A ball of matter: a happy birthday blog

A cyst, a cyst, my kingdom for a cyst.

Right in the middle of my lower neck.... so I never saw it. Except in photographs. And I lived with the little marble-sized fellah for years. I am sure it was male. It was stubborn. But I lived with it. Patiently. A small ball of matter.

Then it became infected.

And hurt. And grew. And stung. And grew. I felt invaded and diseased. The little blighter started stinging in the night. And when I lay back in the bath, it was like being pricked with a thousand tiny elvish daggers. And we all know what THAT'S like. No-one wants a stingy ball of infected matter in the middle of their back, do they?

The Op

So a skilful surgeon (and his team) decided to excise it in a mini-operation. I admit to being a bit frightened, stripped down to my pants in a sterile operating room hemmed in by four masked medics.  So I breathed.

"I'm going in," said the surgeon. 

"Eeewwww," they all moaned when it was scalpeled. I heard a series of small splashes. 

I asked "Can you keep it for me to see?" 

"NO!!!!" they exclaimed in unison. 

"It's very pus-y and granulated," said the surgeon. "And rather big." 

A kindly male nurse who had the job of holding my gaze to reassure me said "You really DON'T want to see it. Even WE don't want to see it."

If YOU want to see the recovery photos - if you have your own cyst that you are thinking of having removed - or if you have ambitions to work in the NHS - or if you adore Hammer Horror Films or The Walking Dead, then by all means read on; otherwise click here to go to my happy place.

18 Certificate Trigger Warning of medical photographs below: pictures of my naked neck and more cyst ramblings....

Aquacel Ag (Aquacel Silver)

With the help of ex-nurse, Sally, and medical photographer, Emily, and a bevy of compassionate nurses who changed the antibiotic bit of the dressing every other day, the hole in my back healed from the inside out. I gradually recovered.

A part of himself and yet unconnected

Aquacel Silver was the magic ingredient that repaired the flesh and the skin from within. I like to think that all my troubles and woes, all my past sins, all my anxieties and guilty shames were compacted into that little ball of matter, that cyst. As George Orwell wrote in 1984:

From now onwards he must not only think right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst.

Glory Be To The NHS

Well now that little ball of matter has been jettisoned, discarded, exterminated. And the remaining scar is evidence of the healing of all my past wounds. But it was just a cyst. And the NHS removed it. For which I'm super grateful. I hope it doesn't come back. Which it might. But for now it has gone. Thank you, NHS.

Amen.