I'M baaaaack!!! Minus melon.

I'm back.


Minus a 2kg ovarian cyst, both ovaries and about 5 kg of weight.

How to sum up the whole thing?


Basically: I had the operation last Wednesday - the doctor did a much smaller cut than planned. About 7 cm, he sucked out a lot of water and was left with a large bag of ovaries within ovaries of material. Samples of that have gone off to the lab for tests and we'll know maybe one week later WHAT material it was...if it's cancerous or potentially cancerous. Or actually a Yubari Melon.

There are pictures of it in all its white and bloody pink glory...but I can't upload them yet till I get home.


The first 24 hours was hard. But now I can walk slowly around, get out of bed with a kind of roll and elbow prop, go to the toilet, have a shower and eat increasingly amounts of normal food.


The doc says I may be out of hospital September 24/5...a few days earlier too!


So all is good- but I still feel tired easily. My first shower and change of clothes sent me back to bed for the rest of the morning.
But today - Monday - I have escaped. I have come out of the hospital building and walked ever so slowly a carefully across the road and round the corner to my English classroom and the Internet line.
I feel I've been away from my world, this room for ever!


High and low lights:


Does it hurt? No, not as much as I'd expected, even after the paincontrol stuff stopped. It hurts when I sneeze, strain a bit in the toilet or do an unexpected move like a hand slip on a wet rail in the shower.

What was the operation like?


The bits I remember: surreal. * Had to wait until almost 4.15 pm to even go into pre-op. Very surreal to walk down in the elevator to the third floor with Yujiro and a nurse...and the stretcher-for-my-return. Walking to your own operation! * Watched Yujiro fight his way into a blue scrubs and a facemask, he looked less like George Clooney and more like a baker. * BIZZARRE conversation in pre-op when the nurses discovered I was the owner of the little English school they see just round the corner on their way home everynight..."um...don't contact me for lessons until October, I am kind of busy...." * The knock-out WAS instant: one moment looking at Yujiro talking about the cats, next moment opening my eyes and realizing that my Japanese friend who has NO SENSE of appropriateness had got into the recovery room with a friend from church and was standing beyond Yujiro gawping at me! (There will be scaling back of this friendship...I told her 3 or 4 times to NOT come and see me until at least Friday and she was IN THE FUCKING RECOVERY ROOM AS I CAME BACK TO CONSCIOUSNOUS!!! If I was a Celeb I'd be consulting my lawyer about stalking laws.


Wonderful: *The nursing staff of KKR Sapporo Iriyo Center. They are a great, great bunch of women. Endlessly kind and patient and helpful and reassuring through all my tearful breakdowns.* The hospital itself - all brand new and smart, with a bedside view of Teine Mountains and Sapporo city, a sunrise view over near neo-natal care. * The hospital food actually, endless rice/tofu and vegetables. But ok...apart from two strawberry jam jellies and cream...that turned out to be tomato-jelly-and.....mayonnaise!!!!!!! * Heather-san's gossip mags, enormous bar of chocolate and...a smoked salmon and salad sandwich.


Hmm?: Surgeon with Bedside Manner Extracted Upon Qualification? Is this a worldwide thing? I am guessing so. While I am glad of course that his expert 7 cm cut 'n suck doesn't stop my Bikini Model Plans yet...I do wonder at a man who briskly peels off the dressing, pats it a bit and exits sharpish when the patient is obviously tearing up as she confronts a gash and stitching in her body for the first time in her life! He sees zillions of these, does it take an iota of human sense to consider that for this human being it may be a kind of strange, scary experience?


Mind you, he can't be blamed or know (even with the Doctor as God abilities) that 30 mins before I'd opened a Get Well card from England, and realizing that my step-aunt had written it at Jane's bedside on Saturday morning...and by that evening Jane had died. The Last Message card PLUS a Gashed/Stitched Body sight all before lunch. Tears allowed.


Small world:  for 4 days my world shrunk to the 5th floor pink and pine, carpeted corridors...where I walked. Sometimes at night I ventured down to 1st or 2nd floor, fought constipation with a 1 am raid for coffee and non-milk chocolate to the all-night Lawsons on the 1st floor. I admired tiny, new born babies in maternity...I swap op stories with the ladies around me. I read. I sleept. I stared at Teine Mountain.

Now: yesterday rush of students and friends came to see me and I was strong enough to talk and laugh. Just now I've managed to walk to here my English classroom - 100 meters from the hospital door. I did training for it last night by walking a circular route through EVERY floor of the 8F hospital building

But I am glad to be in the pink, safe, quiet world of hospital for a few more days.

THANKYOU for many messages!!!!

* and Okaasan? She hasn't been to see me yet...and I hope she won't. Yujiro says she is ok, but he hasn't mentioned anything about her coming. Let's keep it that way!!