From the Jotter app on my phone, written two days ago…

This time last week I woke up full of the strangest adrenaline. I’d been in hospital for two nights and had just had my appendix removed. I did not yet realise how physically drained I was. Instead I spent a happy morning writing a chatty blog post about the whole experience. For an encore I figured out how to post it online from my hospital bed.

I then had a short nap and woke only to enter one of those horrible fugue states where time passes like sludge, you are too unwell to realise how unwell you really are, opiates merely quell rather than kill pain, and you get occasional glimpses of a distressed stranger in the bathroom mirror. There I remained for several days.

It’s a week later and I am still in hospital - it turns out that mine was what the surgeon described as a ‘messy appendix’. Also, I am now a (crap) cyborg: a tube coming from the dressing on my operation wound is attached to a small vacuum pump with a battery pack: this is hopefully encouraging the wound to heal from inside out. In other news my digestive system is now, after a short break, mostly working again as an end to end system.

Invalid takes another short nap, wakes up back at home…

It’s Monday evening now. I’ve not long arrived home. Maybe an hour or two ago?

I’m no longer a cyborg, and though the operation wound will be healing for some weeks to come, it can do that right here with non-battery-operated dressings.

Meanwhile, I can get back to whatever normal was, assuming there ever was any such thing.

Huge thanks and much love to all those who have been in touch to wish me better since my last post.

And once again, it is not possible to thank enough the ridiculously excellent staff of Barnet General Hospital and the NHS in general, without whom I wouldn’t have posted anything at all.