terms of the pain itself, it seems to vary from day to day.  Most of last week I was absolutely fine, despite quite a lot of moving around and being active, but today I’ve been very uncomfortable indeed and I haven’t been doing much at all apart from sitting at a computer.  I’ll certainly be glad when this little adventure is over, and even more glad that I won’t be waiting until November.

Oh, and my wife is an absolute legend for looking after me the way she has been, and I love her so much for putting up with me.