I'm here for the hernia. It's the only place that I can get the surgery done, without waiting for months or paying thousands of pounds. The hernia's been around for almost a year now. To begin with, I fancied it to be a strange outgrowth of fat, but then realised it was more than that. Reluctantly I came to accept that surgery was going to be the only viable course of action. The hernia wasn't very sexy, and was getting bigger all the time. Time to go to Viking country.
I'm in the ante-room before the operating theatre. "Any tattoos or piercings?" I am asked for the twentieth time, this time by a young lady in those green hospital overall things. "No. I suppose they must be an issue these days." "We had a woman in for gyno.She had a piercing that she didn't tell us about." The expression on the hospital worker's face suggests it was not a good experience.
The anaesthetist arrives. He is tall, rangy, well-spoken, rather old-school English. His eyes bulge out almost as much as a hernia, and I fancy him to have a serious interest in real-deal strong drugs and their effects, not the Sunday picnic psychedelics that folk like me have had a leaning towards.
"First we give you a happy drug. Makes you relaxed." He punctures the skin on the back of my hand. "Just like a wee dram." Then a little needle goes in, almost painless. The next thing I know I am in the recovery room.
I was fortunate to be first on the list for the day. I am coming round, and it's only just gone midday. Not much pain at all. Don't feel very disoriented either. Just lots of belching and burping: anaesthetic on migraine tummy, I suppose.
Strength begins to return. My wife comes to visit. "You can leave after you've had a pee" the nurse tells me. Only trouble is, I can't pee. Just vague stinging sensations where peeing habitually takes place.
"Drink water, drink" the nurses urge me. It goes on a long time. I continue to drink water.
There are two of us in the same situation. The other man is in for bilateral hernia - two for the price of one-, and the nurses start mumbling about catheters. This freaks the other guy out completely, so much so that he goes to the loo and comes back immediately with a slightly filled pot and an enormous grin on his face. Now it's just me.
"We'll have to keep you in overnight," a nurse eventually tells me at about 8pm. My wife gallantly sticks around for a while longer, before being sent off to our accommodation and a late dinner.
By now I have drunk the equivalent of half Loch Ness. "We'll do a bladder scan" pipes up another nurse. "Look. It's half empty. Drink more water, drink, drink."
I recall the fates of those occasional victims of ecstasy consumption, a grisly death normally brought on by drinking so much water to avoid the dreaded dehydration that their brain turns to sponge. I give up on the drinking, and lie back to muse on the resting place of all that liquid.
A short while later I am up again, vomiting the equivalent of half Loch Ness down the pan. My migraine years have provided good training for such occurrences, and I am not fazed. In these circumstances, my stomach won't digest water, even. I know the ropes.
Around midnight a nurse comes round and inquires. "How are you feeling?" "A bit nauseous." "I'll fetch you a pill for that." I haven't the will to tell her. Ten minutes later the tablet is thrown up, along with loads more liquid, rejected by a body in full protest.
At 2.30am I pee. Just a little, and painfully. But it's all that's needed. I can go now.
Around 9am my wife comes to collect me. We go to the river for a therapeutic hobble. We move slowly along its banks, then on alongside misty pastures. I imagine those Norse folk of the past here. Catching fish from the slow-moving river; tending their animals - sheep? goats? what animals did Norse folk keep? - beside the river, cultivating a little grain. It's a funny place here, but I quite like it. I am unexpectedly free of bodily pain. And, to my relief, kundalini appears to have come through the ordeal unscathed. Soon time to go home......
