Bypass Day [Surrogate Blip by Carl]

I caused a bit of a panic last night when I decided I was perfectly capable of taking my pre-op shower unattended. I wasn't. I came out in a bad way, barely able to pantingly tell one of the nurses how bad I was. That brought a swarm of people and machines descending on me, plugging me up to ECG machines, sucking out blood samples, checking vital signs left right and centre. My main concern was all this would led to a cancellation of the bypass, but everyone reassured me that the opposite was the case: this merely reinforced the urgency of having surgery.

A wonderfully efficient night nurse woke me at 6.00 am to do the final pre-op body scrub in readiness for theatre, and off I went on the gurney at 8.15, first on the list for the day ...

... and that was it until I woke in the Intensive Care Unit (I heard later that I got down there at 1.30 pm). I felt terrible, mainly because of the wretched throat tube, but even more so because of the utterly dreadful nurse who'd been assigned to look after me. Honestly this girl whose every fifth word was all I could understand just didn't hack it. At one point I had to ask for pen and paper and managed to scrawl out a message: 'I don't like this nurse. She's rough, and I can't understand her.'

Apart from that, I'd been warned by a patient who'd been through it all to expect strange experiences and hallucinations because of the morphine, so I wasn't even sure if Carl was or was not beside my bed at some stage. As it happens, he was, despite our having agreed there was no point because I'd be unaware of what was going on.

FInally, after some minor hiccup delay, the wretched tube was taken out, I could speak again, and I left somewhat human. There's still an overall vagueness about the hours between then and my move out of Intensive Care and on to High Dependency, but I guess I'm lucky it all passed so quickly.

========================================================

Meanwhile, there'd been  great ceremonial handover of the G10 the previous night as Carl took over the baton and became surrogate blipper for a few days. Out there in the great big wide world, the weather was still doing nice things, and he came back with a great selection of stuff, which has been difficult to go through and decide on blips from. On Bypass Day along he came up with Opposite of Stopping, Soon no problem again and Emergency Services, any of which I'd be happy to use as blip for this significant day. A heads-together confab, though, resulted in this one instead. It's Carl's own favourite, it's got lots going for it, and I'l delighted with it too. (For the uninitiated, 'Slí na Sláinnte' is 'Health Way' in Irish ? highly appropriate for the day that's in it, and all the more s because of the approaching jogger and the little heart symbol in the logo on the sign.)