Hello everyone, sorry I haven’t posted any of my hilariously entertaining blog posts for a while. So far the advertising revenue has failed to materialise so there’s not actually much incentive to write this other than to make a significant contribution to the literary canon. Word has obviously spread about how hilariously entertaining my blog posts are and it’s really gratifying to find that people are now comparing me to Oscar Wilde and Alan Bennett and hopefully not just because I look like a gay man.
As those of you who are keeping up with my hilariously entertaining blog posts will know, in August 2016 I had Nearly Died (not that I like to talk about it) and now, nine months later in April 2017, I was due to have the first of many reconstruction operations.
I’d returned to work from maternity leave in March 2017 which was fabulous timing because my reconstruction operation was scheduled for April which meant I had just long enough back at work to tell everyone all about how I had Nearly Died but not long enough to actually do any work. So for a month I just sat in the workroom, spinning around on my chair and annoying my colleagues. I did have to do the odd bit of cover which was irritating and got in the way of the spinning but even when I did have to leave the workroom to babysit groups of surly teenagers I felt like I had a proper work life balance for the first time in my career and felt myself flourishing.
My comrades in 254 were of course all delighted to see me because the workroom had been yawno and dullsville in my absence. I am pretty much the best thing in the workroom (apart from Julia’s doughnuts) and my colleagues were absolutely thrilled to see me back. I teach Classics as well as Philosophy and I was really touched to find that my desk had been made into a penis gathering point in my absence. I teach Aristophanes (not the actual dude obviously- he’s brown bread) and I take great delight in making the teenagers blush when I explain Aristophanes’ filthy jokes. Every year I humiliate my poor students by dressing them up in togas and forcing them to take part in class phallic processions by singing the Phallic hymn from Archarnians and carrying around a roughly hewn wooden knob that has been rubber banded onto my pointing stick (I do love a good pointing stick).
My comrades in 254 all knew this of course because of the number of complaints the college receives from parents so I came back to find cards with nobs on them and a plethora of other penis related paraphernalia on my desk. In fact Comrade Geekus even got me a good luck flying penis necklace which I still wear with pride. (Frog is small and stupid so he thinks it’s a bird)
I did feel a tiny bit guilty for rocking up after having a year off on maternity leave only to then bugger off again for four weeks on the sick, but it turns out that actually EVERYONE was really pleased about this arrangement. Turns out I am MUCH more annoying than even I thought possible and four weeks of my chair spinning, doughnut stealing, swearing and not doing any actual work was more than my poor, overworked comrades could handle and they all seemed quite relieved when I left to be reconstructed. So much so in fact that they all promised to put REAL money into my collection this time (as opposed to the buttons and paperclips that they had put into my previous collection) if I could make the sick leave last for a bit longer.
Now, If you’ve never had an operation you may well be wondering what it’s like so let me enlighten you by taking you on a step-by-step tour of what happens in day surgery.
Before this latest operation all of my operations (apart from the last one where I had been Hanniballed) had taken place when I was an inpatient, so I just got wheeled down to theatre in my trolley, knocked out, hacked to bits, stitched up, sent to recovery and then wheeled back to the ward. It took zero effort on my part and because I was so very ill (having Nearly Died) I was treated like the celebrity patient that I was and didn’t have to do anything other than specify how I liked my tea and moan about the stale sandwiches.
Day surgery is COMPLETELY different and requires HUGE effort and organisation on behalf of the patient.
First thing of course is to find out when you are actually having the operation. My dishy consultant had told me that the operation would be in either April or May depending on the waiting list and so as I Weebled my way out of the plastics outpatients’ clinic in December one of his minions booked me in for a pre-op appointment in early April. Pre-op appointments are now done over the phone (or at least mine was) so I was given a time for the telephone call and told to make sure that I was available at the time specified.
The pre-op conversation consists of being asked a load of questions about your health and being asked to confirm the details of the operation you are scheduled to have. You’re then told that a letter giving the date and time of your operation will be sent out within a couple of days.
Or at least that is what is supposed to happen.
In my case what ACTUALLY happened was that I received a pre-op phone call at a completely random time and had to go through intimate details of my upcoming surgery whilst in Tesco. Now I could have tried to rearrange the pre-op call but was not convinced I’d get a call back at the time agreed so thought it best just to hide behind the crumpet aisle and whisper the story of my blackened tit to the nursey on the other end of the phone.
Because I was whispering the silly bint kept asking me whether I had a cold or a throat infection and despite my best efforts to convince her that I was fine she wouldn’t let up and was threatening to cancel my operation and so in the end I had no choice but to talk to her in my normal voice and thus inform everyone in the bakery aisle all about the intimate details of my upcoming breast surgery.
I didn’t want anyone to think I was rich enough to afford cosmetic surgery in case they tried to mug me on my way home so I took great pains to loudly disclose the full story of how I Nearly Died and was gratified to receive a look of deep sympathy from an old lady who was fondling some bread in the opposite aisle. The 17 year old store manager who was busily counting waffles was thoroughly embarrassed and when I hung up and moved towards him in order to pick up some brioche for Frog’s middle class breakfast he scurried off and nearly fell over the big brown crates that he’d inapropriately stacked in the middle of the aisle- making him doubly embarrassed. It was quite funny. I do love watching people being embarrassed and humiliated- I think that’s what first drew me to teaching actually.
I then went home (without being mugged) to wait for my letter with the operation date in it. I waited and waited but of course the letter never came. So after a couple of weeks I phoned the plastics outpatients’ department and was told that a letter HAD been sent out over a week ago. I never received the letter so God only knows what happened to it. I really hope no one is masquerading as me to get free liposuction and to hook up with my dishy consultant. Free lipo, new tits and getting to second base with a dishy consultant is my compensation for Nearly Dying and it’s not on if fully alive people are able to fraudulently benefit from my Near Death by intercepting my mail and stealing my identity.
Anyway after strongly implying that it was MY fault that I hadn’t received the letter the nursey at the other end of the phone informed me that my operation was going to be in 3 day’s time. YIPPEEE! What a significant amount of notice! How handy! There was no point in being annoyed but that didn’t stop me being so. I had to sort childcare, sort Porl’s care, arrange time off work, make arrangements to be dropped off and collected from the hospital and find someone who could look after me for a week whilst I was on bedrest. All in three days. Annoying.
Fortunately because I have worked as a college lecturer for over ten years there is literally NOTHING that I can’t achieve in three days. In fact most years I plan and resource a whole year’s worth of (shit) lessons in the weekend before the students enrol and so sorting the arrangements for my operation presented no real problem, although finding someone dumb enough to take on Thug ’n’ Grump for a whole day was challenging- luckily Fake Friend eventually succumbed to my threats and bribes and agreed to have them, and this is pretty much the only reason why I haven’t binned her off yet.
So on the day of my operation I turned up to the theatre admissions department with a little bag containing my book, my dressing gown (I didn’t want the world seeing my arse even though it is a thing of great beauty) and my phone and went up to the reception desk to book in. I was on the morning list so I had to present myself at the desk at 7am which meant that it was pretty quiet in the admissions department and I was able to nab all the trashy mags and stuff them into my bag without anyone noticing and thinking I was a cheapskate. Bonus.
After waiting for a bit I was called into a little office and I sat down with a theatre nurse to check all my operation details and book in for the surgery. To my absolute amazement my medical notes were all entirely fabricated! My NOK details were wrong, my phone number was wrong (which seemed bizarre as they had called me on the right number less than two weeks before to do the pre-op) but more crucially I discovered that I’d been booked in for a mastectomy and not a mastopexy! I really didn’t want my other tit lopped off if it could be helped and so I asked the nursey to double check my notes. Luckily it turned out to be an admin error and not a cunning ploy by my dishy consultant to add my right tit to his macabre collection of female body parts.
Once the admin had been sorted I was ushered in to see my dishy consultant where I fully expected to be congratulated on my huge weight loss (remember I’d lost two and a half stone since he’d last seen me) but like a typical bloke the only thing he was interested in was my tits and so as usual he dispensed with the small talk and just ordered me to strip.
And this is where the fun started! He whipped out his big blue marker (and no sadly that is NOT a euphemism) and started to draw all over me! It was pretty clear that marker pens on the NHS are much better quality than the marker pens I have at college (the average life expectancy of a college marker pen is only six weeks which is about as long as a newly appointed FE manager) and I was going to ask where he got them from. However, as he was trying unsuccessfully to manipulate my huge right breast into an aesthetically pleasing shape whilst squinting doubtfully at my nipple- I didn’t think it was the right time and so I kept quiet and admired his superior quality marker pen in silence.
The bit where you get drawn on is pretty cool actually- there’s nothing quite like having a dishy consultant circle your fat bits with bright blue marker pen to make you feel body confident. Luckily I have no issues with body image at all so I happily grabbed some of the flab to make it easier for him to draw on. When he’d finished drawing circles on the flab (it took AGES) he drew massive arrows on each shoulder pointing towards my boobs so he could remind himself of what he was supposed to be doing in case he got side tracked in the theatre.
Once I was covered in blue marker and arrows I was chaperoned down to theatre by a theatre nursey and asked to wait in the holding pen. I’m not sure what this place was actually called but it’s a little room covered in uplifting posters of tropical rainforests and waterfalls where you have to sit and wait until the blood and guts from the previous operation have been mopped up and the trolley sheets have been changed.
I LOVED it in the holding pen! All my old entourage where there and they ALL remembered me from how I had Nearly Died so I got some more nursey cuddles and enjoyed a resurgence of my celebrity status. I think the holding pen is supposed to be a place where the theatre nurseys keep patients calm and reassure them before their operations (hence the waterfalls and rainforests) but sod that. Calm is for losers! I made it into a party zone and didn’t really care that the other yawno patients in there with me were quaking in fear. They were nowhere near as fun or as interesting as me and my old theatre buddies clearly felt the same because the lesser patients were quite rightfully ignored whilst we all discussed how I had Nearly Died and moaned about Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove. I do LOVE a good rant about the Tories, especially with other public sector workers who live in the same Tory induced nightmare that I do.
And then once we’d solved all the problems in education and healthcare by mentally redistributing the wealth of Tory MPs we said our goodbyes and I was escorted into the theatre which had by this time (I hoped) been swabbed clean of the previous patient’s body parts.
Once I was in the theatre I clambered up onto the trolley and was pleased to find that the sheets were clean and that there were no visible signs of blood and guts on the floor. I was hoping to see my dishy consultant before I was knocked out but I think that theatre etiquette dictates that the proper clever dicks only show up once the grunt work has been done by the minions and so I didn’t see him. I imagine he was waiting outside in his power scrubs and ridiculous bandana in order to make a dramatic entrance once I was asleep. Bit of a wasted opportunity to grope my boobs whilst I was conscious, I thought.
Anyway I tucked myself up in the trolley sheets and cheerfully chatted with my friendly anaesthetist whilst he plunged a needle into my vein and told me to relax, and then I felt myself drifting off to sleep…
In literary criticism this sort of ending to a hilariously entertaining blog post (or any other type of text) is what is known as a cliffhanger and occurs when a text concludes suddenly leaving big questions unanswered. The author’s intention is to get their readers to buy the next instalment of the series and for this reason I will be setting up a credit card payment link for anyone who desperately wants to find out about what happened next. I think I mentioned before that I have a mortgage to pay and advertising revenue has yet to materialise so I figure a pay-per-view system is probably the way forward. If of course you don’t feel like entering your credit card details into an unlicensed internet site in order to pay my mortgage you could just wait until I post the next instalment for free in a couple of weeks’ time….