After 4 days of hectic medical experience, including having travelled from one hospital to another, seen a lot of doctors and nurses, been to different places from the ambulance stretcher to the hospital beds, then to the theatre’s operating table, now having had both hands attached drips, 4 days of absolutely no food and no water, 3 cuts on the belly…..my poor husband is back home, with his appendix removed.

I guess my heart is not trembling as badly as the last year around the same time, but it took a lot of patience to get things happen. There was a lot of waiting (for him and for me either) and bad sleeps in noisy and never-stopping hospitals. And there seemed to be always some emergency cases worse than his, then was prioritised before him. That even happened when we were already in the holding bay of Operating Theatre.

Well, I guess that’s fine. The Canberra Hospital has almost done the best, given we are getting total free service with this country’s public hospital system in place. Remember 3 years ago when we were in one of hospitals in Beijing, my husband had the same episode. We were asked to deposit 3000 RMB immediately to just get him admitted.

However, when I was sitting outside the Operating Room waiting yesterday, I had very new and funny ideas about the medical world. Witnessing so many nurses and doctors wearing their special surgery clothing going in and coming out of those doors with big sign of “Restricted Area”, I wondered what they are doing.

Would that be similar to someone working with a chopping board, cutting up people’s skins with a sharp knife and getting things in or pulling things out? I was curious…. but my husband couldn’t remember a thing because he was completely put into sleep.

The only thing he can recall is that the operating table was very short. He had a choice of either having his head or feet hanging out and dropping back. And, he was given an icy pole and forced to hold it himself and eat it in the Recovery Room.

I guess we will never know. To me, it seemed to take a very long time to wake him up after the operation, and he was very very very sleepy when was sent from Recovery Room to EDSU ward. I don’t know how he managed to hold a freezing cold icy pole to eat with his eyes barely open. It was cruel but funny.

That was yesterday afternoon. Now he is home. Guess what? I have never been in bed before 9 pm in the past many years, now I am here, under a warm cotton quilt. I have been off the work since Monday, I knew I needed a good sleep even though I didn’t have time to feel like it. So where has my week gone? I don’t know…but I know where I am going to now, I am going to fall asleep