The next chapter
Saturday Morning
It’s bright and early and the noise of the hospital is clattering around me. I’m two days post op and sitting up in bed feeling optimistic. My surgery was on Thursday afternoon. I was terrified checking into hospital, being prepped for surgery and wheeled into the the theatre. I woke in recovery feeling awful, struggling to pull myself out of the fog of anaesthetic. I’d needed rescue breaths because I’d failed to start breathing on my own coming round. I opened my eyes to the recovery nurse standing over me and immediately recognised her as a good school friend of Marcie’s. “I know you”… I said through the fog. She looked at me confused. “I’m Marcie’s mum.” She looked up at my name tag again. “Oh my god - Renee!” It was a weird moment.
I’ve spent the last couple of days drifting in and out of sleep, weak and tired, but pain free. I’m afraid the pain is just lurking around the corner. I’m going home this morning.
20 Mar
What a week it’s been. Looking back over the last seven days, it’s hard to believe how many things have happened in just a week. My dream of coming home last Saturday and recouperating in a calm, peaceful environment is now something to laugh about.
Mum and Dad came to pick me up first thing in the morning - it was wonderful to be home, despite being still foggy and uncomfortable.While I’d been in hospital, my dog PoppySeed had been taken to the vet for an abscess on his foot. He was still very sore and swollen and needing a follow up visit on Monday. He and my little Sesame were so happy to see me, and I was over the moon to see them. We’d been home for a couple of hours, Dad had gone out and Marcie, Mum and I and the dogs were sitting out on the deck when a huge explosion shook the house. Shocked, we grabbed the dogs and rushed inside. My initial reaction was to think that a gas bottle had exploded somewhere out the back - perhaps next door. Cautiously, I walked towards the back of the house and into the bathroom where I discovered glass strewn across the hallway and at least eight metres into the adjacent room. Our enormous glass shower panel had exploded. There was glass out the window onto the lawn - it was everywhere. There was no reason, nothing touching it. It hadn’t just shattered, but exploded with mind blowing force. Marcie had been in there just an hour before having a shower - she would have been dead.
It took until the following Wednesday for the real estate to get someone in to clean it up, meaning we were with out a shower - luckily the toilet is in a separate room.
On Sunday evening, PoppySeed became really agitated and anxious, licking his foot obsessively almost to the bone. Marcie, Mum and Dad had to take him to the emergency vet where they bandaged it and put a cone on him. On Monday, he was taken to his regular vet where he had surgery to fix his abscess and found an enormous grass seed lodged deeply inside. He was also desexed at the same time. The following Wednesday night at around 9, Poppy got to his stitches and began ripping them out - the cone wasn’t big enough. Marcie and I drove him to the emergency vet once again where they cleaned it up and put on a bigger cone. Thursday morning back to the regular vet (this time in the torrential rain that had started falling) where the vet checked it and rebandaged it. As we left to come home, the car wouldn’t start. After about 15 minutes of stress, it started reluctantly and we made it home. The next Tuesday, he got the cone off when we weren’t watching and ripped out his stitches again. He was taken back to the vet where he was put under again and the stitches redone.
As all of this was happening, a once in a hundred years rain event was unfolding over our part of Australia. The rain bucketed down for days and thousands of people across NSW were devastated by unprecedented flooding. We were safe and dry in our house, up on stilts, on the side of a hill. The roads were closed, so Mum was stuck, Dad had already gone home before the rain began.
The last ten days have been an absolute blur. Apart from Sunday night after the first emergency vet trip, when the stress got to me, I have been doing ok. I’m stiff and a little bit sore but I’m mostly struggling with unbearable fatigue. I’m so tired and weak. I’ve been trying to walk slowly around the block each day, but this is all I can manage before I’m back on the couch, exhausted. My sleep is so deep yet I wake tired each day. I see my surgeon for the first time since the operation next Wednesday. I’m looking forward to getting some answers then.