KONZUKO

So as the time goes on, surgery day four, five. This is where, okay, we’re now, I was on.

So the thing that you need to start doing, now that you’re peeing, it’s like, okay, that means his body is kind of, is working.
So he can have sips of water. So I was allowed to have sips of water and because I could start walking at this point, and obviously I was peeing, I would have to get up in the night and go and use the toilet. I think at some point they were trying to do, at the beginning, how much urine I’m passing.

So they wanted me to pee in the bottles. But at some point I did start getting up and going to the toilet, sort of waddling over with the machine. You know, you’ve seen it in all the movies.

And the little trolley, pushing it on the little trolley thing, the machine, the pump for the IV stuff. And I was doing that. And, but I couldn’t eat.
I was still nil by mouth. I was just on sips of water. And so the thing is, this is where things started getting techie and really difficult, my life.
Because the way you can tell, your bowel is starting to go back to normal, is when you can fart and poop normally. And to an extent, burp. There’s many farting and pooping, because that means, okay, gases are passing through and your body is processing and expelling stuff properly.

But this wasn’t what was happening quite yet. I basically couldn’t really fart. So far, even though I could sort of feel like I wanted to, like at times I could feel stuff trying to happen, I couldn’t really.
And, but I could pee. And what had started to happen is, I was moving around. And maybe if I really tried, or like I could fart a bit.
But now I started getting nausea and pain.

And so there’s two things they did, they want you to do. And this to help your recovery and for your bowel to start working, guys.
So actually the first thing they want you to do, this is a bit unrelated, but it’s to help keep your lungs in good condition so that you don’t get a lung infection, is they have this little apparatus machine which you breathe into and this ball goes and you hold the ball up when you breathe into it.
And then that sort of helps you expand your lungs and works them so that you don’t stay sitting in bed all day and you get a lung infection, which could, if you’re in a bad enough condition, can fucking kill you ultimately. Or at best delay your recovery.

Then the main thing they wanted me to do was to get up and walk around as much as I could, even though it’s fucking difficult. Because look, we have this abdomen surgery and it’s really difficult to walk pretty much, to walk properly and to walk straight.
And so I was trying as much as I could, I wasn’t doing too much, but I’d do my best and I was really pushing, trying to push myself.
But what had happened is I’d started to get, feel two things, pain and nausea, sort of.

And the type of pain it was, and these were dark days, man. It was the one night I’m just up and I’m waking up and the pain, it’s like this is unusual, it’s not normal pain you’re getting.
This isn’t pain from the surgery, this is a different kind of pain. And I’m calling the nurse, like it really hurts. And I know I’ve done everything I’ve been asked to do, but this pain is weird because I’ve never experienced it before.
And the nurse is, and then I ask for some pain relief.

And then what happened? I can’t believe this is escaping me because this was really diabolical situation. And they’re dragging their feet, man.
They’re understaffed. And I tried to explain to her, because she, I was on sips of water. But what I had realized is I would get nauseous.
I’d start a bit nauseous at the beginning of the day and then over the period of the day, it would increase my nausea. And then I would vomit everywhere. Okay.

So now we’re what, we’re over a week into this whole thing. Maybe this was on the sort of the beginning of on the tail end of the first week, moving into the second week as well.
And this would happen every day.
And so I started saying, I’m not gonna take these sips of water because what’s happening is I’m taking these sips of water and it’s not going anywhere and I’m feeling sick. And so I’m just vomiting up everything. I was vomiting up green bile.

And then by this time in the night, I was having this pain. It was as if there was gas trapped and it wasn’t going anywhere. And it was pretty severe.
Trapped gas can be fucking painful. So I tried to get up. I tried to walk.
I tried to move about. It still wasn’t, I was burping and I was helping a bit, but it still wasn’t helping.

And this woman, she’s like, you need to drink the water like the doctors tell you. This nurse, you need to, what’s it called? You need to get up and mobilize. That’s the term that all the healthcare professionals use and I still, you need to mobilize. Is he mobilizing? And I was fucking mobilizing.
And she wasn’t listening to me, fucking listening to me. This Nigerian bitch. She, it turns out she’s a first year nurse, but anyway, just graduated from Flippin University. Fucking old as fuck as well, but it’s besides the point.

She wouldn’t listen to me. I was telling her, it feels like there’s trapped gas and I’ve been mobilizing and it’s not helping. You know, what can we do? There’s the painkillers, there’s the, painkillers weren’t working. There’s the one on the tongue that they give you, that it dissolves under your tongue.
Apparently you dissolve it close to a blood vessel because it gets dissolved and it gets absorbed into your system more effectively. Giving me that, shit wasn’t working. I’m here suffering. I’m calling her, I’m like, I’m suffering.
I’ve done all this stuff and she kept repeating and saying, you need to do this. This is what doctors say, mobilize and drink the water.

I told her, if I drink the water, I’m gonna be sick everywhere. So I feel sick, I feel nauseous, severe pain. I couldn’t sleep. It was hell on earth.
And I was just sitting there on the bed, sort of in this sort of upright position, not lying down, in a position where I could just about, not tolerate it, but the best position I could come up with where I could sort of exist and just ease the pain a bit, just easing it a bit. That was the only position I could find in myself.
She was completely unhelpful.

So somehow I got through the night. I don’t even know what happened. The pain subsided probably.
So I didn’t start really passing gas properly yet, even despite going through all of that. The trap, the whole trapped wind thing didn’t, it got even more complex.
And so over the next how many days, I just kept dealing with that vomiting.

Even when I went completely, I even completely shunned all the sips of water. I tried to communicate with the nurses and everyone. I was saying, I’m vomiting up all this stuff.
And I was telling them, I don’t wanna drink stuff because if I do, I’ll vomit up everything. This is what’s happening. I was telling so many nurses, they weren’t fucking taking it in until how many days later after this, what were we on, day nine, 10?

Oh, so the patient, he’s vomiting up all this stuff at the end, at the end of the day. And we leave his water here because of this. And I’m like, I’ve been telling you for fucking four or five days that this is what’s going on. And it’s not going in your fucking heads.
It was so incredibly frustrating.

And this woman, this stupid nurse, the Nigerian bitch, she’s over the course of my stay at the hospital, she was coming back and she was like, yes, I gave him good advice. And now he’s improving because he listened to my good advice.
Like, this is the attitude. Like she came back and she was like, I’m here just to see how you’re doing. Like, bitch, I was even meant to put in a complaint to her for her against her because the way she was treating me and just everything.
She wasn’t listening to me. She was just going off based on her own thing. She was giving me this whole speech, very unhelpful, very unnurturing.

So many of the other nurses were so nurturing and just every other nurse. Like at worst, the other nurses were just, they came, did what they needed to do. And just left.
At best, they were the ones who were like really comforting to you and just gave you words of encouragement. She was, she walked like she was just, didn’t really give a fuck. She just came in, she’d just kind of look at you.
She was effectively telling me off the whole time I’m there about not doing the right thing, even though I’m doing the fucking right thing.
classic nigerian behaviour

I even have a voice note where I complain. To a family member about this, I should dig up that voice note to myself. I know who this one is, who and where that voice mail is.
And so, yeah, now we’re in how many days in? And like, I remember one time, Giacomo came. And then, you know, I thought I’d got through the day.

Things were going all right. The nausea wasn’t too bad. And then I’m sitting on my bed.
He’s left. My headphones are there. My headphones have a removable cable, which is handy. Because it means you break the cable, you can just buy another one. You don’t have to repair your three, 400 pound headphone.

And what happens is, I’im sitting on the bed, listening to music. The music really helped me drown out the hospital. And focus on stuff like Jon Hopkins. And focus on the music and not just the nausea and the pain and the sounds and whatever’s going on.
But then all of a sudden, I feel something coming up. Something coming up. I’m panicking. I know what this is.

Because you know when you’re gonna be sick, because you can sort of feel the saliva coming out. Coming up. You can feel, oh shit, it’s gonna happen. And then, as I’m running, I’m grabbing to get a sick bowl.
Because I’ve been through this enough times, I had a stack of sick bowls there. But I’m gonna tell you right now, I did not have enough for what was coming.

And I grab it. And I’m sick. It comes out. And then, I was like, whoa. I managed to catch it all in one bowl. Fuck. But I’m still feeling, more’s gonna come. I’m panicking. I press the nurse call button.

And I was like, and eventually she comes. Did I grab another bowl in time? I can’t remember. But I grab. Maybe she gives it to me. There’s more on my table next to me.
And I’m, blah. It’s like, and I’m telling her, I need more sick bowls, more sick bowls. More sick bowls with my mouth half full.

I don’t know. Knowing I’m gonna be sick. It wasn’t full of anything, but I knew I was gonna be even more sick. And she’s panicking, and she’s running around.
Then, blah, third time, I give her the second bowl. It was like she was hesitant to take it because it had all my sick.

But woman, you’re gonna have to clean up all this stuff if you’re not quick, getting a bit of sick on your hands, some bowl. It’s not like I’m vomiting up chunks of macaroni, cheese, and SpaghettiOs.
But then, third time, and a bit’s getting on the bed.
But luckily, and I say this because of my removable cable, and I managed to put my headphones out of the way on my phone, I didn’t get anything on the headphones, but I got some vomit all over the bed.

Usually, I’m really good at not getting vomit anywhere and just catching it in the bowl. Well, because I was sick three times, I emptied my entire stomach of bile, green bile, into these three containers.
Some of it did kind of spill and go on the bed. And I’m sort of sitting there, connected to the machine, IV pump.
And there’s two nurses there and they have to clean me up. And I’m like, I need to get out. Why am I sitting in my own sick? And it’s fucking disgusting.

And she’s like, hold on. I was like, no, let me get me out first. Don’t do whatever you’re doing. Just get me out of this bed first.
And then you guys can make the beds and do all of that stuff.

And what did I do? I think I even went to have a shower because by this point I was mobile. So I could, could I go and have showers? Yeah, I could kind of have showers at this point.