Off the stage and out of the theatre

The woman who brought me round in recovery had the same name as my mum. It's nice when you wake up to be able to focus on something familiar. I remember slipping in and out of consciousness and if I'm not mistaken I could hear Rose's voice in the background a few times, she may or may not have been commenting on how pale I looked - cheers Rose! I was sick. Very sick. Anaesthetic and me are just not the best of friends it makes me throw up for hours, apparently I cleaned them out of anti-sickness drugs in recovery for the four hours I was down there. I remember being wheeled back onto the ward after and seeing Babs and Tony and Val - so nice to see familiar faces - it's those things that make all the difference.

You get a nice induced high after an operation on account of all the drugs, which is good and I am sure most people who have had an operation will tell you that the memories of that time are hazy and patchy and in my case sicky.

Tara was out of theatre by the time I came back onto the ward and so I knew that she was doing ok which helped.

The next few days were hard, I won't lie. Major surgery is painful. If you react badly to morphine and other pain relief then you have to rely on the trusted paracetamol to see you through. You do have dark times when you feel you can't move, or they have to take a drain out, or your catheter is not draining, or you have to be put on a drip to rehydrate you and all it does is make you want to pee every 30 minutes through the night which is hard work because you can't bend in the middle. You have to suffer the indignity of a commode and friends coming to visit and not being able to talk to them because you are too tired/throwing up. You take one step forward and then feel like you've taken two back sometimes. You cry. I'm not a big crier but I got very emotional for the first few days following the op - everything was making me cry - people being nice especially!

But you get there.

It tests your mental strength rather than your physical strength and I promise you do get there.

Simple tasks become huge milestones. Peeing for yourself, drinking a whole cup of tea, eating something, swinging your legs over the side of the bed.

Each time you do one of these things you feel stronger. You give yourself a pat on the back and you plan your next challenge (reaching your phone from the other side of the hospital table, sitting up, passing wind!)

Tara did better than I did in the first few days. She walked around to see me on the day after the op, a day when if I moved more than my eyes I felt like the whole hospital span around me, she sat with me for a few minutes. She looked so well. It spurred me on. A couple of the nurses were very kind to me and told me it wasn't a race and she was the hare and I was the tortoise and I would get there. Very kind of them to keep my spirits up and seeing Tara doing so well helped massively - this is what it was all for and she looked AMAZING.

One day when I was feeling really down because I felt I had done so much better and then the nausea returned Rose came and sat with me for a bit and we had a good old natter about feeling sick. I don't think she knew it at the time but that chat helped loads. Everyone who talked to me and kept my chin up when it was wobbling and queasy did an amazing job. When the sickness finally left I felt amazing.

Recovery is a process not an instant thing. You have to take it slowly. It is also a proactive process. You have to push yourself when you're tired, when it hurts. But listen to the nurses. Walk tall and BREATHE. It is good for you physically but more importantly it is good for you to believe you will get better, you are getting better and it is not a race.

By Saturday, only three days after the operation I was ready to go home. So I did. Leaving Tara behind to follow two days later on the Monday. We did it.

P.S. All fashion sense leaves you in hospital it's the law (unless you're a rock star and called Tara)

P.P.S. Hospital wheelchairs go backwards.

P.P.P.S the cardi is Val's, she insisted, it was cold.