Nurse Curls busied about. Pain free me shnuffled around in bed quite happily, still keeping half an eye on the door for Mr Ethereal. Another nurse arrived with a sizeable canister of Nitrous Oxide. I’d been here before and, with the teachings of Janice alive in my mind, knew that whatever was coming was gonna be a whole lot more bearable on a few good lungfulls of Nitrous Oxide.

Nurse Curls: ‘Ok, you need to put your mouth over the mouthpiece and inhale and it should make this noise.’ She lets an amount of air out and a great Darth Vader inhaling noise ensues. I get straight in there and get the exact noise required. It’s quite a large mouthpiece for my small mouth. Also dry and plasticky which compliments perfectly my dry and plasticky lips. I fight back the gag reflex and get in a few practice lugs. Slightly metallic taste but other than that not much to report, it is a mix of nitrogen and oxygen I presume which we’re breathing anyway, just in slightly different proportions.

Nurse Curls: ‘Ok, the effect isn’t very long lasting so the trick is to keep going, long deep regular breaths, breathing in and out through the mouthpiece. We’ll let you get going then give you a breathe in once, exhale, breathe in twice, exhale and on the third time you hold hold hold and we pull the tube out. There are two tubes so we do the whole procedure twice.’

Apparently there are tubes in me.

I love medical staff as they do always explain exactly what’s going to happen in very simple terms and then it does happen. Also, thanks to all the extra curricular activities my Mum had me doing at school, I am very good at listening to and carrying our instructions.

I was pumped, let’s do this.

The breathing commenced and overtime I did get fairly light headed. I was so convinced that Bassalot would turn up while this was happening (it just seemed obvious) that as sound distorted around me I definitely heard his dulcit tones outside the curtain. I really concentrated, tubes are coming out man, this shit’s real, I can hear my breathing. Nurse Curls starts to count ‘Inhale one….. inhale two and hold, hold, hold…’

Pull, pull, pull oh christ something is actually coming out of my stomach and it’s quite fat and long

Nurse Curls: ‘Oh god it’s always those blue bits which get stuck’

At which I burst out laughing, mind spiralling into overdrive. The last time I had a tube in me (whilst being conscious admittedly – yesterdays operation being the exception) the tube was going up through the vein in my wrist all the way to my heart ready to pop in a stent. So when Nurse Curls said:

“It’s always the blue bits which get stuck!” – my mind graphically and rather beautifully I thought conjured up a manga animation from a film I’d watched called Urotsukidoji. Blue tendril like veins were ejecting from my stomach as the tube left its housing. And as I was on laughing gas this seemed incredibly funny rather than in any way horrific so I removed the mouthpiece and said ‘Please don’t mention the blue bits’ while almost crying with laughter.

She laughed and said ‘That’s why they call it laughing gas!’ I sucked hard and we went in for tube number two.

I was having a massive rush and there was silence both at the same time. I was facing straight ahead and the relief of the tubes being out was euphoric. I now realised why, when I was in bed, that I felt as if my rib cage was being supported on two skewers. The nurses, one on each side of me said ‘Well that was really good, you did really well, textbook.’

They took away the cannister and opened the curtains which had been drawn to surround the bed. I presume the whole thing had been quite noisy. Curtains don’t generally mask a whole lot of noise like that. I remained shocked for a little while and I never thought I’d say this but thank you Janice.

Two chapters up for you tonight so Chapter #14 also up on line for a read – ‘No Rest for the Wicked’ xx