[Clarity]

The Coma!

Well I woke up on the Saturday Morning, it was 17th October 2015. I had an excruciating pain in my stomach and I rang NHS direct, they dispatched an ambulance. The ambulance guy at first said I had just drunk too much…I didn’t drink, hadn’t for years. But then the pain magnified. I remember going in the ambulance and arriving at the hospital. I remember a doctor telling me I had an acute appendicitis and they would operate immediately. I don’t remember too much after that, I vaguely remember ringing my daughter and mother, I have spoken on the phone to my mother every day without fail since my Dad passed away in 2011 and wanted to let her know why I wouldn’t be ringing that evening. I also remember signing the consent forms, one form was to give permission for them to revive me should anything go wrong. What could go wrong I thought but signed it anyway. Just as well as it turned out…. I found out when I had recovered that they didn’t do the operation straight away it was too busy so sedated me until the Sunday, my appendix ruptured and either the poison caused a heart attack or the anaesthetic did. Whatever caused it they had 7 attempts at starting my heart without success, they got it started on the 8th by which time my brain was hardly functioning (nothing new there, very similar to being in the bookies)! And my major organs were failing. They induced me into a coma. Those are the facts, this is what I recall.

….The first thing I recall is like being in a big diving bell under water, I was floating in the water but near the bottom I could see through a pane of glass and could see a doctor/surgeon with blue scrubs and mask on he was shouting my name “Can you hear me” it sounded like he was talking through the water I was trying to say yes but no words were coming out. If you can imagine on tv or in a carton and the words are all bubbly that’s what it was like. He still couldn’t hear me, then instead of looking through the glass I looked straight up through the water and he seemed to acknowledge that I had understood him, he said “There have been a few complications do you understand, we’ll have everything back to normal” It was still in the bubbly voice he was still about 30ft above me but I remember him saying to someone he’s still with us… (I obviously don’t know if this was before I was comatose or before they induced me, I reckon this was before but will never know). I then remember looking through the glass and seeing my brother, (I have two brothers I’m the youngest, this is the “middle” brother who had just returned to work overseas about a week before this happened). My brother was on an old WW2 motorcycle and was wearing a Biggles style flying jacket and googles he was shouting up at the doctor, and said something along the lines of “ok I will get through.” Then he turned to me and in the underwater voice told me he an important secret mission and had to get to Germany to help the war effort!! He did say he knew the doctor and went to school with him. He then shot off on the motorbike.
Then I recall actually looking down at the building, it was a school, not my old school, but a school I had actually attended as a 6 year old when I had to stop with an Aunty for a while, I think my mam was in hospital my brother also attended the same school at the same time. It was a very old school building I remember the toilets were in the school yard.
It’s funny I remember things very vividly there was about 5 or 6 things going on but am finding it hard to narrate. But this was one dream/vision there was about 5 or 6 going on, and I kept flitting from one to the other. For most of them I was underwater. The main tact, concerned me being born. I actually seen my delivery and there was somebody trying to buy me from my mother.
I was born in 1966 but a lot of this coma was concerning WW2.
But the bit you all want to know about is the tunnel I reckon. For the most part of my coma it’s like I was ruminating, like watching myself in a film, not through my own eyes. One part which was very distressing I was a boy of about 5 or 6 and these two doctors kept taking me from my mother and torturing me, they had to condition me for sale. I did feel actual pain, I’m wincing/squirming now remembering it. I won’t ever forget it the pain. They had me in a sort of army billet/hospital I remember them being all “nicey nicey” to my mother who was glowing radiantly with a bright white dress on she was frantically trying to get in touch with my Dad. My Dad went to sea all his life and in this dream or hallucination he was in West Africa. My Mam was sitting at a telephone exchange type switchboard the sort you see in old black and white films where you plug the wires in the holes. She was frantically trying this socket then that one. I was watching her, she was a vision of loveliness her cheeks rosy and as if she had a glow all around her. Yes she’s my Mam, of course she’s special to me, I love her. But this was a different level of loveliness. More than angelic almost holy I would say now. She couldn’t get in touch with my Dad but then another more gaudy looking Lady came in she was called Alice Gardiner, she spoke very very posh, just like the queen. She managed to get hold of my Dad I heard him say as clear as a bell, “But I’m up the bloody Congo Man”! My Dad never swore in front of my Mam not even “Bloody” I heard my Mam burst into tears as the horrible doctors took me off to a private room.
First they hit my knees with bits of wood. (This has happened to me in real life many years ago….bad gambling debt people). But then what they did next is the pain I’ll never forget. They were forcing things up my backside….not parts of their bodies but stupid things, a potato, and a tin of fruit. The tin of fruit wouldn’t go. (Thank God). But then I looked at the surgical table as one of the doctors went behind a cardboard divider and put some music on. We’ll meet again by Vera Lynn it was on full volume the other doctor had 5 or six large stones/small rocks and wrapped them in a blanket and started hitting the with a hammer they were destined for my backside I knew. I started crying and screaming and kicking he told me unless I told them about my Dads job they were going inside me “for starters”. I didn’t know I told them . The other doctor came back and took the bad one away, then they took me to a normal hospital room, still like wartime décor but said we’ll leave this here as a reminder. It was an old fashioned tin of pears.

( I found out weeks later when recalling this to my mother that her mother had an Aunt called Alice Gardiner who was a distant relation, I have no recollection of ever hearing that name. My nana (Mams mam, died in 1981 age 82. I also found out that when my Dad very first went to sea in 1959 he went to West Africa, that’s where the Congo is. I presume they may have inserted tubes into my backside during my stay in hospital but my Mam didn’t know she said they couldn’t see me for all the things stuck on me apparently I was twice my normal size. However about 6 weeks after I came out I started bleeding from there, I went back to hospital and without embarrassing myself any further there is a problem which stills bothers me on occasion).

So far I’ve been in tears once when writing….my Dads voice, not the pain.

Please don’t comment on this thread, until I’ve told it all, I will continue and add to it, not like in a weeks’ time but over the next 24 hours. But for now I have a few things I need to do.

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