All part of the healing process

General anaesthetic? They stick a plumber’s friend over your mouth and pump in isoflurane. But not quite. Don’t forget the muscle relaxant.

The prep didn’t work and I lay awake and febrile on a trolley close to where they keep the sharp things. Desperate, I read The Daily Telegraph proving that the balance of my mind was disturbed. A scruffy quasi-medical figure declared himself baffled by my alertness.

I awoke from the procedure to hear the surgeon complaining it had all taken far too long. But I was concentrating on breathing. It’s a simple activity, I’d been doing it all my life. Except now it wasn’t so simple. My chest muscles were inoperative and my lungs seemed to be elsewhere, perhaps in a waste bin. I was the star in a film about dying from shortness of breath. And I knew what a 35 lb carp feels after being whipped from the river and held for minutes by a grinning angler posing for the camera.

Later the surgeon visited me in the ward. Was I OK? Yes, but the non-breathing had been scary. Ah but that’s all over. Alas, no. I now chose to pass on the bad news that I’d been commissioned by World Medicine to write an article about my experiences. Hmmm.

Ten minutes later I was visited by the scruffy quasi-medical figure who smelt overpoweringly of cigarettes. The anaesthetist. Just the after-effects of the muscle relaxant, he said. But I wouldn’t be writing about that, would I? I reassured him I wouldn’t. But I lied.