13
I lay awake in my hospital bed after surgery, the priority right now that I have to prove that I can pee. The anesthetic can put the bladder to sleep apparently, and if it doesn’t rouse that means the insertion of a catheter. They fitted me with one during the initial surgery some eleven days earlier. I woke to find the catheter inserted you know where, and an external fixator fitted to my leg – that’s like scaffolding screwed directly into the bones to hold them in place while they wait for the swelling to go down so they can then perform the actual surgery. I wore the catheter for…
The Big Goodbye
It wasn’t long after I finished my typewritten novel that I started experiencing panic attacks. The first one woke me in the middle of the night, terrifying me, and leaving me seething with anxiety. I was sure something had broken inside my head. I thought the anxiety would run it’s course, the way a cold would, but it remained omnipresent. The nights became a horror; I dreaded the quiet, where the anxiety could just spill out into the emptiness. But, conversely, sleep brought the only refuge. Finally, I decided I needed to see a GP – just not my GP, who knew my parents well. I didn’t want to risk…