Last Friday I went under the knife.

I had to undergo a biopsy and debulking of an exophytic oropharyngeal tumour that had extended towards my soft palate, partially obstructing my airway.

The tumour was a nuisance, but didn’t hurt. The aforementioned procedure, however, hurt like hell. Even under general anaesthetic it must have hurt like hell, because when I came to on the Recovery Ward I was still strapped down to the bed…

It started with the consultant spraying anaesthetic up both nostrils to aid the introduction of some intubation and then anaesthetising around the tumour by means of a long, LONG needle to the throat. That last bit was actually less painful than the cannula on the back of my hand. It just seemed more “horror show” than the rest of it…

Then came the actual intubation.

First, the introduction of the endoscope up through the left nostril, back and down past the tumour and onward towards the trachea. That made me squirm a bit.

Then they slid the air tube over the endoscope, using it to guide the way to the target before pulling the endoscope back out leaving a path for the anaesthetics to be delivered. Now that scraped and scratched its way down so much that I couldn’t help but contort myself in pain. A pain that I couldn’t soothe…

And then they started filling me with their magic sleepy gas…

“Are you awake, Mr M?”

Those words woke me to find myself surrounded by nurses fiddling with my tubes…

“Y-yes. I think so.” , I tentatively replied.

“Thank gods! I’ve got my old voice back!”

No more sounding like Mr Bean for me, thankyouverymuch!

A cup of tea and a cheese sandwich later, my mother and brother came along to pick me up, so off I went home with my prescription of a fortnight’s worth of Codeine for pain relief, and the promise of a future appointment for the biopsy results in two weeks.

The Drugs Don’t Work

Well. Some do. For some people. Sometimes.

Codeine is no use for me. Nor, for that matter, is paracetamol.

I’ve known for some time that paracetamol doesn’t work as a pain killer in me. It does nothing. Nil, niente, nada. I may as well be swallowing a sugar tablet.

Codeine, however is a bit different. It does have an effect. It just doesn’t kill the pain.

What it does, though, is it plays with my eyes. It also affects my balance, but mainly it plays with my eyes.

Things move about in my periphery vision, but when I look… nothing there…

Lights swirl randomly around against the background unless I stare directly and intently at them. And it’s not just a slight twitching around that they do. No! This is full-on “sign your name with a sparkler” type swirling. No wonder they tell you not to drive!

I checked on the NHS website to see if I could take Aspirin while on Codeine. Seems to be fine, they say.

Aspirin comes in, rolls up its sleeves and gets on with dealing with the pain. No messing. Five minutes? Job done. Meanwhile Codeine’s over there saying “Look what I can do with his other eye!!!”

I’m off the Codeine now. I don’t think I’ll ever be going back to it either.