I’m off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz…

Only I’m not getting a heart (I really hope I have one of those already) I’m getting my gall bladder taken out. And the wizard is actually a surgeon who calls me ‘my dear’. And sadly it isn’t Oz where we’re meeting up – although hopefully having remembered my private medical insurance, it should be a better hospital experience than the recent nhs one…

I’ve made a few discoveries this week that, should you end up in a similar gall stony type of state, might be useful to you:

• Try not to watch an episode of CSI which focuses on being buried alive too close to having an MRI scan (one of those ones in the tunnel). It doesn’t help with the slight feeling of panic that starts about 20 seconds into the 20 minute procedure.
• Don’t rely on the nurse to tell you when to breathe while in the MRI tunnel thing. After several rounds of ‘breathe in. breathe out breathe in, hold, 2, 3, 4…19, 20, and breathe normally again’ we got to the counting, we stopped counting and…nothing. So added to the feeling of possibly being buried alive was the vague sensation of being suffocated.
• Don’t think too much about the operation. Especially the bit about being ‘filled with gas’, particularly when you’ve been told that you ‘will need a bit extra due to the inflammation’. I can’t help thinking that I may float away like an oversized balloon if they get too carried away with the giant canister I assume is stashed in the operating theatre.

And one final thought. I’m going to find out how much a gall bladder weighs. I’m going to weigh myself before and after. I’m really hoping it could be a stone or two.

OK, there’s being positive and there is just being daft. I may have just crossed the line. I blame the gall stones…

:o)