This is it. 312 days later and I'm in so much pain but finally something is happening. I am booked in with my new Surgeon, Dr DS at The Avenue and he is going to remove all the existing metal-ware.
The surgery is booked for 7am and in I go. Praying for a good outcome. Stunning 'cocktail' of meds from the new anesthetist I can't remember and I'm off with the fairies feeling absolutely overjoyed to be in hospital again.
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It's around 1pm and I'm in a new private room in the new private hospital and I have just come out of surgery where Dr DS has removed all the metal-ware in my leg and ankle.
I am in excruciating pain like nothing I have ever felt before. It's like my whole left leg from the knee down is on FIRE which is not what I was hoping for. It's so damn painful I can't believe it. I hit the panic button and nurses come in, I must be the only one here because they come so quick and we are in a pandemic crisis, but my leg was broken so they were able to admit me as a Category 1 requiring emergency surgery.
I'm immediately given 20ml of oral Endone via subcutaneous injection into my stomach.
It does nothing, if anything the pain is getting worse but now I'm mildly high, sort of euphoric but the pain overtakes it immediately and I spin in my bed like a demonically possessed Linda Blair, and stick my left leg up in the air. It's hot, so fucking hot I can't believe it. Just chop it off I think immediately. CHOP IT OFF.
I start groaning or screaming I can't tell because the pain is now all encompassing. One of the beautiful side effects of MS, it exacerbates pain. It's now my whole body, my entire being that is screaming in pain. My leg feels like molten lava and I try to explain this to the nurse who is trying to comfort me to no effect whatsoever.
I'm given another 20ml of Endone subcutaneously on the other side of my stomach and I can't even tell they gave me anything, it does absolutely nothing. Another handful of tablets, Tramadol or something but nothing is working.
And that's it, that is my tipping point.
312 days since the accident and I still haven't cried.
Until now, I start crying, or sobbing, or something.
It's not like the kind of crying I'd do for my baby girl dog Bella when she had to go to the big sleep, it's an urgent please-kill-me-now-or-stop-the-pain kind of crying.
It's please have mercy on me I'm in way too much pain, and I can't stop it, and I'm out of control type crying.
Ragged breaths, wreathing in pain trying to crawl up the wall and out of my body I push myself further up, upside down trying to give the left leg to any God who will take it. I want it gone. I'm so out of control with pain I start shouting at the nurses.
"Do something, please for fucks sake do something, this is AGONY!!!" I shout at one of them.
They duck and weave and try to get me to come back down off the ceiling and into the bed. It's no use, I'm inconsolable.
Before much longer, although how long I couldn't tell you because the pain has taken over, an anesthetist appears and appears to nod in understanding.
"This is chronic post surgery nerve pain. Daniel, I'm going to give you ketamine which should stop it. We will then give you a nerve block in your left leg", she explains.
I stop sobbing suddenly and start to remember ketamine, and blowflies. "Oh god I mutter", not that, but anything is better than this I muse to myself.
Before I know it I'm given ketamine somewhere, I can't recall how it was administered because pain is all I know.
And then the trip starts.
I rip from consciousness into oblivion and there are now goldfish floating around the nurses.
Beautiful big goldfish with lush thick flowing fins and tails or all sorts of fabulous colours and I think they must be koi because they are huge.
I grab one and smush it into the jelly I'm not really holding and then it turns into a cake. Now my fingers are sticky with cake and I'm laughing, but I grab another funny looking goldfish with googly eyes and stick it in the cake and start laughing.
"Hey look at that one!" I grab a big silver koi as it tries to kiss a nurse who has somehow wiggled me back down into the bed and flipped me around.
My leg is numb now and the pain is gone but there are goldfish EVERYWHERE. Now the nurse has turned into a poodle, no wait she is Ren from Ren and Stimpy and she looks wildly funny to me.
"Woohoo!" I rejoice. "Goldfish parteeee with Ren". I'm freaking delerious.
As they wiggle and swim silently around my room someone is putting a button in my hand, it's Ren I think but she has teeth everywhere and I can't understand her, I think the button is a mind control button for the goldfish, or maybe the jelly, or it could be to order more cake?
My hands are sticky with smushed goldfish fins and cake bits. But I can't taste them. I try, but they taste like fingers.
Nothing makes sense, and all I know is if I push the button it seems to increase the velocity of the goldfish and remove a tiny bit more of the burning sensation.
"This is great, I love goldfish" I think absent minded pushing the button again and again.
But the button slowly stops working and I'm kinda coming down from goldfish land although there could be cupcakes now I am not sure.
Ketamine. Fuck I hate ketamine. This is going to make me hella sick I just know it, but at least my leg isn't on fire anymore.
I'm so damn high I think I just blacked out.
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Later on I wake up and my leg is purple red, there's a bog bruise hole in my thigh from the nerve block but the goldfish and cupcakes are gone and I am not in any pain. Just numb.
A catering person comes and delivers me dinner. I wonder what is under the cloche?
And here it is people. How do you know your private hospital from your public ones? Dinner, that is how.
I haven't eaten for 24hrs? What's under the cloche?
A piece of baked salmon, some green beans and a sauce of undetermined origin, but damn it tastes so good!
I don't even like salmon, never eat it, but that piece of salmon was the best food I have eaten in my whole life.
You know what they say about giving a man in the desert a cracker right?
Best damn cracker he ever ate.
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The metal-ware has been removed and I'm in a bandages. It feels better than it has for ages. I start to come down from ketamine and feel really disgusting, like I want to vomit but can't, the vomit is in belly, my head, my brain but it won't come out. K is bad. Great for nerve pain but not for my sanity.
The bandages stop me from seeing what has been done and the next day I'm checked out again and sent home. I've lost count of surgeries. I feel apprehensive but more positive than I have in a whole year and I trust Dr D, he seems genuinely interested in my well being and recovery.
I've got a lot to process and nothing but time.
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