My year in review part 5
“Mr Nguyen, we’ve got to get you into surgery”
“Oh, no kidding??”
“You have an abscess in the perianal region”
“The what what??”
“Basically you’ve got an abscess that we need to remove”
“…..”
“We’ve set you in the theatre for 10 this morning, so for now just rest and we’ll prep you up”
“Rightio….”
That was all said on Monday 11th Oct, and rewind back to a few days before and there was no chance I would’ve seen myself hoisted up on the operating table with my legs up in the air about to get sliced and diced near my butt hole. Thanks to my pain threshold and combined with my stubbornness, this all would’ve been less of a hassle but never mind I chose this path and will have to deal with the consequences.
I play basketball on Tuesday nights and the games are always rough, so it’s no surprise that I felt a bit of pain in my buttocks. My natural reaction was “yep must’ve gotten corked there during basketball”, but when I woke up on Friday and was barely able to get up, I knew something was wrong. It didn’t help that I couldn’t walk without some discomfort in the lower area, and getting ready for work turned out to be one long test of endurance and pain management.
I got to work and had to attend a meeting, and it was there that I had decided I had to go and see a doctor, I could not sit still without having to adjust so that I could avoid the pain. My team leader allowed it and off to the doctors I went. Did I ever tell you that there was a movie called Freddy Got Fingered? Well let me tell you that Freddy did indeed get fingered and I yelped at the sensation of having a finger go inside there. Imagine a picture of me lying to one side of the bed, nothing but my polo shirt on and a doctor with latex gloves on examining me and the sound of “YIKES”. He gave me a prescription of antibiotics and haemorrhoid cream and said that it should clear up in 2-3 days.
2-3 days later though there wasn’t any progress and what was just pain that was bearable, became unbearable. I was just in a state of delirium and just wanted this pain to be over. The final solution was a trip to the ER room and after a 6 hour wait there, I got my chance to be examined and that’s where the news was given. They explained the procedure and what would be the aftermath, it sounded so simple but oh was I wrong.
Women out there, I give you credit for the pain you have to endure for child labor. Because a day after recovering, in the recovery ward, I had to have my packing taken out (packing is the process of where medical gauze is stuffed into the cavity to allow healing from the inside out) since they needed to replace it daily. To my shock I didn’t even know I had packing stuffed inside my butt, and it wasn’t until I had my first bowel movement that I found gauze hanging out of my A – hole ….
Anyways the sheer pain that I went through for that 30 mins, was the most traumatic and tear jerking experience that I ever went through. It took 15 mins to remove 30 cms of gauze that had been tightly stuffed inside there and another 15 to put back in the new one. Did I tell you that for every centimeter that was put in or put out, I was screaming so loud that I had practically woke up the recovery ward!!!
The experience itself made me think of some goals I had placed a long time ago and need to chase up when I went under the knife for my stint with appendicitis. It also made me realise who were the ones who would be there for me in my darkest hour. People will always talk about having gone through tough times, and how sh*t their lives are, but it’s how you absorb these experiences and turn them into a positive thing. In conclusion, appreciate what you have around you and things could be much worse, but they’re not so why worry???
“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened” – Mark Twain
