Major gynae surgery is not funny but I had my lifelines

I haven’t yet looked at last month’s mobile phone bill. I’ve spent enough time in hospital lately, and that phone was my lifeline.

I used it all the time. I phoned my children to kiss them goodnight. “We’re making a banner for you. It says ‘Welcome Home Mummy’. When will you see it? When can we see you?” (Not for what felt like a lifetime.)

I took a photograph of the apple I had for tea one day. It started my series of “proverbs that are just plain lies”. (The doctor did not keep away, and for that I am thankful.)

Major gynae surgery is not funny, but I grew tired of misery. I texted a colleague. “SOS. Send me a joke that’ll break a smile, but not my stitches. I’m after rapture, not rupture.” He obliged. (So did my stitches.)

I played music. “Next thing you know/ You’re eating hospital food,” sang Eels. (I didn’t. I lost nine pounds in 10 days.)

I spoke to a school friend in England, and we compared post-operative notes. “Don’t tell me about your sore toe,” she told her husband, “or you’ll have a sore ear as well.”

I listened to Morning Ireland, the Irish Times Women’s Podcast and, when stitches permitted, to Friday Night Comedy. I read The Irish Times news app every morning, until I was able to stagger downstairs to buy the paper.

There were many more lifelines. The friend who nipped up from work with extra nighties and a new towel when I went downhill instead of home. (No one knew that my laundry sat under her desk all day.)

The friends who brought blueberries and put them in an unauthorised bowl. (That landed me in the soup with the catering staff.) The friend who offered to bring crafty things for the times I was too lethargic to read. (I declined, on grounds that they would get tangled in my drip and I’d knit myself into a scarf.) The friend who organised a dinner rota among the school parents, and the parents who gave my children many lifts. The friends who brought soup, cake, humour and books (so many books) to bed and doorstep.

My sister, who collected, minded and fed my family. My brother and his wife, who sought daily updates. My dad, who tried to mask his worry with good cheer. My sister-in-law, who applied her medical and practical experience to aid my recovery at home. And my husband and children who, on my return, ensured constant supplies of tea, berries, yogurt, water, news, jokes and more tea, and all but banned me from the dishwasher and washing machine for life. (Result.)

At times, my lifelines intersected. The gorgeous flowers my colleagues sent wilted in the hospital heat but were revived by the cleaner who kept the ward spotless and my spirits up.

I missed the book-club night, but the anaesthetist who shot me with enough adrenalin and morphine to fell a hippo (her words) – and, luckily, to revive a human – kept me awake by discussing the books in my locker, tapping titles into her phone and recommending reads.

The literal lifelines were her colleagues: the medical and nursing staff. The midwife who posted a colleague at the door, and dashed for doctors when I crashed. The midwife who recognised that my mind raced as I paced, and calmed the night terrors. The midwife who gave me a pithy warning: “The sooner you go home, if you’re not up to it, the sooner you’ll be back in here.” The sister who passed me on the corridor just before I passed out, and followed me back to check on me. The doctor who invoked the sepsis protocol so that I was swabbed and on IVs within 10 minutes.

And, as I recovered, I noted the funny side of the lifelines. The bed numbers that sounded like buses (31A) and bra sizes (38D). The notice about “Patients [sic] food consumption” that, understandably, forbade food from “external quarters” . . . not including “low risk foods (e.g.) Chocolate, Crisps, Sweets, Biscuits etc”. (We worried about high-risk blueberries.) I feared for my stitches when I re-gifted the magazines. “You wagon,” said the florist-cleaner, as she thwacked me on the arm with a fine example of Fat Shame Weekly. “So that one ‘has gone from a trim size 6 to a curvy size 10’. I tell you, if I looked like that after losing a stone . . .”.

All these lifelines need fuel. I made biscuits for the midwives and cleaners. I owe a lot of people a lot of dinners. And I owe some people my life. I am lucky.