I have to say that I am absolutely amazed by the number of visitors to my website, do you know that there have been over fifteen hundred views since I first published my blog two weeks ago? Obviously I am putting my massive popularity down to my hilarious witticisms and the fact that everyone wants to hear about how I Nearly Died- or at least I was- until my dad helpfully pointed out that the blogs are probably just being read by dirty old pervs searching for tits— thanks dad…
So, for all you dirty old tit pervs out there, and for anyone else who might be interested, here’s the next instalment…
The last blog post saw me undergo a skin graft operation where my vac dressing was removed and my pet fatshake was permanently rehomed to the blackened tit section of the biohazardous waste disposal unit. Thanks to the chats I’d had with my own personal microbiologist who I never mention, I knew all about the safe disposal of biohazardous waste but sadly no-one except my personal microbiologist ever wants to talk about it.
In the same operation that removed my vac. dressing and permanently rehomed my fatshake, my dishy consultant also hacked off the skin from the outside of both of my thighs and stitched it over the open wound in my left breast. (Who says that men can’t multi-task?) I’m guessing that my dishy consultant was a fan of Silence of the Lambs- because he was wearing a Hannibal Lecter muzzle whilst measuring up my thigh skin and making a weird sucking noise when he breathed. With hindsight I probably should have been more concerned than I was about the mask but what can I say? I’ve always been a sucker for a professional in a gimp suit (just ask Porl) and I didn’t sense the danger I was in until just before the anaesthetic knocked me out, and by then of course it was too late- I’d already signed the consent form.
Anyway, turns out I wasn’t murdered and eaten by my dishy consultant (bit of a shame because it would have made an awesome blog) and I came round from the operation very much alive but minus the shake and vac and with a brand new origami nipple.
After the operation I spent an hour or so in recovery chatting to some of my old entourage who all remembered me because of how serious my Nearly Dying had been and because I was a celebrity patient. And then I was wheeled back into the day care ward and told that I had to sit in the discharge lounge and wait to be collected by Porl. I was a bit chuffed when I heard about the discharge lounge, it sounded awesome and conjured up images of comfy sofas and day time telly and colourful throws and an open fire and a friendly cat.
But of course being the NHS it was nothing like this at all so I quickly renamed it (in my head) the patient dispatch centre. The dispatch centre consisted of a cold room stuffed with a load of hard backed nursing home recliner type chairs that didn’t recline without at least two people working together and using brute force. I know this because I made a great song and dance over how I demanded to recline but couldn’t operate the recliner function myself given that I had Nearly Died and then been Hanniballed. A single nursey rolled her eyes and came to assist me with no success so she had to call for a reinforcement nursey and between them they wrestled the chair into submission. No sooner was I settled into my non-reclining recliner chair that I realised I needed a wee so I had to get out, at which point the non-reclining-recliner chair sprang back into it’s usual non-reclining position. Annoying.
When I got back from having a wee I sat back down in my non-reclining recliner chair and was presented with a cup of tea and a stale tuna sandwich. I was well pleased and revelled in my celebrity status until I realised that every other bugger fresh out of theatre also got tea and a sandwich. Gutted. I hate equality. Much better when I get special treatment.
Luckily there was a telly in the dispatch centre but it was on mute and showing the news with subtitles. Yawn. I wanted to watch something fun like This Morning. I LOVE This Morning – how I would LOVE to go on that show and tell the nation the story of how I Nearly Died and hang out with Phil and Hollie- I would be such a great guest to have- the ratings would rocket (hint hint).
Anyway, I was a bit woozy and in a fair bit of pain (mostly stomach pain from the stale tuna sandwich) but quite happy to sit there, not reclining and wait and watch the comings and goings of the dispatch centre.
And so that’s what I did. For about two hours. I got another cup of tea but otherwise I was mostly ignored. Other dullard patients came and went but I ignored them cos they all looked a bit yawno- none of them seemed to have had a Near Death experience so we clearly had nothing in common. After a couple of hours of not-reclining I got a bit bored so I asked one of the nurseys if my husband was on his way. She went to check and came back with the fantastic news that he was ALREADY THERE and had been waiting next door the WHOLE TIME since I’d first arrived in recovery. MY HOW WE LAUGHED as we paid for four hours of unnecessary parking in the hospital car park.
I was dying to check out my new origami nipple but was under strict instructions to wait for two whole days before I could do the big reveal. When I sensed it was time I gathered the family around and as they looked on expectantly I began to remove my bra, and then slowly and erotically I slipped off the dressings. It was a dystopian strip tease.
The skin graft looked great- a bit scabby but the stitches were really neat and there were no obvious bite marks. Sadly the state of my origami nipple proved beyond doubt that thoughts and prayers are pretty useless and that what is really needed is stricter nipple control. The origami nipple did not look good. It was kinda shriveled and looked a bit discoloured and Porl told me to put it away cos it made him feel sick. I’d been body shamed by my husband. What a Loser.
I kept a careful eye on the origami nipple and willed the little fella to survive but sadly he lost his fight and crusted over and then completely scabbed off. It was pretty sad but also pretty cool and I was looking forward to showing my disembodied crusty nipple to all my mum friends, they had all shown great interest in my fatshake pet after all.
Annoyingly though before I could scoop it into a velvet-lined wooden box or even take a photo of it, I’d gone and dropped the bloody thing and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I couldn’t believe how a crusted over origami nipple could have just disappeared! I looked absolutely everywhere. But eventually I gave up and we moved house. Hope the new owner of the house doesn’t feel too freaked out when he finds it…
Apart from the wilted origami nipple the skin graft healed up really quickly, much sooner than the donor site on my thighs which stayed sore for ages and ages but luckily didn’t prevent me horse riding, or walking, or driving, or being mithered by my sodding children.
Six weeks after the skin graft operation I had to go back to see my dishy consultant so he could ogle my thighs and boobs whilst pretending to check on my progress. So on a rainy Tuesday afternoon I trundled back to the plastics outpatients clinic to catch up with him.
I think of all the places in the whole world, the plastics outpatients clinic is probably one of the most interesting. Next time you have a spare afternoon and can afford a hundred and twenty quid for the parking, forge a letter from the hospital and pop along to the plastics outpatients clinic for a nosey, you won’t be disappointed.
Obviously you’ll find a fair share of breast cancer reconstruction patients bimbling around (big love to you guys- cancer is a fucking cunt), but there is also a ton more underground cool steam punk type stuff going on. Every time I went (which was pretty much once every six weeks for over two years) I ran into new groovy patients and I LOVED playing ‘guess how the horrific injury was caused’ and ‘did they Nearly Die like me?’ (I’m working on the board game version)
There were patients with only fragments of fingers. Patients with bits of their legs missing. Patients with bandaged faces. Burns. Eye patches. Holes in elbows. Severed lips. It. Was. Awesome. I bloody LOVE a bit of human disfigurement (but only if there’s a happy ending obviously). The fact that all these people had direct access to my dishy consultant and were getting reconstructive surgery meant (I assume) that they were pretty happy, or if not happy then at least hopeful which is good enough.
There’s a lot of joking in this blog (hope you noticed) but honestly the proper clever dickness of my dishy consultant and the other not-so-dishy plastic surgeons who spend their days fixing this weird shit is really inspirational. Well done to all the proper clever dick plastic surgeons out there. To everyone else- be a bit more bloody careful!
So anyway, I sat in the plastics outpatients clinic, checking out the human horror show and waiting to see my dishy consultant. When I was called in he immediately eyed me up and asked me to get my tits out. I was pretty used to his smooth approach by now so just winked and started undressing. Normally I’d ask for a bit of romance, maybe flowers or a compliment first but to be honest I’d had three kids and only had one tit and beggars can’t be choosers so I just got on with it and stripped off.
My dishy consultant commiserated over my lost nipple but declared that the skin graft had taken well so we both cheered and punched the air and then he gave me the awesome news that I’d get a prosthetic tit to wear! To match the one that didn’t nearly kill me. My bra was a bit lopsided you see as my left breast still looked like an empty bean bag but my right one had swollen up to epic proportions thanks to being preggers and breastfeeding and being a bit fat.
So my dishy consultant went out to eye up some other woman’s missing tit and in came Breasty (I forget what her actual name was). Breasty turned up with a big sack of flesh coloured mini bags made from the same material as tights. She fished one out and I saw that it was basically an empty budget bean bag. A new bean bag to replace my old bean bag. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. When someone in a white coat mentions prosthetics you assume you’re going to get some sort of uniquely engineered, specially modified titanium/silicon tit type thing- not a budget bean bag- but I guess it’s all about the funding.
Breasty presented me with an array of flesh coloured bagetts (small bags- not a French stick obvs- I don’t know the technical term for the bean bag prosthetic so bagett will have to do) I picked one and was then given a load of stuffing material- the sort of stuff that you know is cheap as chips and flammable. I had to fill the bagett with the flammable stuffing until it matched the size of my massive right breast. Two bags of flammable stuffing later I was satisfied and Breasty gave me a hug for being brave and went on her way. I do bloody love nurseys. Best cuddlers in the world. My mum is a nursey so I get free nursey-mum cuddles on tap and they are the best of the best.
And then once my bra was filled up with a flammable tight bagett and Breasty had exited the building, my dishy consultant swanned back in and started telling me about THE NEXT STAGE.
I had assumed that this was going to be goodbye- that he would send me on my way with a flammable tight bagett, a load of scars, a missing nipple and gratitude for being alive- and I think I would have kinda been ok with this. It’s the NHS after all, and they’d already saved my life and patched me up, and given me cuddles and fed me tea and stale tuna sandwiches, I wasn’t expecting much more. Also Jeremy Hunt was the Health minister at the time so to be honest I was pretty amazed that the hospital was even there in the first place. I certainly wasn’t anticipating what my dishy consultant told me next.
Apparently this wasn’t to be a goodbye! My dishy consultant was clearly desperate to see me again and told me that he wasn’t just going to sign me off with an empty bean bag tit, a non-nipple and a flammable bagett, oh no…
HE WAS GOING TO MAKE ME AS GOOD AS NEW! (better than new in fact)
He talked to me about RECONSTRUCTION!
My left breast was going to be completely reconstructed by taking fat grafts from my flabby areas and then injecting this flab into my left boob to fill it out. So I was going to get liposuction! And a breast reconstruction!! AND EVEN BETTER- He’s also going to do the poor old right tit which so far hadn’t had much attention paid to it at all- so that it matched my better-than-before left tit. He said he’d give me a mastopexy (uplift) so my right nipple would no longer hang down between my knees (thanks kids) but would sit perkily on top of my gloriously remodelled right breast.
TO SAY I WAS WELL CHUFFED WOULD BE A MASSIVE UNDERSTATEMENT
My dishy consultant was pretty sure that he’d be able to get really good results and that when everything had been reconstructed I’d look as good as I did before I’d had the kids. He also said that he’d have another crack at doing the origami nipple once everything was healed up. And then he licked his lips. Lucky he was so dishy cos otherwise it would have been a bit creepy.
I obviously immediately agreed to all of this without asking any questions so he said he’d see me at the end of December, three months after the skin graft operation, to make sure that everything was fully healed and that he’d then book me in for the reconstruction. There was a three to four month waiting list so the reconstruction was likely to take place in April or May 2017. This would be about ten months after I had Nearly Died.
I was really excited and chuffed to bits and I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the kids. Usually I hang around for a bit after my appointments to check out the parade of freaks but this time I skipped out, my prosthetic bagett bouncing along in my bra as it picked up on my celebratory mood.
When I did get home and tell everyone about how Nearly Dying was probably the very best thing that has ever nearly happened to me, Frog was really happy cos he’s into Transformers and was hoping that I’d get reconstructed into a truck. Not as happy as me though- I was super thrilled, probably because I wasn’t small and stupid like Frog and knew I was going to end up as a MILF rather than a lorry. Or at least I hoped that was going to be the case…
In my next blog post I’ll tell you all about what happened during my plastics outpatients appointment in December and my sinking realisation that I had gone from being a bit fat to being well fat.