Reality

As a few of you may know, I was recently in hospital.

I woke up one morning with the worst cramps I had ever experienced.

They got steadily worse, until eventually I had to go to hospital. These were no ordinary cramps.

In the waiting room, after being initially checked over, I lay there with a drip in my arm, fearing the worst. Cancer and death were my main thoughts, pushing their way to the front as if to say, “Hi! It’s great to meet you!”

But thankfully, the ultrasound revealed the source of my pain. A cyst.

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I won’t go into specifics, but it was in a place where removing it could potentially have left me infertile. The fear that hit me was as acute as the pain stabbing at my stomach.

After a lot more pain, waiting, drugs, and tests, it was decided that I would stay the night at the hospital (by then it was very late) and have an operation the next day.

I had never spent more than a matter of hours in a hospital before, and if I’m honest, that day was the most frightening day of my life.

I had surgery the next morning, which was a success – no, I’m not infertile – and ended up staying in hospital for three and a half days.

Breaking out the honesty again, it was truly among my worst experiences. Yes, my nurses, surgeons and doctors were (are) unbelievably kind, but my modesty, dignity, personal space and other synonyms thereof pretty much jumped enthusiastically out the window.

I don’t think I’ll need to say much more when I tell you the type of surgery I had is literally called “Invasive Surgery”

And, after all, I was just a young woman, in a foreign country that spoke a language I really don’t understand enough of.

So yeah, it wasn’t pleasant.

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When I was released and reunited with my notebook, I thought I’d have a poem for every hour I spent in there.

But I didn’t want to write about any of it.

And even now, after all the hurdles I’ve clumsily climbed over, I don’t want to write about it.

I just want to forget it and move on. But I think a big part of me needs to accept what happened.

After all, you can’t run away from something when the evidence will remain on your stomach for the rest of your life, can you? No.

So I’m going to try my best.