Waiting days

Wednesday already. Time has just slipped by since Sunday, waiting for surgery tomorrow afternoon. Clare took John to the bus on Monday morning. We then discovered that he'd left a pair of shoes in the hall. They'll have to be posted to him. I took the bus into town in the afternoon. On the grass verge besides the Llandaff Fields bus stop, I noticed the first of this year's smaller native daffodils flowering in the sunshine, and took a few photos. Early, I thought, but then remembered my first Instagram photo, posted when I started using the app. But how long ago was that, I wondered? I checked, and found it was 9th January 2016, a month earlier than this year's blooms.

Tuesday morning, I walked to the wound clinic by a long route to get some exercise before having my last dressing done there before the operation. I noticed whole carpets of daffodils blooming in Thompson's Park, which came out without my seeing them over the weekend. 

The nursing team was running late as they'd had an assessment that morning. I was seen by Kate, one of the supervising nurses who visited and treated me at home on Holy Innocents' Day. She said she remembered I was in a bad way then. I hope she was impressed by the change in me since. Needless to say, I praised the regular nurse team to high heaven for reversing the frightening deterioration I experienced in the run-up to Christmas. I'd like to think that now there'll be less of a mess for the surgeon to sort out.

After lunch I went out again to Thompson's Park and took photos - daffodils, snowdrops and several colours of crocus carpeting under the trees and just daffodils on the steep banks. Wonderful, although the photos never quite do the spectacle true justice.

This morning, I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's and went for an acupuncture treatment after lunch. I really needed this. After a couple of quietish days, the wound was painful and draining me of energy. At the end of the session I felt restored, as good as I can be, to face the vital repair job. Sister in Law Ann reckons that the operation will leave me pretty drained and needing a week or so of rest before I begin to feel the benefit. 

I admit to feeling apprehensive at the prospect of being any more incapacitated than I have been over the past six months, conscious of how much longer it takes to recover from any injury at my age, but I just have to trust the process. I would help if I'd been able to have an advance conversation with the operating surgeon, and a chance to ask questions about a treatment plan. Although I've twice written to the head of the surgical team, I've had no reply, and specific information supplied by the hospital is negligible. It would be easier to get information from my mechanic about repairing the car than it is to get properly informed about  how a surgical procedure is going to work and affect me and my carers. Does this, a teaching hospital, presume patients will do their own research on-line? Or what? 

There are some answers I'd like to pursue once this is all over.