On the Up

My surgery was three and a half weeks ago and I’ve been home from hospital (the second time) for a week and a half. I’m recovering slowly but steadily. Home is peaceful and T is looking after me very well.

My wound is still sore and I take my full allowance of paracetamol and co-codamol each day, but the skin has fully closed over and is looking healthy. I now possess four large scars on my torso and would have no trouble being a body double for a pirate. I already have the accent. Although swinging through the air on a rope with a cutlass in my teeth might be a bit much for me at present.

After the bowel surgery and the dramatic relapse my guts are very sensitive. I lost ten pounds during my two bouts in hospital. And I’ve been finding it difficult to eat enough to put weight on. I tend to eat little and often. I also have to take soft and easily digestible food. I’m only able to manage a half to two thirds of what I would normally eat at any one meal. I seem to get full up fairly easily. At the same time, T is on a diet and has to watch me munching through full-fat yoghourts, digestive biscuits and organic chocolate bars each evening.

I go for gentle walks a couple of times a day. I amble along, my wound twinging, down the lane from the house. I’ve made friends with the collie dog who lives at the first farm. He now accompanies me on my walks and escorts me back to the house. I reward him with a biscuit before he returns to the farm. I asked T to give him a name. She called him Rex. I saw the old farmer a few days ago and asked him what the dog was called. Strangely enough, he said Rex.

I’m also sleeping a lot, ten to twelve hours each day. Every afternoon, whether I feel tired or not, I close the bedroom curtains and lie down. I usually wake up an hour or so later. My habit is then to watch daytime TV. My favourites have been the reruns of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ with Jeremy Brett as Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Watson, and ‘Time Team’ with Tony Robinson.

I’ve caught a few matinee films. I saw ‘The Producers’ for the first time for decades and was struck by how politically incorrect its humour was, with a series of jokes about Jews, Nazis, women, gays and so on. It featured the recently deceased Gene Wilder but the star of the show was undoubtedly Zero Mostel. I found myself happily singing along to ‘Springtime for Hitler’.

I was much less impressed with ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, starring a wooden Gary Cooper and a vivacious Ingrid Bergman, with little onscreen chemistry. It was a sort of Spanish Western with plenty of action on horseback and the blowing up of a bridge across a canyon. Location shots were impressive but the sets were rather tacky.

‘The Mouse that Roared’ was a curiosity. A vehicle for Peter Sellers (who played three roles) and a weak satire on the nuclear arms race. It was a cross between ‘Passport to Pimlico’ and ‘Dr Strangelove’, with few of the merits of either.

I’m still unable to concentrate very well. I can manage a newspaper article but I’m not yet ready to read a book. The print seems to swim before my eyes quite quickly and my head seems to have plenty of cotton wool inside. I hope the anaesthetic disperses soon.