Surgery and stuff

Inspired by Sam Parker, who recently had his tonsils out and blogged about it, I realised I might be (literally) sitting on a goldmine of writing ideas following my own surgery last week. Yes, my blog focuses on The Real Real World, but I'm sure there is a tenuous link there.

So, last Thursday I went to the doctors with the feeling I had tonsillitis. I had it a lot at University and felt, after fainting in the shower, I must be coming down with it again. My throat was swollen, my squeaky voice was replaced with a horse, gravelly murmur and I had a penchant for hacking coughs. All the signs were there.

"Well, your tonsils do look quite horrible," said my doctor, staring into my mouth. "But they're not infected."

I was stumped. As my doctor mused, biting the end of her pen, I half expected Sherlock Holmes to burst out the medicine cabinet, desperate to solve this marvel. Boy thinks he has tonsillitis, but doesn't. Guuh? Unfortunately, something else happened.

"Let's get you on the bed and give you a physical," she cooed. I'll point out at this point that my doctor, while lovely, was the size of SuBo and had hands like shovels. Her feeling my every curve was going to be rather harrowing.

So, after a bit of a feel, 1/3 of which I found strangely arousing, my doctor found the problem. What I thought was a nagging lower-back pain, something I expected I could ignore until it reared its ugly head in my later years and force me to stoop like I was inspecting pavements, actually turned out to be a big ol' infection.

Naturally, I'll leave the ins 'n' outs to one side, but let me break it down. I had to go and have some surgery to rid me of the infection that was purging my body, spreading like red wine knocked over a tablecloth. I imagine the infection looks like this:

I imagine 'groo' is the sort of noise an infection makes.

After surgery, I'd need about 4 weeks of doing sweet FA so my wound, which wasn't allowed to be stitched up, could be padded and re-padded with gauze until it healed naturally. Healing naturally? I'd just read Harry Potter 5, whereby they go to a magical hospital and a simple spell heals most wounds. This, in contrast, was a massive downer for me. Alohomora, or some shit.

When my family heard I was ill, and worse so, I was in hospital, they naturally assumed, in their Northern way, it had something to do with terrorists. After explaining none of London was blown up (to my knowledge; I had spend all day in A&E being examined by trainee doctors, who knows what I missed?), they still decided they'd come all the way to London to check I was ok.

After surgery, I was discharged and went back to Carlisle with the rents, which, due to the effects of morphine was dream-like and passed quickly.

It feels as if this tale is age-old, one I recite countless times, but it only happened a week ago. A week. Seven sodding days. Because the problem with sitting at home and doing sweet FA is that time goes very slowly. My Nintendo 64 has been sold, and my Nintendo Wii has bad games on it. Daytime TV is a clown-car of mild idiots, from the goofy homoeroticism on To Buy Or Not To Buy? to the vampish harpies on Loose Women. On Friday, they invited Ronan Keating to sing a song on the show, before clawing at him with their talons and devouring his manhood.

Luckily it's not been all bad; FHM, who miss me dearly while I'm away, send me series 1 of The Wire on DVD, which is good, because I never got into it, and always wanted to, and now I like it. I'm also going to get into Mad Men since everyone wails on about it a lot.

Next post will be detailing my hellish existence in the house as home comforts turn to nightmarishly dull things. Calm down, I know it's exciting.