Stick my head under a dripping tap for a few minutes and I might go crazy. Cover my head with a black sack and let me loose to a pack of raging pit bulls and it may pack a punch. I will be scared shitless but for once that zipper mouth aided by a certain stubbornness will remain tightly jammed shut. Expose me to sleep deprivation, loud music and flashing lights for a prolonged length of time… and Ill continue to party. But put me in a small white room for five hours straight and I’m as good as useless

For optimum torture make sure I’ve had no food or water for the past 12 hours, ensure the lights are fluorescent and arm me with an assortment of reading material from Better Homes and Gardens to Women’s Weekly December 1999 Christmas edition and I am well on the way to going nuts. Add to this five hours of highlights from Michael Jacksons funeral and my breaking point is swiftly achieved. The five hours in the waiting room at Royal North Shore Hospital on Wednesday morning was the ultimate form of torture. 

When I was finally called up the other patients were elated. I was only in for a day procedure but Ken was in for dialysis and Mary for chemo and so on… they all cheered loudly. So joyously I almost skipped to the awaiting hospital bed. Not certain if I was still on planet earth, I was told to strip quick… “Yes take it all off” …and on with the hospital gown with my bum crack peeping out from behind.

Wheeled away by the RN who could have been Mr Beans brother, his eye contact off-putting, I searched for anything else to focus on before he began miming something ridiculous like picking his nose or getting my hospital sheets caught in his fly. We entered the lift in this spaceship they call the public health system where to my surprise my mobile bed was wedged in between four civilians. They all stare down at me, alien eyes wide with anticipation… what part of me will they be opening up today. “Are you serious, there’s but a feeble collection of over bleached cotton stitches between them and my nakedness and in this heightened vulnerable state am I really travelling cattle class from level 8 to the operating theatre on level 4″? It would appear so.

I am wheeled towards theatre as I pass surgeon after surgeon texting disinterestedly into their mobile phones. They all call good luck, which I am going to need, we all know how difficult it is to text and drive but what of texting while manoeuvring a scalpel? IV’s in and the whiff of drugs near the veins means enhanced confidence until they realise no one has marked the body part to be operated on. A surgeon appears in the nick of time and asks which knee it is… I tell him the right one and attempt a joke “are you marking me with a tick or a cross”? while an overwhelming sense of self doubt creeps through my body. Oh my God… have I told them the right knee? I have only been living with this injury for 15 years and in the two seconds before lights out my brain is clouded with self doubt.

The anaesthesiologist has asked me if I smoke, then… “do you drink”, “yes” is my enthusiastic reply. Is he asking me on a date? “How much”? “Oh I don’t know, not enough”. He giggles  “well we will mix up a nice cocktail for you today Wendy”. “Well I usually drink beer or wine, but that will be fine if there’s vodka involved”. My last words before being abducted for scientific experimentation.

I wake up coughing in recovery two hours or so later. The nurse looking over me is so intense I want to tell her to chill and the two across from me talk food food food. I want to scream at them, don’t they realise I haven’t eaten for 14 fucking hours. I feel pain in the knee but also in the upper thigh. Muscle strain even? “What did they have my leg around the back of my head or something, was I doing aerobics”?. “No” the surly nurse says “they moved your leg a lot during surgery to get to your knee”. I remember my lack of underwear and go quiet, contemplative almost. The pain in quite bad, and I verbalise it just enough until they administer the morphine.

Back in the ward now and I am seriously off my chops, gibbering, and in and out of consciousness. The major op is in six weeks, a woo hoo this will be fun. But then I begin itching uncontrollably and although they have already told me its a side effect of the morphine I gibber on also uncontrollably about the bed bugs and the state of the public health system. The dead beat nurse goes to get me more drugs but this time for the itch but doesn’t come back, so I continue to scratch.

Dry retching now, I’m sick from the anaesthetic. I inspect my arm but dare not look at my knee. Did I point to the right or the left one, I couldn’t remember then and I cant remember now. I have a series of bandages dotted up my arm each not quite concealing globs of blood. There had been problems inserting the IV, I was dehydrated and although my veins had began to collapse they forced it in, in the end. So what of the four puncture wounds and the massive bruise inside my left elbow? “What the fuck have they been doing to me”? The dead beat nurse shows no reaction to my tone and I’m not sure if I’ve said it out loud or its the voice in my head… I pass out.

Four hours later and my careful surveillance is up. We all wanted me off this retched spaceship. Hospital rules state that you cant go home until you have eaten and drank something and until the staff are satisfied that you are indeed well enough. It took about an hour to puncture the juice box/popper with the straw. And while I fed the undisclosed chicken dish to a friend I ate one pea and spilt the rest on the floor. I unsuccessfully dry retched and filled a bowl halfway with spew (but interestingly with no pea) and was herded out the front door on swaying crutches. “Can I possibly get a spew bag for the car trip”? I gibbered. “No, sorry we don’t have any”… they thrust me a handful of clear plastic bags and I was on my way. See you in six weeks I cheerfully waved in my drug fuelled stupor.