The ‘packing change’ surgery knocked me around more than I thought it would. It is the smallest surgery I’ve had, but the ongoing effects of it seemed disproportionately large. Though as my dear friend India pointed out, my benchmark for surgeries is pretty high. So even if this one isn’t as big as others, that doesn’t mean it’s not still significant.

I think many surgeries in a row tend to start affecting your body more too. It made me quite tired, but perhaps that’s to be expected, especially when eating is difficult, and pain is constant. The ulcers in my mouth and lips from surgery lasted for well over a week, which made eating even harder than it was anyway. Plus my cheek was sore.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage doing it every month while waiting for the reconstruction, how long would it be for? Months? Years? The idea of going through that same thing many, many times was a bit of a grim prospect. It seemed an intense way to find a holding pattern. But people have survived enduring things for unspecified periods of time before. Of course, I would find a way to deal with whatever I had to, there is no other option.

And anyway, I’m quite happy spending time in my flat – resting, reading, writing.

Essentially, it’s a great time to be ill. I’m mostly able to stay at home and rest without having to say no to visitors (who I obviously appreciate, but I’d rather just wait until I’m feeling better). I’m not missing out on anything – No FOMO, because no one is doing anything anyway. I’m not having to smile through pain and pretend I’m fine to people who want to see me. I don’t have to manage my own energy levels around other people. Sometimes it’s ok to just endure things, without the pressure to rush to some designated end point. This quiet, calm life we are living is very nicely aligned with where I want/need to be right now. And indeed I am very happy in my own little world for the time being. It’s a nice little world. And I have the rest of the world at my fingertips, should I need some company. So thank you, fingertips world, for your unwavering support.

Right in the midst of wondering how many times I would keep having to do this ‘packing change’ surgery, I had a chat with Deepti which gave me a bit of hope. She said their plan is that the next surgery, whenever that might be, will be reconstruction. They are starting to discuss it. I’ll have scans in the next month or so, which will be good. Hopefully I will finally meet the OPEN MRI MACHINE that I have been assured does exist, it just has one hell of a waiting list (and can’t actually be used for all instances so I may not be so lucky anyway). But we shall see.