Making The Most.

48 Hours of my Pre-Op life is now all that is left.

I was never going to write this blog post. I was supposed to do something far more constructive than have another moan on the Internet.

I got back home to Cardiff on Friday. I had been feeling relatively stable after spending those weeks with my parents and living along with their routine, however humdrum, it still gave my days structure. But now that I have gone back to my own life, the weight of the reality has crept back, the horror stories have crawled back in and my sense of routine has dissolved. I should be getting all of my various things in order ready for my Surgery, but today I have crashed and have only a miserable wreck of a brain to work with.

I decided that the last five days I had left Pre – Op were going to be spent making the most. While I was still able to go out, one of my very good friends took me out for Saturday afternoon and evening. I went to spoil myself a little in town before meeting up, then we went for a Tapas Lunch, dessert from Hotel Chocolat and many, many bottles of Wine. The following day I took up the invite from another friend of going to a local a pub for Sunday Dinner, and spent most of that afternoon draining more glasses of wine and bitching about Vladimir fucking Putin. Possibly my last ever Tapas. My last traditional Sunday roast. My last Chocolate. My last night out drinking and seeing friends without being terrified by toileting habits. Is it possible to mourn over food and dressing up in your best clothes and having weekends out with friends? They are all, very soon, going to be part of an irretrievable past.

For the three days isolating prior to surgery, I decided that for each dinner I would have a meal that I know I will likely have to give up post Op. Not just for the sake of my Stoma being manageable, but for the sake of even a chance at losing weight. I’ve barely managed to get a few pounds off myself since the limitations of the Pandemic ran into the limitations of Cancer. Yesterday we had my last ever KFC (naughty Cluck-Cluck!) for dinner. Tonight will be my last ever Mango Lamb Curry. Tomorrow will be my last ever Pizza. I am even having last-ever Peanut Butter on Toast for Breakfast and last-ever Cheese and Ham Croissants for lunch.

Me being me, it was all planned out and every hour was accounted for. I was going to get all of the housework and tidying and cleaning done. The mountain of ironing was going to disappear. The Hospital packing was going to get done. I wouldn’t have to worry about coming home from hospital to a Flat full of chaos, dust, washing up and cat hair. Of course I still had Pre-Hab and Therapy Meetings to keep up with, but I had three whole days indoors that needed filling. I got the kitchen cleaned and tidied and my bags unpacked from my time away at my parents, the Altar rearranged and the last of my hospital things ordered off Amazon, but by the late afternoon I was starting to flag. By the time we sat down to eat, I was starting to feel ill. It was at this point where it set in that I had picked up Covid. I had been tested in the morning, but the results weren’t due for another 24 hours at least. I felt my mind split itself in half. One half was berating myself for putting having a wild time out above protecting my health ready for hospital, while the other half was begging for Covid just to have another desperate week or two in the body I had always known. I never thought I would EVER catch myself wishing to have Covid. As I was eating I started feeling a bit sick, and not long after finishing I had to make a dash for the loo with a bad belly. I know it’s eating fast food, and I know that once in a while the sheer enjoyment of the food is worth the price of being stuck in the loo for a time, but that won’t be the case with a Stoma. What would be a bad case of “it’s something I ate” could put me in hospital.. Forget just the bathroom.

The following morning, this morning, I woke up from some very vivid and disturbing dreams. I tried doing some of the EFT Tapping techniques I had been learning over the last few weeks, to try and keep the rising Anxiety Attack at bay, but I think I am just too much of a rookie with it. By the time I got a call back from Tracey the Stoma Nurse, I was in bits on the bathroom floor. We talked for almost an hour. For someone who says she is honestly not familiar or trained in either Autism or Mental Health, she did a profoundly better job than some I have met from both of those fields of expertise. She reckons there’s some Positivity in there somewhere, but right now it is buried under a mountain of horror, and alot of that horror is shared by maybe 800 of 800,000 Ostomates out there. She reminded me that I am once again doing way too much. Taking on way too much. It isn’t just Stoma Surgery. It isn’t only Cancer. Its life altering surgery plus Cancer on top of Pandemic Stress, on top of CPTSD, Dysmorphia, Rejection Sensitivity and all its other co-morbs, on top of Anxiety and Depression, on top of an Autism Spectrum Condition, on top of the social pressure just to be able to live in a high flying, high achieving modern world. I can’t handle everything at once, but equally I have no idea of how to unpick the mammoth tangle and find somewhere to start from in the first place. I’m overrun with this meeting and that phone call, and I can’t keep up with them all, let alone take in all of the advice and then apply it to action. I’m not Wonderwoman, and I even think being Wonderwoman would be easier to manage than this.

After that call I was left as exhausted as I had been the evening before, as if sleep had never even happened. I could barely get my brain to function on doing much else past playing Candy Crush, and I had two other Pre-Hab meetings in the afternoon, so I gave up on all thoughts of cleaning. The Flat is still very much in disarray as I sit here writing, necking wine. It is still way beyond my standards of cleanliness and the chaos and mess makes me feel dizzy and sick. The packing for Hospital is still sitting ignored in the hallway. For all of my busying yesterday, today has been a kick in the spleen. I can’t focus on anything beyond perpetual dread for what is to come, and wanting to drown it, and me, in a bottomless vat of red wine.

Despite my efforts to make the best of these last days, I think I knew the whole time that everything would catch back up with me. Everything that I had buried during my time way. When I was at my parents I was able to separate myself from the situation to some extent, but now I am back here in the thick of my own life it has all come flooding back, knocking me over and washing me away like being hit by a tsunami. I don’t know how I will be able to face life as it gets harder without my parents to escape to, like how I will face it when they are gone, and I only have myself left. I don’t get the same kind of reassurance from anyone or from anywhere else. It makes my desires of escape and freedom and independence when I was younger utterly vacuous.

I think once again my capacity to look after myself, despite all of the advice I have been given, has dissolved into nothing. Those next 48 hours are likely to be spent in a Wine-induced cloud of confusion.