To ICU and beyond!

thankfully the airheads kept me under for the whole night after surgery. Breathing tube still in until the following morning must've been hard for j to see but I couldn't have been any happier. I woke up in ICU truly believing that it was 10am Thursday morning and they had failed to intubate me. The lovely Windy Wellington couldnt convince me that it was a whole 24 hours post surgery, nah, you're lying I told her. Turning to J I said tell me honestly she's having me on right? No babe, the operation went ahead, it's gone really well, you've been here all night with a tube down your throat. "amazing! It's amazing! I can't believe it. It's amazing". It was amazing that I had no recollection of any of it post epiglottis. 

ICU is one of those places that I dunno, I always thought would be peaceful gardens of tranquility.patients in various states of rest fullness, drug induced comas, that kind of scene. Maybe it was party town that day but it was all whistles and bells down there from where I was lying. I had to go to my happy place a few times during the day. The day felt like the night cos of the dimmed lighting and my own body clock was screwed from not having processed the day I missed. So I was wired. Your imagination carries you away when you are behind a screen or curtain. So voices get exaggerated and noises fire up your imagination until you really believe you are in the middle of awar zone in Vietnam in the 60s,with Charlie sheen carrying you out of the jungle to a backdrop of Adagio for strings. God they give you good drugs in ICU.

Finding your happy place should you need it:

Preparation prior to surgery should always involve watching your favorite movies. Just not the ones where people die like About Time. Couldn't do that one even though it's a fave of ours. Musicals are especially good. "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down" is abit obvious but trying to remember what comes after "tea a drink with jam and bread" is a good one when you are trying to focus your head away from the emergency trachy going on in the next cubicle. That yellow brick road couldn't have looked any more golden as I tried to remember what the tin man needed and who Dorothy met first on her way to the emerald city. Music has been key to most of my happy places. I was so lucky to have an ICU handheld radio - who uses these nowadays? - to hold onto like a comfort

blanket while my legs trembled below from anxiety. 

Musical hallucinations got me through a few special moments in ICU. can you imagine working there  day in day out. To the team in ICU I salute you, one day was enough for my nerves. You're legends.