The Birthday Massacre by Sue Wald
Right.
Let's start at the beginning for a change.
A quarter of a century ago, I had been madly and blindly in love with the man I still call the love of my life, although - given the fact that twenty years later he turned out to be a far lesser man than the noble being I had chosen to see in him then - I don't consider him worthy any longer.
But back then, one afternoon while I was enjoying a relaxing bath at home, I discovered that my right breast seemed to be oozing what appeared to be mother's milk, and I put it down to my body letting me know that there would soon come a time when I would be a mother.
That was my very own romanticised explanation, of course.
I was sent to see a specialist and was drily informed that I had an encapsulated cyst, and needed to have another specialist run a scintigraphy on my thyroids.
I seemed to be taking it really badly - alas, nobody had cared to mention that chemically suppressing your thyroid activity prior to the test might turn you into an emotional, if not to say tearful, blob of jelly.
Which it did.
End-result: No baby in sight - not for another three years, anyway (and not with the love of my life), not even a lasting relationship to speak of (not with the baby's father nor anyone else for that matter), but abundant nodules in my thyroids.
The very word makes them sound suspicious, doesn't it?
Which brings us back to the present, when their ever growing size and numbers made me agree to my thyroidectomy, scheduled for the day before my 56th birthday.
They roll me into the operating theatre in the morning and God knows when they roll me back out - but when I come to I feel relatively well.
That changes during the night.
I find myself becoming weaker, with difficulties breathing - in through the nose seems to be ok as long as I concentrate, but to be able to expel the air I seem to have to consciously open my mouth.
I tell the staff, on countless occasions, but they just shrug it off, along the lines of "you just had a major surgery in your neck, it is to be expected".
Well no, it's certainly not what I expected, and I believe it is beyond what is to be expected - I shouldn't be feeling so weak.
Shrug.
By the time the surgeon pops in on his daily round, I am apathetic, and he shouts at me: 'Susanne, tell me what’s happening', and I can just about muster enough energy to whisper: 'Can't breathe'.
He opens me up there and then, in my hospital bed, with my roomie's daughter - incidentally called Susana - looking on in horror.
Through closed eyelids I see strange flickering lights as they rush me to the operating theatre, on my birthday, without anyone knowing, as I hadn't thought of naming my daughter as a contact, thinking I would be back home within a couple of days.
Not that anyone had asked or given me a form to fill in.
Everyone is starting to wonder, though, as to why I’m not answering any messages or liking my electronic birthday and get-well cards - to the world, I was offline and unavailable for comment.
In the meantime, in the cocoon of the intensive care unit, where they have parked me after the emergency surgery, I am told that I had suffered internal hemorrhaging, interfering with my capacity to breathe - I told you so, I want to shout, but only the merest whisper escapes my flaky lips as parched as the Atacama Salar - while I am experiencing chattering teeth and the shakes.
As I generally don't take any medication and never have, really, my body isn't responding well to the onslaught of pharmaceuticals.
I suppose those, together with the fear that had me in its throes during the hours beforehand, conspire and create a temporary Do not fall asleep or you will suffocate paranoia, along with the strangest pictures before my inner eye.
Every time I wave at them from inside my glass cabin to tell them that I feel sick and am afraid I am going to have to vomit, they release another dose of drugs into my bloodstream or pop something under my tongue, which already feels like a slug that has died of dehydration.
Yesterday.
Try and dissolve something underneath that - well, if it really were a slug, it would probably work better...
In my case, it causes dry heaving.
And on and on it goes.
Until they deem me fit enough to go back to my room.
Or maybe they just tired of my babbling.
The moment I can think of anything other than 'concentrate on your breathing', I ask them to call my daughter to ask her to come to the hospital.
She arrives in a flash - she had been calling but hadn't been told anything other than that I was now recuperating from a 'little indisposition' (oh, is that what it was?), and luckily she stays with me for two nights as I drift in and out of strange day- and nightmares - one consists entirely of my running commentary on all musical styles of the last 70 years, doing all the singing myself.
Believe me, it couldn't get any weirder than that.
I had never been this afraid before, and I do have a near-drowning experience to my name from when I was four years old (I had fallen into the Mediterranean, playing too close to the edge with a girl my age - incidentally called Suzanne - whose family was also holidaying in Menorca).
Between the time it took for her to run off to inform our parents, who were enjoying the ambience of the picture-perfect pueblo in a bar close by - yes, they had told us not to go near the water's edge (as if that had ever stopped a child from doing just that) - receive an advanced bollocking from her dad in case this turned out to be a prank, and my father finally arriving at the scene - light-brown leather sandals slapping on the cobblestones and dark-blond straight hair flapping in the wind (that is exactly how I remember it) - they found me sitting in a puddle on the pavement, soaking wet and shivering, hugging my knees.
I saved myself, thank you.
I had gone under a few times, with the waves not so gently pushing me into the stone wall, had come up spluttering each time, and had managed to pull myself up and propel myself over on the third try.
That's the stuff I am made of.
I'm a survivor.
But, as I said earlier, suppressed thyroid activity somehow reduces you.
They upgrade me to the hospital Room with a View, (after some bollocking from higher up, I suppose) but they don't quite manage to acquire professionalism, as one of the new team now in charge of my already battered body and bruised mind accidentally hits me over the head.
Never one to bear much of a grudge - cut me some slack here - I manage to chirp 'lo qué me faltaba' (just what I needed).
Honestly, what was there to get cross about? I was alive! On my birthday! Yay!
Over the course of the next few days (all in all I spend a week there), I suspend all but the strictly necessary medication - and feel better immediately - while they blunder on, managing to pop a vein, forcing me to temporarily become left-handed: the duck's egg on my right hand leaves the catheter in an awkward position and to flex my hand is near impossible.
Ah, and one particularly adept nurse seconds my improvisation of the levitation scene from 'The Exorcist' when she unthinkingly pulls the drainage bulbs towards herself to empty them, obviously oblivious of the fact that they are attached to my neck via two shortish tubes.
I horizontally rise off the bed to meet her before she yanks them out, I swear.
I'm thinking that as long as I can avoid the company of one of my namesakes whilst in some kind of precarious situation, I may be able to evade bringing the 'three times lucky' maxim up to the maximum total.
I should be so lucky.
