Tales from hospital part the second

"What time is it?"

For some reason, that is always the first thing I ask when I come round from surgery. I seem to be obsessed with how long I've been in theatre.

For this surgery, I'd gone in at 1.45pm and woke up at 3.20pm, which was pretty quick as I'd read it was around an hour each foot for bunions. Either Mr Nugent is a genius or a total butcher. I'm hoping it's the former.

Forewarned as they were about my fainting episodes, the staff on Recovery kept me lying down, checked my obs almost obsessively, and only moved me towards being upright very slowly over a long period.

For once, I felt fine. No fainting, no passing out or feeling sick, just chatting away and wondering why the room looked ever so slightly like a morgue.

Just before 5pm, they decided I was fully recovered, and I was wheeled away into Hunter Ward, where I ended up in Bay B, bed 4, next to the cruciate ligament lady and opposite a lovely girl who was in having her second hip replacement despite being under 40.

I dubbed her Queen of Hunter, because she knew all the staff, and how everything worked, and wasn't afraid to ask for what she wanted: "Get me some oral morph please!"

Luckily I was out of theatre and onto the ward in time for tea, so I did get my fishcakes, mash and beans after all. They tasted like school dinners, which I've always liked, and while Michel Roux Junior won't be asking the hospital cooks onto Masterchef anytime it was perfectly OK and I'd even go so far as to say I liked it.

Here it is:

That first evening was uneventful. I got given drugs, injected (quite roughly) with my first dose of heparin and then spent the night wide awake listening to people snoring and the doctors and nurses apparently having a small rave in the corridor. I can't get no sleep..do,do,do,do,da,do,do...