Melancholia

It's dark and there's a light drizzle outside. Nothing seems to be more apt.

There's a gauze wrapped around my nose to absorb the bleeding. Underneath it, there's two sets of wires running across each of my cheeks, supposedly holding my nose in the right position. Inside are some absorbable stitches. I'm taking painkillers so my nose is like an alien appendage.

I'm breathing through my mouth. Swallowing is difficult as it has an unfortunately effect of causing some reverberations in my ears because of my clogged nose. I can speak if I concentrate hard enough. Every moment my mouse is doing some activity such as chewing are seconds in which I am not breathing.

I foresee a monotony in the upcoming days. I won't be sleeping, I'll be taking naps. Anything longer than an hour or two is probably out of the question because of my condition. There's a regular interval when I am forced to wake up because I have to swallow or spit my saliva (and in some cases, blood). There's also the constant fear that I will choke and training my body to breathe through my mouth is an exercise.

I can't take a bath because it'll ruin the gauze. I can't even wash my face for the same reasons. Sometimes, the gauze gets in the way of my eating and drinking because it's touching my upper lip. And I am constantly wary of food so I'm currently subsisting on congee.

There are various pains in the body. Sometimes, it's the back of my head or my neck due to being bed-ridden for two whole days. Sometimes it's something in my chest, whether due to the anesthetic, the build-up of phlegm, or a ticking time bomb that was installed when I was unconscious. When I woke up, my arms were strapped to hospital bed because I was a feisty one.

Perhaps the worst is the boredom and with not much sleep in the coming days, it's going to stretch like eternity. I can't really pick up a book, or at least I tried and the story simply didn't sink in. Progressing further I think will do the author no justice.

Thankfully I can still write, although the gloominess around prevents me from writing anything deeper. It's like a part of my brain shut down and that integral part is what makes me persevere and press on, the element that incites my curiosity, the voice that tells me to edit and revise, the initiative to seize the day.

I'll have eternity to re-learn that I miss. The reading, the writing. Two centuries ago, my operation probably wouldn't have been possible at all. Four or more decades ago, people who go through what I went through didn't have the luxury of computers or the Internet (and receive all the well-wishes that you've sent). How do they cope? They probably picked up a journal and wrote. Or a sheet of paper and drew.