Operation 2

I was woken up by the anaesthetist saying my name. I don’t know about you, but I get “sleep guilt”. Whenever I fall asleep during the day or in a public place or on the sofa and someone wakes me up, or asks if I was asleep, I maintain in the strongest possible terms that I was doing anything but sleeping. Bizarrely, the first thing I felt after waking up from the general was sleep guilt. I didn’t know where I was or who it was that had woken me, but I woke up determined that I would argue vociferously that I hadn’t been asleep.

Fortunately, as I tried to claim my innocence, I found that I couldn’t speak in sentences yet.

After a second or so, I felt a dull ache in my knee and it all came back to me. I was asked if I was in any pain and, for some reason, I said no. I felt that the dull ache didn’t really qualify as pain. I kept saying no, actually, throughout my time in hospital. Stupid of me. All that free morphine available and everything.

I was wheeled back to my room; a journey which I can remember a lot less clearly than the journey to theatre. I was transferred onto my bed and people began attaching things to me. My feet had what I can only describe as inflatable socks velcroed to them. Every ten seconds, the right sock would inflate with air, then deflate. Ten seconds later the left sock would do the same thing. According to the nurse who attached them, this was my exercise: it kept my circulation going. I also had ice on my knee and a drip in my hand.

My doctor/surgeon was there and he gave me some photographs of the operation, which he explained to me, but I couldn’t really take it in. I was also given a jar with some small bones in it that had been removed from my knee. I lay there clutching them for a few minutes, trying to work out how I could get them from my hand to the bedside table. You can see photos of these items below. I think that the knee looks in worse nick after the operation, to be honest, but what do I know. The new ligament (actually a hamstring) is the thing that looks the same colour as a prawn.

The next few hours are very hazy in my memory, but I was given a three course meal almost immediately (or maybe hours later) which, to my surprise, I wolfed down. I drank a lot of water too. I made a nonsensical phone call to my friend, too, who had agreed to pick me up. This probably worried him rather than reassured him.

I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. There were several reasons for this. I would shut my eyes, relax and feel myself dropping off. Then someone would punch the underside of my right foot. I would come round and realise that no one was punching my right foot: it was just the inflatable sock inflating. The same process would happen again until I was punched on the underside of my left foot.

This process became more complicated as the night went on because I gradually became more and more desperate to pee. For some reason, I couldn’t; probably something to do with the combination of drugs that had been administered to me. I kept drinking water thinking that it would help. It didn’t. It just made me more desperate.

So now I would be almost off to sleep when I would feel the punch on my foot, then I would come round, realise that I needed a pee, spend a few minutes with a receptacle in position, waiting for Godot, as it were, before giving up and trying to sleep again. I would almost be asleep when someone would punch me on the foot and the whole process would start again.

As the night wore on, I started to give myself a stern talking to each time I tried to pee. I also started to… er… push things a little. Indeed, I started to worry that I was straining so hard in vain at one end that I might end up yielding unwanted bounty at the other. Either that or I thought I might burst my stitches.

I was told almost immediately that I would be in for two nights. I feared that this would mean that I would miss England v Sweden because, although there was a tv, the hospital surely hadn’t subscribed to the World Cup Premium channel. As it happened, they had subscribed to an Indonesian channel which enabled me to watch three out of the four live games, including the England game. Having said that, I can’t even remember who was playing on the first night, but I do remember that my eyes were open and that I was looking at the tv. I turned the sound down because the commentary was in Bahasa Indonesia.

The next day I discovered that the commentary was actually in English.

The Indonesian coverage was very reminiscent of Chanel 9 on The Fast Show. It was sponsored by “Extra Joss”, which is an Indonesian energy drink, endorsed by Cristiano Ronaldo. He features in one advert with a bare, greased torso, doing kick-ups, while around him some Balinese men do the Kecak Fire Dance. How do I know they’re Balinese? Because I recognised them. They were the same dancers Ella and I had seen in Bali when we were there in April.

Just before breakfast, I finally managed to pee. My litre-sized cup almost runneth over.