Post-Op Prevarication

I’ve come to the conclusion that no one ever tells a patient the whole truth about what her surgery is going to involve.

“In two weeks you’ll be doing everything you did before,” my surgeon told me, and he was partially right. I found, only fourteen days after the big event, that I was perfectly capable of lying in bed all day, reading a few short get-well cards. Occasionally, I even had enough surplus energy to moan every time I tried to turn over or take a deep breath.

What he never mentioned were the things I couldn’t do--cough, sneeze or stand upright for more than twenty seconds without my ears starting to ring like the carillon in the cathedral at Notre Dame.

My doctor wasn’t the only one who didn’t seem to realize how weak I was after my operation. Friends who take to their beds for days with a sore throat or a trick knee were amazed when I told them I wasn’t up to dinner and the theatre the day I got home from the hospital.

They, and everyone else I met, kept telling me they’d undergone the same operation, suffered worse complications and recovered weeks sooner than I had.

“My dear, I was playing tennis ten days afterward,” someone told me smugly when I celebrated my three-week post-operative anniversary by having my husband drive me, very slowly, once around the block in the car.

Eventually, of course, all my malaise came to an end, and the day dawned when I could actually comb the back of my hair without feeling so faint I had to lie down for a week.

Gradually I found that I could stand upright quite comfortably without worrying that I would split open and spill something vital onto the floor.

Now that I’ve recovered, I think it’s time I shared my new-found well-being with those less fortunate than myself. I’m going to join the ranks of that vast legion of liars--people who have undergone surgery.

“You’re going to have an operation?” I’ll ask blithely. “Don’t give it another thought. I had something far more serious done not too long ago, and I was up and around and feeling absolutely marvellous in no time at all!”