Dark Places

The Silence

Modified Radical Mastoidectomy.

Trying saying that with a mouth full of Maltesers after five pints of vodka.  Bet you can't.

My ears are knackered.  That's the deal.  A defect from when I was born that meant the canals joining all my nasally-ear bits together decided they didn't want to grow past me being 3 years old.

This will sort it all out.  After a life of infections and partial hearing, I'll have a little less hearing but no infections.  Well, half the time I don't particularly want to hear what people say anyway.  I much prefer to be lost in my books.  Escaping to worlds and lives far removed from my humdrum existence.

Sometimes I wish I could sail along the canals that I'm having repaired, perhaps on a Venetian gondola - they do, after all, feel like they're full of water half the time.

I'm going down to theatre in a few minutes.  They're coming to take me away, ha-ha.  The line will be going in and I'll be off to sleepy-byes...

* * *

Wha...?  Where...?

Oh.  That's right.  I'm in hospital.  There's a huge pressure on my head.  Bandages are wrapped around me.  They're covering my eyes too.  I was expecting some padding over my ears, but not this.  Surely it's overkill?  I panic for a moment, but soothing hands pat my own, stroke my arms.

Calm down, they're reassuring me.  It's ok.

I suppose it is.  I should have asked about it, really.  Not assumed.  Saying that, maybe they should have told me.  Either way, it is too late now.  I am a mummy - or at least my head is.  Part of the walking dead.  Ancient beyond words and twice as crumbly.

Well, I can't see so at least I can entertain myself with silly thoughts.  I picture myself walking around, arms outstretched, groaning - just my head swathed but the rest of my body joining in the fun.

I can't hear anything.  I expected that.  At first, at least.  There would be swelling, internally and externally.  It would be a day or two before sounds would seep in.  But the pain and the headaches and the constant infections would be gone.

I could handle a couple of days of deafness for that.

It's not fun when you're being fed and you can neither see nor hear.  The nurse's fingers (I assume it's a nurse and not some random person stalking the halls of the hospital shovelling food into patients mouths) are tapping my mouth for me to open it for the spoon.  I don't like tomato soup and I've tried to say as much.  They're still feeding it to me, though.  I feel like a baby being weaned.

Maybe I am.  Just missing the nappy.

* * *

The bandages are coming off.  Finally.  I didn't expect it to take three days but perhaps I haven't healed as fast as they'd hoped.  I think it's been three days, anyway.  I've slept at odd times.  When you're surrounded by the night, it's hard to know when it's actually day.