Smooth operation Rona Fitzgerald

Smooth operation

A routine operation said the surgeon, man. Not for me I should have said-it’s my womb, when did you have a hysterectomy?

At 3.a.m. I’m delirious, shouting for help. The sacred heart’s spinning around my room pursued by wild horses.

I sit up, alert as a hawk, afraid to sleep. All the fear of my lifetime, in only one night. No more morphine for me.

The losses stacked up, leaving Dublin, my spaces and places, my family and friends. My hinterland. I already knew this city would not become home.

Initially all went well as the slow inebriation of anaesthetic calmed my fears. ‘You kicked up a bit’, said the surgeon later, ‘resisted’. ‘It went well, I stopped counting after thirty fibroids.’ As he walked away, he added, we took it all nothing could be salvaged.