Silver Linings

  It's been an eventful week, for all the wrong reasons.  I ended up having to go to hospital for a minor operation, which I was told would be under general anaesthetic.  Having never had a general before, I was  anxious, and, true to form, Steve was away for the weekend. (His super-power is absenting himself just before he's needed).

In the end, after eight hours' waiting, the doctors sent me home and asked me to return the following day.
 (It has just occurred to me that this would have been a classic opportunity to practise my grumbling, and I missed it! Really must try harder).

  When I returned, they decided the general anaesthetic was, as it were, off the table, and a local anaesthetic would do.  All well and good; in the afternoon I was meant to be at the playgroup Spring Fayre, face-painting , and perhaps I would make it after all...  However, I hadn't accounted for the slow-turning wheels of the NHS. It was a further five hours before I was finally sliced and packed, and on my way home to join the tail end of the Fayre.

   I expect I earned Brownie points from the rest of the committee for staggering straight from hospital to face painting, although I only managed to deface six small children after all that.  And as time wore on, the anaesthetic wore off.  It turned out I was in more pain than I'd realised, and perhaps I had been silly not to have gone straight home for a lie-down.  (After all, what more could one want, after thirteen hours of Sitting and Waiting, than a wee rest?)

  If I sound quite relaxed about the whole thing, it's because I am. I detest waiting, and waiting for something you are dreading is a particular kind of hell.  During the first eight hours, it was all I could do to keep my attention on the very good book I was reading, which was all that stood between me and a minor breakdown.  But even then, I was aware of the guilty pleasure of reading for hours at a stretch (though it would've been preferable if it hadn't been on an empty stomach), and devouring a book at one sitting.  Perhaps the choice of book could have been more prudent (I'll come back to that another time).

  On the second day, however, knowing I was having a local, everything was different. I was able to sit curled up in a plastic hospital chair, ignoring the pain and suffering around, lost in a world of makebelieve.   I managed to choose a less dark novel, which was still gripping (I'll come back to that another day, too),  sip on a cup of tea and sink into another world for a few hours.  I think I've even learnt a little over those two days by looking for the sleights of hand the two different authors used - what larks!

    I'm not hoping for a repeat any time soon, though.