Slam !

Going home today! Feeling pretty good, not a lot of pain, just this damn wound drain left to be taken out. It is an annoying thing. It is a thin plastic tube inserted through a small hole in my side, there is about 2 foot of tube that has a plastic oval bulb, a bit bigger than a tennis ball, attached to the end. There is a little cap on the top of the bulb that can be opened to empty the contents. The bulb is then squeezed to expel the air, the cap is replaced and a gentle suction is created to draw fluid from the wound site. As the bulb fills it becomes too heavy to allow it to hang down, so it has to be held by the tube with the bulb attached looking like a bizarre little blood filled bauble.
The surgeon came for his final visit and gave the order for the drain to be removed. I got on the bed and wait for the registered nurse to unpack the sterile dressing kit. I have had surgical drains removed before, they are only mildly uncomfortable. The drain is stitched in, she deftly cut the stitch, says now take some deep breaths, which I do, them Slam! I hear myself I scream so loud, that in that split second I wonder how far away they can hear me. I feel the approx one foot of tubing which has been threaded into my abdominal cavity being yanked out in one go. I gasp for breath. It happened in both a mere few seconds and in slow motion so that I felt the tube move through every inch of its journey. I hear myself say that I am going to pass out, and the nurse saying keep breathing deeply. It's then that I realize, that she too is surprised that there was so much drainage tube left inside me. I try to breath and relax my gut but the pain and the shock are overwhelming. Then for the first time since all this began I started crying, really crying. I sobbed for the next half hour.
She gave me pain killers and finished dressing the wounds while I cried.
She wheeled me in a wheelchair downstairs to the car park. It was a rainy, grey, miserable day and I got in the car still crying.