The Tumultuous Occasion of Being Tube Free

The last chain shackling my limp body to the mechanical prison, which has been my bed for eight disturbing, disastrous and downright dreadful days has finally been broken. Every tube, be it a saline drip, catheter or even marvellous morphine has been discarded. I am a free woman, which is rather lucky as all the veins in my arms have been bludgeoned, strangled or stabbed, unfortunately resulting in their ultimate demise. William Wordsworth most adequately expresses my emotions surrounding the addition of each cannula, tube and machine that became a necessary attachment to my body,

“Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,”

More tubes, more machines meant more complications, more time in the day when I was no longer living, just purely existing. Today, however, I truly believe I have turned the corner. I will be remaining in the realm of the living. I will have the energy to write ridiculously overdue, verbose responses to my friends. I will don day clothes (with the assistance of some exciting old-lady gadgets) and the nightdress ghost, neither alive nor dead, who has been my persona for the last week, will be consigned to the benthic depths of myself. I will, at long last, be able to look outside the window into the lives of friends, family and acquaintances, no longer solely absorbed in my own difficulties.