#do rag

Southern Grandpa Gets Some Lessons

Instantly we were engulfed in tear gas.

When I went to bed on Saturday night my face was beginning to swell, which was expected. A bit like last time. It looked like I’d had a facelift, or botox or something.

When I woke up on Sunday morning – dear God. I looked like some grotesque cross between Donut Homer and Quasimodo. Like I had grown another face in there overnight and it was trying to make a break for it.

There have been myriad photos taken and shared, and I look ridiculous in every single one of them. Most of them were posted in the Whatsapp group I made for Alex to update people on, but just for posterity, I shared them all on the Facebook post accompanying this blog.

I’ve come to realise that a medical scenario is the only one in which talking about poo is ok.  I realised on Sunday that I hadn’t performed the ultimate euphemism - ‘opened my bowels’ - for days, so I was snaffling down all the roughage I could in the pursuit of a natural delivery. Eventually I had to ask for an intervention via small enema, and OH MY GOD did it work. I won’t go into too much detail, but I was told to wait half an hour and I only lasted 5 minutes. Ahem. Anywho, since I’ve left hospital I no longer have a bumhole, and all my food dissipates out through my veins, into the ether.

Less amusing - I went for a light stroll around a nearby park with my pal Carl earlier on on Sunday, and had a mild, but lengthy seizure. I was pretty bummed out. I’d really been looking forward to kicking the seizures altogether, so it felt like a huge setback. When I spoke to the surgeons though, they reminded me that the seizure threshold is never lower than after brain surgery. So they could still disappear. Because I hadn’t been unconscious, they were still ok with me going home that day, but I opted to take my own advice, take it slow, and stay until Monday when I felt 100% confident about going home. Hospital felt ‘safe’. But my flat, now I’m here, feels like home.

I was sent home with the liquid morphine (score!), some laxatives (because you never know), and super strong ibuprofen. I was also given staple removers. Yup. I was told that I make an appointment with my GP, take these along with me, they’ll be able to remove the staples that I have in a line across my head. I also found a rogue one above my right ear, because why not. I called my GP, and I was told that despite having a practice nurse, they don’t do anything of the sort there, which is exactly what I thought would happen because since they’ve been semi-privatised my GP surgery is rubbish.

Alex drove me home. We went for a Maccies, which is naturally the first port of call upon release from hospital. I love that man. I’m not sure what I did to have ended up with him, but whatever it is, I’m glad I did it.

It’s now Tuesday and I slept quite literally all day today. I seem to feel more or less like myself for a couple of hours around 5 or 6pm. I’m so tired in general though, and as much as I joke about enjoying the morphine, it’s really helping what I’d forgotten is actually quite a painful head wound. It’s not unbearable, just super uncomfortable. My scalp feels very tight and ‘big’. For want of a better word.

I managed to wash as much hair as I could avoiding the bandage strip, which required a plastic chair, a wet top, some incredibly caring ‘nobutthatssoclosetoyourwoundthough’ from Alex, and some deep breaths from me. It felt so good to get some of the crusty ‘orrible blood out of my hair, and I spent the evening very smugly tossing my fresh coconutty tresses around. Ish. I’ll never have tresses.

Anyway - learning to rock a do rag in the interim! Thanks Nikki for the incredible and fabulous headscarf.