Thank you, best wishes and a simple goodnight x
Today marks one week since my brain aneurysm clipping.
It's been a strange week. In some ways it's gone incredibly quickly. In others it feels like months ago that I was lying in pre op waiting to be wheeled into theatre.
The first couple of days were mostly a blur. Pain. Nausea. Intravenous anti nausea medication. Some fairly serious painkillers. Neurological observations every couple of hours. Blood tests. Blood sugar checks because of the steroids. Then trying to get whatever sleep I could before someone gently woke me again to shine a light in my eyes and ask me where I was.
I was discharged on Friday, but unfortunately I was sent home a little too early and on the wrong dose of steroids. By that evening my brain had started swelling again. The headache became unbearable and I ended up back in hospital by ambulance early Saturday morning.
Thankfully everyone recognised what was happening almost immediately. The steroids were increased, IV fluids were started, the pain medication was adjusted, and over the next day or so things settled back down. I was discharged again today, exactly one week after surgery. They even removed my staples.
Oddly enough, washing my hair afterwards felt like one of the great luxuries of modern civilisation.
There are some experiences nobody really prepares you for. Vomiting after brain surgery is one of them. You know, rationally, that everything is secure. You trust your surgeon completely. Yet there's still that ancient little part of your brain quietly whispering, "Are you sure this is okay?"
The constipation from the opioids brings on its own equally irrational panic. You find yourself thinking that somehow using too much effort might undo everything. Looking back it's almost funny. At the time it absolutely wasn't.
What surprised me most wasn't the surgery.
It was the ward.
Compared with so many of the people around me, I was incredibly lucky.
There were people recovering from ruptured aneurysms. Brain tumours. Severe head injuries. Patients whose skulls had been temporarily removed because the swelling simply had nowhere else to go. Some couldn't speak. Others couldn't remember conversations they'd had five minutes earlier.
One gentleman kept saying he needed to go and check on the cars. Over and over again. I have no idea what his life looked like before he came into hospital, but whatever responsibility he carried before all of this was still sitting somewhere deep inside him. The nurses would patiently ring his son, who would reassure him until he relaxed again.
Across from me was an older couple. I assume they were husband and wife. He barely left her side. For hours he'd simply sit there rubbing her feet. No speeches. No grand gestures. Just quiet devotion.
To my left was another family who seemed to fill the room with warmth. They brought music. They laughed with him. They talked to him constantly, whether he could answer or not. At one point someone jokingly broke the news that LeBron had left the Lakers. It was probably the biggest reaction anyone had managed to get out of him. He slowly lifted his hand, gave the camera the middle finger, and the whole room burst into laughter.
For thirty seconds everyone forgot they were in a neurosurgical ward.
Those are the moments I keep thinking about.
People often describe illness as a fight.
I don't think that's how it felt.
For most of this experience I wasn't fighting anything. I was a passenger.
When you're under a general anaesthetic you surrender completely. You're trusting people you've only just met to breathe for you, monitor every heartbeat, watch every number on every screen, and quite literally hold your brain in their hands.
It made me realise something that I probably should have understood long ago.
Real progress often comes from accepting help.
Not resisting it.
Not pretending you're stronger than you are.
Just accepting that none of us gets through life entirely on our own.
Over the past week I've heard from people I haven't spoken to in years. Friends. Family. Old workmates. People I barely expected to remember me. Complete strangers on Reddit who took the time to share their own stories and reassure someone they'd never met.
Every single message mattered.
Hospitals are extraordinary places.
Not because they're filled with heroes, although there are certainly plenty of them, but because they're full of ordinary people quietly doing extraordinary things together. Surgeons. Nurses. Cleaners. Orderlies. Pharmacists. Ward clerks. Kitchen staff. Occupational therapists. Physios. Paramedics. People who refill water jugs, empty bins, clean bathrooms and change bedsheets.
None of them are the centre of the story.
Every one of them is essential.
This week has made me feel incredibly small.
Oddly, that's been comforting.
It reminded me that underneath everything else, people overwhelmingly want to care for each other. You see it in families who refuse to leave a bedside. In nurses explaining the same thing for the tenth time with exactly the same patience as the first. In someone rubbing their wife's feet for an entire afternoon because that's all they can do. In a son answering yet another phone call. In a cleaner quietly making the room feel human again.
I don't think I'd ever really seen that before.
Or perhaps I'd just never slowed down enough to notice it.
I'm still swollen. My hair is doing whatever it wants. I probably look a little strange.
But I'm still here.
Still me.
And I suspect this week has changed me in ways I'll only understand months or years from now.
To everyone who checked in, sent a message, made a phone call, visited, or simply thought of me, thank you.
To the people I shared that ward with, although we'll almost certainly never meet again outside those walls, thank you.
And to every person who helped carry me through one of the most vulnerable weeks of my life, whether you were holding a scalpel, serving a meal, cleaning a floor or simply sitting beside someone you loved...
thank you.
Ps i wouldnt have usually let AI play with my words but in my current state I don't think I could have gotten them out any other way.