Things have changed since my operation...

Things have changed since my heart bypass operation. I'm just not the same now. A little older, a little greyer and more wrinkled with some wrinkles in places I'd never have expected them. But on the surface I look the same. That's why it's so damned difficult, you see. What does one do to explain? We've all met those who go on about their operations and it can get a bit much until we learn to switch off after the first, 'Oh, it was agony, Ivy!' I sure don't want to fall into that category.

The operation I had has become quite common now, evoking little more than the flutter of an eyebrow here and there. I mean to say, after waiting all one’s life almost for a chance to go to hospital so that flowers can be sent, friends can visit, hospital meals tasted and nurses appraised, it falls flat because it's the third operation of this kind in our town this month. Tough life, eh?

So I've had it. People I know stop me and ask, 'How are you?' and before I can say anything they rush in with, 'You're looking well'. They were saying that before the operation. I just nod my head. A waste of time trying to explain how I really felt. They didn't want to know anyway. It was just a greeting because they felt they had to say something. A bit like the minister shaking hands after the church service. It's like shaking hands with a piece of cold fish. He's miles away, talking to the second person behind you. Hardly gives you a glance.

The surgeon did a good job. I'm not complaining. Really. It's just that he rearranged some of my internal plumbing in the process. Well, the artery was there, doing nothing he reckoned, so might as well make use of it. And, as I say, nobody looking at me now any the wiser. For me though, that knowledge is quite deflating. Hits the old macho male ego for six I can tell you. I mean. What if I should suddenly need my left mammary gland for what it was originally intended. Whatever that was. There! It's out! My left mammary can't mam any more. Is it any wonder I feel such a fraud?

What's made it worse is the get-well card one of my friends sent me. It's of Michelangelo's David, a complete man, obvious which ever way you look at him. The only rearranging required for him would have been to remove anything bordering on the erotic from David's sight prior, during and until the sitting for the painting, sculptor or whatever had been completed. Depending on whether he wore a fig leaf, a cluster of grapes, or his sister's sexy shortie nightie.

I wonder if he'd have been so appealing if he'd had his left mammary rearranged? That of course, is something we'll never know. Just as well we can't change the past, isn't it?

Dennis Crompton© 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)