October 2005 Archives

i am writing this entry on morphine and it might prove to be an incoherent ramble, but at least i will have a record of how dull i can be even when dosed up on the good stuff. capitalising and correcting my sentences involves too much effort so apologies for the terminal case of the uglies. seeing me would give a big clue as to why typing is a problem, but for those who didn't know, upon submitting my ph.d. thesis, i went in for some corrective surgery.

So (yes, i know, but 's' and shift are close together), last week I submitted my thesis. done. survived. happy. and yesterday, i was admitted to hospital. i only had to wait five hours before anything was done to me, and when it began, i was, in short order, given some happy drugs, lots of oxygen, and then a big shot of the white stuff. soporific bliss. yay for general anaesthetic.

under the spell of a very cute anaesthesiologist (everyone was cute by this point, but i think he may actually have been as he came to visit me on the ward this morning when i was feeling more dark-haired than i was the night before (i.e. not so blonde, keep up ffs)), my favourite shoulder was opened up, some repair work carried out, and i was stitched up. i came to in a warm daze beneath a hot air blanket and the smiling face of a crazy cantonese woman. i swore at her in cantonese because that's what you do when you're high. we got on famously. she wheeled me up to the ward where i was greeted by mother, partner (sugery was my first anniversary gift to him) and lots of snack food. Nausea kept me from touching any of it till 3am, but when the pungent odour of anaesthetic vanished from my nostrils at around that time, i had a small food orgy on my bed while four older gents snored around me. and snored, and snored.

this is why sleeping on a ward usually leaves light sleepers borderline suicidal. so i got to take a look at the handiwork. very pretty if you have a fondness for gore. to be fair, a med student messed up my i.v., so the spray of blood across my arm and gown made it look =a bit more dramatic than it was, but judging from the yellow mess around the shoulder, there was lots of oozing going on during the night. the sutures look very neat though, and there isn't too much pain. i may change my mind when the local wears off completely. so now my arm is immobliised against my chest so as to preclude excessive movement at the joint. it has to be kept this way for four weeks, which is a bit wank, mais qu'est ce-qu'on peut faire? necessary sufferance. but it went well and i am happy. submittng the thesis and having a first (if uncelebrated) anniversary with the dearest man of my life add to this, and then there's my incipient move back to London. so, things are in the process of changing, as i imparted in the last post, if in a typically obfuscatory manner, and for once in my life i have no idea what i'm going to do. this actually makes me endlesssly happy, as i've always been one to plan to the dollar, so it feels good not to have excessive concerns about where things are headed. hamlet alluded to death as being an 'undiscovered country'; so too, surely, is the process of living, and the days are just packed.

A small creeper clings to the wall, recessed and sheltered in a shady corner around the back of the house. Its leaves are pinnate, dark, and velveteen green, and they are laced in an intricate net of silver. My friends would be surprised to learn that I don't actually know what it is, but I don't, and it's there, with leaves of insubstantial size, little, but no less pretty than those of the exotic things that we import to fill our conservatories and terraria.

And now they're bleeding. Like seeping magma, the firey reds and oranges of the dying time are are stealing out over the surface of reluctant green. They will blaze, for a brief instant, in a bright show of crimson, then fall, and wither. And that is the sign of the times.