Early Morning

I will wander up to the Hospital and have my pre-assessment done. I must remember to drink plenty of water as they need a sample when I get there and I need to take the 2nd pee of the day in a sample jar with me too.

I'm getting an old hand at this now and I am going to take my Blood Pressure readings of the last month along just to prove a point about my white coat syndrome. Even though I've been through all of this before I still find it particularly stressful especially blood tests and everything else. I've only ever been ill when I've been in Hospital - that statement may not make sense - but what I mean is, it has always been, operation this, course of treatment that, stitches, injections, operation, nasty tests and so on. I suppose you don't go there otherwise but to me, it just has no "nice" feel to it at all. I associate it with having stuff I don't want to have done, being done to me.

At the end of the day though, they are helping me and I am a lot better than I was 4 years ago without doubt. If they didn't operate then and do the treatment etc., well..... maybe I wouldn't be here now to complain about it :-)

This will have been the 9th Operation in 4 years. It is eclipsed by my time when I was a child of having 11 operations albeit over a 9 year period and some of those were close together. These were on my ear which I managed to have a series of Polyps removed and then a blown ear drum, a reconstruction, some clever removal of the hearing bones and re-insertion sometime later and then a mastoidectomy which I remember being pretty strange as I had a tendency to fall over through dizzy spells for some time after and had migraines for about a year afterwards. Glad I never got those headaches again they were wicked things as I recall.

To add to that I had one hell of a scare after getting off a flight and ended up for 4 or 5 days with a suspected heart attack that was eventually explained away as a feint - possibly to do with the plane being cramped?? Mmm. So there you go - Hospitals are not my favourite places.

I did have my friend come and do some hypnotism on me and that has helped me a lot. I can take myself to and from hospital. I can even have blood tests and that without needing anyone nearby so a massive improvement in the way I approach having to attend and go through all these things. Once tomorrow is out of the way I will be able to take it relatively easy as I won't go in until the 16th July and so a week and a half should help me to get prepared for Scar Wars IX. Let's hope that it turns out better than Scar Wars VIII.