I’ve now been at the Workhardt Hospital in Goa for three weeks.
In this time, I’ve been subjected to several sonograms, three CT scans and undergone
two operations. I’ve spent six days in intensive care, where numerous blood
transfusions and blood tests were performed and along the way, I’ve been forced
to pee into a range of ridiculously tiny receptacles. I currently have the
delightful pleasure of a plastic catheter tube stuffed up my va-jay-jay and I’m
permanently attached to an intravenous drip, pouring a medley of medicines into
my now inflamed veins.
But at least I now know that what caused all of this had
nothing to do with yoga. In fact, Marichiasana D, the posture that made me go
pop, pretty much saved my life. Well that – and my boyfriend. If it hadn’t been
for him insisting on taking me to hospital, I would still be lying on the sofa,
clutching my stomach, believing the pain I was in was just a pulled muscle.
Nevertheless, I’m still not entirely sure what it is exactly
that is wrong with me. This is partly
because my medical team and I don’t really have a common platform of
understanding, owing to our language differences. And partly because my
prognosis keeps changing as their medical investigations widen. After my
initial scans, they were convinced that the rather large mass they’d detected
in my lower abdomen was a haematoma.
But the first operation scotched that theory.
Upon draining this thing out of me, they discovered not
blood, but a gooey, mucousy gunk filling up their syringes. They declared this to
be some kind of supersized cyst that I’d most likely been walking around with
for years. Still, at least they’d got the mucilaginous monster out.
But no. The cyst persisted.
Within hours, the pernicious fucker had refilled and
returned with a vengeance. Further scans informed me that it was now on some
kind of urological colonial crusade. It was growing into my pelvis, pushing
into my bladder, it had taken hold of my left ovary and was now rapidly on its
way to engulfing both my kidneys.
This beast was quite literally trying to possess me. I felt
like the Linda Blair character from the Exorcist. I was quite certain that if
this thing wasn’t gouged out of me soon I would be projectile vomiting while my
head did a succession of full 360’s.
Cue surgery Number Two: The Exorcism.
This was going to be epic. Nothing like the neat little
keyhole procedure I’d had previously. This time, the surgeons would be sawing
my stomach in half to scoop the blood-sucking fuck monkey out of me. I would be
like the magician’s assistant in some kind of twisted magic trick. Only without
the magic. And no general anaesthetic either. Thanks to a congenital quirk that
renders me completely inept when it comes to clotting blood, they decided that
putting me under would be too much of a high risk. They didn’t want me bleeding
out. I would be given an epidural to numb me from the waist down instead.
I’d become the unwitting subject of a Channel Five shock doc…and
I had front row seats to the whole hideous horror show.
A flurry of frenzied activity then ensued as my doctors set
about hunting down the gallon or so of extra blood they needed to staunch the impending
haemorrhage, giving the nursing staff enough time to institute their own pre-op
preparations. Most absurd of which included the shaving off of all my pubic
hair and the rather half-arsed removal of my red toenail polish. By the time I
was actually wheeled into the operating theatre, I had an extremely itchy
six-o-clock shadow situation going on ‘downstairs’, while my feet looked like
they’d just tap-danced their way through a murder scene.
And I was petrified.
I’d never had an open surgery before and as I lay on the
operating table, squirming under the starkness of the bright theatre lights, I
began to cry. Uncontrollably. I really wasn’t sure if I was going to make it
out of there alive.
Still, at least the whole thing was going to be quick. No
more than an hour, I was told.
Six hours later, I was finally wheeled out. Unconscious. Not
one of the six epidurals they’d attempted had worked. I cannot even begin to
describe the unconscionable pain I endured as they stuck the scalpel in and
began slicing me apart. Suffice to say that once they were done peeling me off
the ceiling, my surgeons had no choice but to knock me out cold.
And thank God for small mercies. Because aside from
predictable blood bath, what they found when they finally got inside my stomach
was so overgrown, odious and insidious, it prompted a riptide of shock
throughout the hospital. This entity had engorged beyond all proportions and plugged
its tendrils into the various vital organs of my lower body.
It was going to be a cluster-fucking nightmare to excavate.
When the surgeons finally emerged to showcase the mug shots
of this monster to my now supremely concerned boyfriend – they were calling it
a tumour. When I eventually came round, my man filled me in, conjuring a
living, breathing being from what he witnessed of this angry looking,
watermelon sized mass with pulsating veins, coated in viscousy goo. To me, it
sounded like Captain Caveman. Less the hair. And if given half the chance, I’m
quite sure it would have sprouted fangs, horns and a psychopathic Cyclops eye.
The good news is that I’m going home tomorrow. Two days
before Christmas. And while this cyst/tumour/whatever-the-fuck-it-is may have
stolen my left ovary, robbed me of my dignity and stopped me from doing any
form of exercise for the next 6 weeks, I am pathetically grateful it’s out of
me.
Whether there’s a sequel to this ghastly horror story, I
won’t know until I get the results of the biopsy next week. But for now, while
my Christmas may be spent in a horizontal position, at least I won’t be lying
in hospital feeling desperate and alone. I’ll be in my own bed, with the one I
love. And for me, that’s a gift that not even Santa can surpass.
