So I’m through the op. It’s not nearly as bad a thing as many blokes who may read this have had to face. But I’ve allowed myself to get down and frustrated over this. There have been weeks stuck in the house, off work, a premature retirement and being made to face for myself, the sort of risks/benefits decision, as a medic I ask my patients to take. Like the decision to have a treatment which carries risks, not as a life saver (as it often is with my patients), but to give me full exercise capability in the long term. For instance, getting back to 100 mile-a-day cycle treks across France, with the mad Revd. Beech. And after making the decision, with difficulty, I get an infection so the op’s delayed for a week with one day to go and the risks increase and other things go wrong.

Nothing new for many blokes reading this, but one of the things I do best is worry. I’ve done dangerous sports in the past and now, extreme (some would say) endurance cycling, which literally reduces grown men to tears. But through it all, I worry. I worry about all sorts of things, not just this. During these frustrating weeks, I’ve been reading the first part of the Book of Psalms. It’s all there; The Lord is always with you and will guard you and guide you through everything including in David’s case, life and death situations, not just non-urgent back surgery. That’s the unchanging truth in Scripture and that’s enough for anybody. But because I’m weak and a worrier, I keep asking God to give me some more reassurance that I’ve made the right decision. But I’m not looking around for ‘signs.’ I don’t do that, much.

Then 2 days before the final date of the op, I’m reading a national daily paper. I don’t get it normally; I’ve just read it a few times while stuck in the house and not for several days previously. Again, my mind’s a million miles away from ‘signs’. I’m just browsing, filling in the boring hours, when I realise I’m reading an article featuring my surgeon and the hospital where I’m going to be a patient. It’s not a complaint, by the way, it features him as a leading expert in something. Then, at the top of another article on the same page, I catch sight of a photograph of a familiar face–someone who was a medical student in my year, who now does medical articles for that paper. I haven’t read one for years, but that day, his column was about the latest evidence showing that the best treatment for people with back problems like mine is not to mess about delaying things with physio etc, (the previous traditional way to deal with it), but to get on with early surgery–which was just what I had decided.

Carl came to see me and I showed him the page. And just as though to underline it, while we’re talking, in a lull in the conversation, a voice on the radio solemnly names the newspaper. We both smiled and thanked God. This sort of ‘fleece’ experience hardly ever happens to me, but when it does, it comes completely unexpectedly. I shouldn’t require it and I don’t deserve it and it’s always possible to dismiss it as a coincidence. But I’m taking it as a kind reassurance to a worrier at just the right time, from a God who amazingly cares about details. What do you think?

I went for my op with much more confidence. The lesson I suppose is to be thankful for the health I‘ve got and when fit again, to strengthen my all too weak resolve to use it in following Jesus–and perhaps, to try and stop worrying so much. Lord help me to do that.

Discs gave me trouble in my mountain bike brakes, now one’s gone in my back, so I’m in hospital, to have it removed. I worked in the same hospital as a consultant till last year, so it’s interesting being a patient. An hour before I go to theatre, the anaesthetist turns up. I didn’t realise at first. He looks 16. ‘Hi, I’m Dave.’ Nice bloke–he whizzes through what he will be doing. I remember ‘there’s a 10% chance of you getting a bit knocked off your teeth,’ and ‘there’s a 1 in 200,000 chance of dying under the anaesthetic, or waking up disabled, or with brain damage.’ If you are supposed to feel positive when they tell you, you could win the lottery (1 in x million–more chance of being struck by lightning ) how are you supposed to react when they give you a 1in 200,000 chance of waking up (if at all) with the brain power of a Tesco trolley?

Half an hour to go and three nurses I worked with there, come in, grinning like idiots. Sensitively they tell me about some of my ex-patients who I handed on when I left the hospital and who are now dead. I then get taken away to theatre, where I meet Dave again. Nice bloke– he tries to be chatty while putting me under, but remember, anaesthetists are people who’ve made a career decision to work with a clientele who for most of the time, are unconscious.

‘Hi, I see you’ve not gone to Canada then, like Dr…’

‘Er, no.’ (How can I have gone to Canada? I’m lying on a trolley in front of him).

He tries ‘reassuring’.

‘Better grit your teeth, this will hurt.’ (It didn’t).

He tries ‘informative’.

‘This may sting a bit as it goes up your arm.’ (It hurt like blazes.)

‘Yeah, that hurt.’

He tries ‘apologetic.’

‘Yeah-sorry.’

He tries ‘chatty’ again.

‘Retiring soon?’ (Crumbs, do I look that old?)

‘End of the month actually, then back part time.’

‘Fed up with it all then?’

‘Er…’

‘At least you’ve only got back trouble. What about old Prof…?–Heart trouble. Retired, then died.’ Shortly after that, I lost consciousness. Nice bloke, Dave. What you see is what you get. I like him. Anyway I didn’t die. I woke up feeling rather more alert than a Tesco trolley. And no this wasn’t written days after the event, it’s being written now, 2 hours after the anaesthetic. With the CVM blog, at least you get the action live.

The nurse enters my dimly lit room with two bottles and some sinister information:

‘Some blokes can do it on their back. Some blokes have to lie on their side. Some blokes have to stand up out of bed, but stay close in case you start to pass out. Any probs, just give us a bell-then we come and stand beside you and say the word “catheter,” then they nearly all manage it.’ She disappears.

So, sometime later, halfway through penning this masterpiece and in-between chapters of Jeremy Clarkson, ‘Driven to Distraction’, Penguin Books (great read, present from Carl), I manage it-lying on my side, actually. I’m greatly relieved, in more ways than one. I carefully balance the bottle on the bedside table, on top of Michael Wilcox, ‘The Message of Psalms 1-72’, IVP, (another great read but it will have to wait until my brain has climbed further above Tesco trolley level).

My symptoms are much better but I don’t sleep all night. Instead I write my retirement speech, a talk (unasked for), for CVM, half this blog, read a large chunk of Jeremy Clarkson, pray through the rest of the night and by morning I’m still firing on all cylinders. Something’s wrong. I’m not depressed enough. I have a suspicion. I look on my drug chart–yes, straight after the op, while I was still out, they gave me a big dose of steroids–body and mind rocket fuel. I’ve been on a high all night. What goes up must come down and for the next two nights I sleep like a log. I often have to give my patients the same steroids. Now I know first hand why they seem so chirpy.

Part 2 out tomorrow …